Pleonasm

I learned a new word this week: this week: pleonasm.   It means using more words than necessary to express an idea, and all too often the beginning (or simply patronizing) author does that - explains when it's not necessary.  

You recognize the sort; he or she irritates you when trying to clarify; crosses the line from acceptable instruction to rejectable (if that's a word, and I've decided that it is) pomposity.
 
I won't commit that offense, I trust, but I have an excellent illustration of, well...  Actually, my daughter, Liv Montgomery, wrote this rebuttal to one of my lengthier pieces of writing advice:
 
"First off, I'd like to make it abundantly clear in as few words as possible while making my point compellingly interesting, that although I have the highest esteem for your ample writing ability, your keen mind, your sophisticated style coupled with your refined looks, piquant humor and venerable experience, in the final analysis it goes without saying - for me, for you, and for anyone else who may happen to read this timely and relevant note, now or in the future - withal and notwithstanding my own experience and recent efforts to reduce my profound but turgid manuscript to its most essential elemental form, I believe (and I could be wrong here) I am the quintessential queen of the preposterously ridiculous bull____ run-on sentence."
 
Here's the next chapter of Dead on Dutcher's Mountain, which of course, you may buy (if that's your intent and you have access to both $4.99 and a Kindle) at www.amazon.com/Margaret-Raymond/e/B006MZUHUA or continue to read in serial here on this - and I may seem to be presuming upon your patience here as I attempt to make a point - excellent vehicle for my exciting suspense mysteries. 

Twenty

Kneeling over Brian, triageing and improvising and strategizing, forcing the wounded man’s good lung to work, McCoy automatically reached to his belt for the radio.  Gunderson continued to tremble, but it was his turn to be rational. 

“No, for God’s sake don’t call a deputy!”

McCoy threw the big man a glare, his thumb moving onto the radio switch.

“No!  Every call on your police band is picked up at The Herald!  I’ll call Altstock’s medical officer on my CB  He has an ambulance, and he can call your office.”

McCoy saw reason: at the newspaper Brad was a little deaf, his radio a little loud, and Hillary would be at the paper with Karen.  As soon as he got to Rosalie’s office he dialed the paper.

Hillary seemed strained even before his announcement.  But, “paralyzed?” she asked, although in a small voice.  “Can he breathe?”

“So far, Hill.  It looks like a bullet nicked one of the thoracic nerves.”  God, what did that mean to her?  he wondered.   Sometimes he acted like he was missing common sense. 

“Will he be taken to Medford?”

“Yes, Hill.”  And why couldn’t he call her full name, instead of that ancient kid-stuff nickname?  He said, “It’s closer to us here, and the facilities are complete.”

Long pause; she was beginning to cry.  “Good,” she told him.

“There are medicines and pain killers up here.  And I’ll help doctor him in the ambulance on the way to Medford.”

“Good.”

“Hill, he’s going to make it.”

“Good.”

Another pause.   “Hill, let me talk to Brad.”  Brad was cretinously insensitive, but available.

As instructed, he promised to provide Karen with a baby-sitter (the typesetter would deliver to Deputy Linda) and brought Hillary some heavily sweetened coffee.  He would drive her to the hospital.  He would conscript his distribution manager to follow in Hillary’s car, so she wouldn’t be stranded in Oregon.  McCoy promised him an exclusive on the story, but barred photographs of the paralyzed victim.

Once in the ambulance and on the way, it seemed very clear to McCoy, depending on the identification of those skeletons.  Brian had returned to the site of his wife’s death to seek a grisly sort of closure.  The cave had been used by Dudmann Brock to store his marijuana, and his boobytrap had caught Gail Webster.  Brock probably didn’t know about those skeletons; they were in that other room of the cave.  Now Brock was dead, and his killer used the place.  But he hadn’t set another trap, so when Brian was discovered, he got shot.  Gunderson, yelling inside the cave, had scared the attacker off.  Find the pot dealer and solve two murders, Gail’s and Brock’s, and one attempted murder; Brian’s.

As if on cue Brian sighed, gurgled, and bubbled blood from his mouth.  He was strapped to a plywood wedge, but the head restraint had loosened and he had slipped sideways until his head lolled.  McCoy swore and helped the attendant wrestle the man into a more upright position.  In order to nick a thoracic nerve from that angle, he reminded himself sarcastically, the bullet would have pierced a lung.  And pierced lungs gave up this bright foam; they could drown the victim.  Pay attention, doctor. 

On the other hand, he reasoned as he held Brian’s head, there might be a flaw in his thinking about the crimes.  A truck driver had seen an Accordo head down the mountain, emerging from a track by the first bridge going down.  The driver was a blond wearing dark glasses, but wasn’t as big as Karl Voerst.  VenLoo.  Obviously it was a pot farmer, probably the farmer. 

But that had happened about an hour and a half before Brian’s shooting.  Either way, he’d have to search that cave and the pool inside it.  It was a budgetary gamble, but four, no maybe six attacks counting the skeletons, were involved.  Worth it.  He called to the driver, still clutching Brian’s head and balancing himself on the curves of the mountain road: would he radio for extra lights and another man to come to the mine?