Time, Time, Time

When too much time passes in story lines

Today I want to talk about the passage of time in a series.  I am not referring to publication dates of books but rather the amount of time that passes inside a series.  For example, I just finished the book A Brush With Shadows by Anna Lee Huber.  If you read my review, I talked about the fact that the story takes place a week after the last book and that I really enjoyed that because I always feel like I am missing major events when too much time passes inside the story between books. 

I recently finished the Barker and Llewelyn series by Will Thomas and while I really enjoyed it, I was very annoyed that 1-2 years passed between the events of each book.  The subsequent book always started off by skimming over major events that had happened in the intervening time and I would grab the previous book to see what I had missed, only to find out that those events weren't in the book at all.  I know it sounds a little convoluted but I don't want to give away any spoilers because I do still highly recommend the series.  The most current book in that series started out by mentioning something that was so shocking and such a big deal that it should have been included in either that book or the one previous instead of as just a side note and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.  

I am ok with 4-5 months passing between events but not really anything more than that - especially when you are reading about private detectives.  You can't convince me that a year or more passes between cases.  When you are talking about amateur sleuths, it isn't realistic for them to be involved in more than one or two murder investigations a year but since the reader is already suspending disbelief as it is, you have license to allow the characters to get up to more shenanigans more often.  This is especially true when you are several books in to the series and you're learning more and more about the main characters.  

What is even more jarring is when there is a large gap in time and important secondary plots that run through the series is completely left out. That seems to be the case with the Sebastian St. Cyr series by C.S. Harris.  Sebastian has been trying to find his mother throughout the entire series and things were starting to ramp up but something happened in one of the books and we haven't heard much about that event or the search for his mother since then and it's really disappointing.  There seems to be too much emphasis on the personal relationship between he and Hero and everything else has been forgotten and I don't like that, either.  Again, it goes to the passage of time inside the series.

So what are your thoughts on this topic?  Does too much time between events bother you or am I being too picky?  Let me know your thoughts below.