A writing structure I'm sure you're all familiar with: CLIFFHANGERS.

Recently, I finished a book called BoneMan's Daughters. This book was good. I have to say that Ted Dekker gets me everytime, even though sometimes there are lulls in his stories that are quite deadly when it comes to thriller writing. In my favorite thriller books, I find that there are two stories/two things happening at once, and the stories/character perspective switch of every other chapter.

Cliffhangers are awesome. But they can also be annoying, frustrating, nail-biting, suspenseful, or exciting.

This is a clever thing, because once you finish reading a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, you want to keep on reading to find out whether the other character is going to fall off that cliff or not, but first you have to read about what this other character is doing meanwhile. This technique is both good and bad in different ways. It builds suspense, but it makes a weaker reader set the book down because they don't particularily care about what Jane is doing at the moment. A stronger reader plows through the chapter, and finds out that Jane is dangling off an even higher cliff than John is!

(Oh, and if you haven't caught on yet, this is all hypothetical and John and Jane have nothing to do with BoneMan's Daughters.) So now you're back to John, who you were so worried about a chapter ago, and now you just want to get this chapter over with to see how Jane's doing. This is sometimes the case with a book, but other times it is not, and the whole book is just a whirlwind of events for a reader.

That's the best part- having your emotions flung all over the place, not sure whether you're going to implode any second from all the suspense and excitement the book is causing for you. BoneMan's Daughters was both of these for me - sometimes so exciting I was holding my breath, and sometimes so boring I wanted to fling the book across the room and pick it up again in a few days...maybe. I have been both the strong reader and the weak reader, sometimes setting the book aside and sometimes plowing through the chapters like a steam engine would through a valley of molasses. And with that being said, I need a new book. Any suggestions?

What books have you read that had this type of structure? Was it mindblowingly suspenseful, or so annoying you wanted to fling your book across the room?