> But what I dislike more about Perry is that her characters
 > don't develop.
 
I agree, except that I would express the problem in a slightly different way.
 
The problem is not *only* that the characters don't develop.  There are other 
writers whose series characters go on making the same blunders in their 
personal lives over and over, but the rest of the story is engaging enough 
that the reader doesn't really care.  If the books were solid in other ways, 
it wouldn't matter so much.
 
No, the real problem, IMHO, is that Perry has set up an expectation that the 
characters *will* develop.  We both want and expect Monk to regain his 
memory; in every book Perry toys with our curiosity about what he was like 
before his accident.  And lord knows she hints enough about the painful 
three-way relationship between Monk, Hester Latterly, and Oliver Rathbone.  
There are enough hints throughout that we expect something to develop.
 
And things do happen -- but at a glacial pace.  Maybe Monk will get one new 
scrap of memory in the course of a 600-page book.  Or we'll get one measly 
Incident between Monk and Hester, or Hester and Oliver. The rest of the time, 
we just get the same carbon-copy churning and angst that doesn't go anywhere.
 
Contrast this with the development of the relationship between Lord Peter 
Wimsey and Harriet Vane over the four HV books by Dorothy Sayers and the 
difference becomes very clear.  And sure, if you compare Perry and Sayers, 
then it's quite fair to say that there is no development in Perry
 
I wonder how many books Perry expects us to wade through before Something 
Really Happens?  If the length of the Pitt series is any clue, we'll have a 
long wait.
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