CHARACTERS MAKING YOU WANT TO KEEP ON READING

Victor Gischler writes some of the best crime fiction around, making it look so easy.  Here, in just four sentences, he nails a character:

"Baby Sister was family, but she was also a loose cannon.  Baby Sister frightened Nikki sometimes.  There was something in the sighteen-year-old hellion that delighted in pain and cruely.  Baby Sister was the reason they'd given up on family pets"  -- Shotgun Opera (2006)

Gischler wraps the character up and ties a bow on it.  And he makes you want to keep on reading well into the night.