EBarnacle:

LOL! I can certainly understand someone flinging Half-Blood Prince into the trash because the reader was upset with what the author had done to her characters!

I once did the same thing with the last book of The Lymond Chronicles (Checkmate, I think) by Dorothy Dunnett. I reached the place where one of her characters was killed, and it made so much sense to the plot that I believed it had happened--I threw the thing against the wall and screamed at her that "it wasn't FAIR" and "how dare she do that to me?"

Fortunately, I eventually picked it up and finished it. I was much happier with Ms. Dunnett after that.

And I'll be standing in line for the next Harry Potter, just like I was for the last two.

By the way, since when are mysteries not considered literature? They have been considered so since shortly after the days of pulp fiction. I defy anyone to tell me that John D. MacDonald (one of the many excellent mystery authors) didn't write good literature!

Lin