Crime fiction seems to be thing currently. What is going on? Please help me booksa bloggers…why do people write crime (or not)? Why do they read it (or not)? Does it sell locally? Why does it sell internationally (or not)? What does it all mean? What are your views? Help me please….
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October 16th, 2009 @09:45 #
It would be a help to Crime Beat, too. So we join Margie in her plea for input.
October 16th, 2009 @12:03 #
When I was still working for A Major Book Retailer, Mike Nicol approached me with similar questions about local crime sales and merchandising trends. I'm afraid I was a bit dismissive saying "I don't read crime, I'd rather spend two hours on the movie adaptation." That was then, when I still had literary pretentions and was a little green. Now I am browner and have read a lot more local fiction, including fab crime books by Sarah Lotz, Jassy Mackenzie and Mike himself and I am coming round.
Most of my life, reading was about escaping - escaping from the local details of South African life, and especially from the details of crime and violence - to an anywhere-but-here. Perhaps because of the medication or the fact that I no longer have to drive 30 highway kilometres to work every day and get myself in real life-threatening and protohomicidal situations, I am starting to enjoy the kick of reading pacy, entertaining books set in recognisable places.
In my experience, I can stomach crime novels only when I'm not currently feeling traumatised by my life.
I also find that the SA crime I've read thus far is actually rather idealistic and feel-good, no matter how violent or troubling. The relationships they depict are sort of affirmative-action, idealised friendships - a picture of a rainbow future in which blacks and whites actually drink and braai together, speak a compromising in-between language, and in which goodies are good no matter how scarred and baddies are bad, and we know the difference.
October 16th, 2009 @12:10 #
The Castle Lager effect - the adverts of the 90s...as I remember them, that feel good factor...I am interested in what you say Louis, that it is reading local crime in general that has softened you up for crime in particular. I think there is something to that notion of the whole family of genres (with all their imaginary rules and expectations) that make up the literary body of a nation
October 16th, 2009 @12:22 #
I actually started on crime, Margie. I grew up reading Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell - the first adult books I read as a teen (and Poe!) Then I developed a liking for "literary" or pomo sort of books durig university and kept it up during my career at the bookshop. We got proofs of the trickier-to-sell novels from publishers and never a Grisham or whatever because those would sell without the booksellers' recommendation. But throughout my varisty careeer I always was interested in genre fiction. My honours elective was on Dan Simmons's science fiction and my MA on vampire fiction, so in a way reading crime (and currently writing horror) is a sort of homecoming. I'm a latecomer to SA fiction in general, crime or not - it didn't appeal for one reason or another until recently - and I'm excited by all the new voices and trends, the fact that we're developing a proud body of genre fiction.
October 16th, 2009 @12:26 #
Margie, I read crime fiction because I love it, and I write it because I read it.
Why do I love it? It's easy reading, fast paced, fun, absorbing, and it's original and yet predictable at the same time. Predictable because you know the baddie's going to try something at the end, you know there's going to be a twist in the tail - the fun is in trying to outthink the writer and figure it out, while following the adrenaline-fuelled action.
I don't seem to remember being put off crime fiction after I was hijacked. In fact, I might well have curled up with a Lee Child that very night. However, when a friend of mine had her first baby, she told me she stopped being able to read thrillers for a while, because she became very fearful and security conscious, but that applied to *all* thrillers, not just those set in South Africa where she lives.
I've had a lot of really encouraging comments from South African readers who've read my two books, saying how much they enjoy the local setting and what fun it is to read about familiar places. I do believe that when people say, "Oh, I don't read local crime fiction, it's too close to home" it is actually an excuse for "Oh, I am sure this book is going to be a substandard product, boring, badly written in comparison to international works, and not worth my time."
I don't think there is any reason at all why people who read international crime fiction should be put off local mysteries, because after all New Yorkers read thrillers set in New York, and Londoners read thrillers set in London.
October 16th, 2009 @12:56 #
Fascinating point, Louis, about the feel-good factor. My take is that James McClure actually provided a template with Tromp and Zondi and that many of us have adapted this as a local convention. All the same, I'm intrigued at your sociological reading of the crime fiction (how about extending it?) and so, Margie, whatever you don't use out of this lot I'd like to gather up and place on Crime Beat. I also take Jassy's point that the local excuse is about not reading SA writers rather than not reading SA crime writers. However, in this regard, I posted a quote yesterday from an Irish crime writer, Declan Burke, lamenting that Irish readers ignore the homegrown product too. He called it an inferiority complex.
October 16th, 2009 @13:48 #
V. interesting, esp re feel-good factor. Oh Jassy, I've just written a post saying my problem with Daddy's Girl (yes, Margie, I am sailing on! am hooked now) is that it's "too close to home". I agree re crime round the world; if you read crime, you should read local crime. Goes for all genres: legal dramas, chick lit, etc.
For purposes of Margie's questions (and also in defense of my global krimi anxiety): I am a very late arrival in this dept. In my mid-20s, I started reading Dick Francis to destress while writing my Masters, and then ONLY because of the horses. When I'd read every single one, I looked around for more of the genre I could tolerate. I can read P.D. James if there's nothing else, but find her too bleak. I branched out into Ruth Rendell (her Inspector Wexford novels only -- can't do the others) and Sue Grafton's alphabet series.
My idea of perfectly heavenly, 100% H-rated krimis are the Number 1 Detective Agency Botswana books. Close second: the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. By now you all know I am SuperWimp, hear me whimper. Oh, and I adored Sarah Lotz's Exhibit A, but for me, that's not a krimi.
Just can't do hardboiled gruff krimis (simply couldn't handle Mike's Payback, for instance. Sorry Mike. I can't read the Kellermans either, if it makes you feel any better.) It's only hanging around on Book SA and the questionable friends I have picked up here that have made me feel that I ought to roll up my sleeves and plunge in. Plus I have an academic interest in this area: is it a way we cope with crime and uncertainty?
October 16th, 2009 @14:01 #
No need to apologise, Helen. Confession: I can't watch injection scenes in movies. But how I enjoy the splatter-factor in prose. Pure poetry.
October 16th, 2009 @14:16 #
You mean all it takes to bring you to your knees is a syringe? Mwahahahahah. I shall flourish one when you least expect it.
October 16th, 2009 @14:27 #
No Requiem for a Dream for Mike, then.
October 16th, 2009 @15:26 #
I read crime books because I have an insatiable greed for wanting to know What Happens Next, and I generally find them to be unpretentious and more concerned with character development and plot than navel gazing and philosophical self-indulgent wank. I love a good story with a cracker of an ending (Jassy - you do the double-double twist brilliantly), and my favourite krimis provide vicarious real-life wish-fulfilment: When the rapist/murderer/baddie gets their comeuppance, it puts my world in order, just for a little while. Revenge - a dish best read at 3am (or in the bath).
I think local crime fiction is often passed over because local readers are so afraid that it’s going to be politicised – a reminder of past injustices, lingering guilt and pain.
Intriguing questions, Margie. You tempted me to crawl out of my heavily caffeinated rock to think about them.
October 16th, 2009 @17:30 #
Straw dogs - all of you...now that was a book. Very astute points. There was a discussion on my facebook site too - very interesting.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681145985&v=feed&story_fbid=157092327942
here is the link - you might all have to become my new best friends to read it - but there was one really interesting comment from Elaine Williams. She said that she loves crime fiction generally - can escape, not worry about what to think, just go along. But she also said that it is pretty much the only genre where there are often gay men or lesbian women as characters...I found that interesting too.
Jassy - you make some great points - look forward to being Crwys-Williamed with you next Tuesday!
@ Mike no injections? How did you watch PULP FICTION???? and requiem for a dream is so marvellous...:)
October 16th, 2009 @17:34 #
Sarah please explain for me a caffeinated rock. how did it land on you? why - if you could crawl out from under it have you not done so before....
And I am so with you on revenge - it is why I write crime to be honest - so that I feel better and get the bad guys. very childish I know but there it is - us crime fans are simple folks and quite easy to please. But as Mister Chandler points out - writing a good crime story is not as easy as it looks
October 16th, 2009 @18:12 #
Pulp Fiction is one of my favourite movies. I think on my fifth viewing I was able to watch the injection to the heart scene. But it took some doing. I had to hold my eyes open. Ah, Helen, injections/syringes in real life don't phase me. Just on screen. Actually while on confessions the other thing that gives me the rittles is a man shaving. Probably why I have two novels that start with shaving scenes. Go figure.
October 16th, 2009 @19:29 #
Shaving is useful - for men because it starts the day without saying this is morning. and you get to have them stand in front of a mirror/window and introspect...women it is make up - same thing but without the blades etc..
October 16th, 2009 @20:15 #
hi Margie, talking about shaving reminds me of the showering in your first (I think?) book. I've not read much other than poetry for fun in the last two or three years but I am a life-long who-dunnit fan - in the beginning for the plots but later because of characters, (from Miss Marple to Lisbeth Salander) who entranced me, and of the interesting/factual backstories that were kind-of 'candy-coated' (probably not the best choice of word). I've no time to elaborate now - it's just about wine & food time:-P but I found a lot of the above in your Like Clockwork. Maybe I should give converation a 'net airing? will open a separate thread...
October 16th, 2009 @20:39 #
The famous shower scene - of course - introspection but also a riff on the Ultimate Shower Scene of all time - in Hitchcock's Psycho. No one has every showered safely - in literature - since - I would love another thread - and Daddy's Girl does take one of the candy coated backstories - literally candy, the subject of the novel is six...and tells that story
October 17th, 2009 @09:06 #
I'm a lifelong crime fiction and thriller addict, although the addiction has let up a bit in the last seven years or so, since I've had my daughter (less time to read for pleasure, for the pure indulgence of reading and the thing of not getting interrupted). Started with Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, James Hadley Chase, Alistair McLean etc
Like Jassy I like the combination of the horror and violence and crime and then the joy of how it is sorted out (even if it there can't ever be a putting right, the person is dead, or some terrible deed had been done and can't be undone, justice can prevail, the baddies are caught).
Also I think it is a way of engaging with one's own inner shadow figures, allowing the baddies some air time and even with writers like Elmore Leonard, identifying with the baddies. (BTW - I loved the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, John Travolta is a wonderful sick weirdo, (Pulp Fiction @Mike). We've all been socialised but certainly I have a rich fantasy life (usually played out while driving, but not only of violence, but I'm sure most people who know me, would find it hard to believe.)
The other thing I love about crime fiction is the carefully observed sense of place. So if it somewhere I've not been (VI Warshawski's Chicago; James Lee Burke's Louisiana, Elmore Leonard's Miami and Detroit) I get a real thrill out of feeling the place become familiar in some way. If I ever got to go to Chicago, I am sure it would be familiar. Jassy McKenzie's Joburg is both familiar and strange to me, and the frisson of recognising her Rivonia or Yeoville or Newtown or the drive to Louis Trichardt, offers me another level of enjoyment. As did watching District 9 and Jerusalema.
October 17th, 2009 @09:25 #
That richly observed sense of place - very important in crime fiction - it fixes you in THIS place, at THIS time, with THESE people - very secure to be so located. ANd then the freedom inside the boundaries. I love Elmore Leonard too - a warm hearted writer. and funny too
October 17th, 2009 @09:43 #
Yes, the sense of place! Very NB. That and food. It always interests me that characters in krimis are always eating (or making/drinking coffee/tea). Plus they mostly have fairly ordinary working lives going on too, and we get a sense of normality along with all the horrors they face. Tempe Brennan is always grading papers, Kinsey Malhone is forever catching up on paperwork and making herself hard-boiled egg sandwiches. V.I. listens to a lot of opera (I think: have only read a few?). Wexford and Mike are always repairing to local restaurants, with Wexford is always torn between eating what he really wants and being healthy. I can't read Cornwell, but I'm told Scarpetta is always making sublime pasta sauce. And that Milo of the J. Kellerman books has discovered a wonderful Indian restaurant he uses as alternative headquarters. Plus they all have domestic lives (if truncated and tense): lovers, children, nieces, spouses... is this part of the comfort? And who can forget Mma Ramotswe's endless pots of rooibos tea?
October 17th, 2009 @17:40 #
And for women and for me as a young woman (when I was one) the laying out of a way of life (hate the word - lifestyle) for women that focussed on work, and her own life (Kinsey Milhone, VI, Kay Scarpetta, Clare Hart - although she came later... ). I found it instructive and helpful - new role models.
October 17th, 2009 @20:24 #
yes, Colleen and there's the whole industry of lesbian detective fiction that is probably useful in that way too, but which also goes a long way towards 'normalising' what is still a very marginalised/silenced way of life. Provided of course, that straights read them, I guess...
October 17th, 2009 @21:34 #
There is a lot of space for strong sassy women who aren't interested in getting hitched in crime fiction - it is the domain of the femme fatale and the blue stocking and killer-bitch and all kinds of other women who don't have fitted kitchens - that is one of the things that took me into crime writing. AS hostile and masculine a genre as it is in some ways - if your character proves she has balls she's okay. And gets left alone. Apart from the de rigeur psychos who go after her every now and then
October 18th, 2009 @09:39 #
“It’s something to do.” An honest answer to an in-store version of this straw-poll. This was from a woman buying Rose and two Pattersons. She said she read often, always crime/thrillers and when asked why, her response: “I dunno. My hubby had it at home I guess … I travel a lot so it’s something to do. My kids play sport so I read it while I’m waiting … I’ve done all the soppies … the Daniella [] Steele … so it’s a change…the nice thing about Patterson is he does short chapters… I hate to stop in the middle of a chapter.”
What you mentioned, Louis about the characters - isn’t that along the lines of the difference between commercial fiction and literary? Real commercial fiction is “something to do”, spacefiller, TV when/where there’s no TV.
October 18th, 2009 @14:55 #
No, Alex good crime fiction is much more than something to do. For me anyway. Lots of interesting social commentary, and showing how problematic the space between the haves and the have-nots is, and and and, too dull witted on Sunday afternoon to argue my point, but will do so soon.
October 18th, 2009 @17:07 #
My whole aim is to write crime fiction that is not written-down-television. Those books are unreadable generally. And tension happens very differently in narrative to how it happens in visuals. Think Hitchcock - and those devastatingly tense scenes he films - in The Birds and in Psycho. You can't write down 'some weird guy is checking this chick out showering and its really scary and she's got great tits. and the water goes down the plug, which is gross, but you kind of want to kill her too cos the film maker puts you in the place of the sicko. and then you don't because he puts you in the place of this wet naked girl who manages to clutch herself to display her sublimely white body to its best advantage.' Which is pretty much what happens in the shower scene in writing. but not at all in watching...so two things happen. too different kinds of scariness...
October 18th, 2009 @22:23 #
Agreed … well, almost. There is commercial crime and literary crime, which is to be expected. Oh dear, my head in need of sleep has paragraphs of stuff to add, and probably best to not read on from here, and if you do, well, a pinch of salt is worth more than what’s to follow . Colleen, Margie, maybe you’ve read some negativity into the words ‘spacefiller’ and ‘TV’ – none is meant. I don’t see TV writing as ‘written down’ – there’s commercial and literary TV/screenwriting, different types for different needs, and some of it is dazzling**, not just to watch, but in script form too. Ja, so when I say spacefiller, I don’t intend it as a bad thing, just a thing, it’s a reality of the human condition: the need to fill the space of our conscious minds, perhaps our unique problem as a species … butterflies don’t get bored… Gah! I suppose in that case, commercial or literary fiction, both are spacefillers, mindtrips, but there is that qualitative difference between the trips. Beautiful, awful and necessary as writing and stories can be, and heartbreaking as it is perhaps to say it, books are products, like bottle tops, and very commercial fiction across the genres - and btb I’m not in the camp that considers ‘literary fiction’ a genre on its own – is light, shallow, pulpy, a quick-read, a page-turner, it’s an entertainment spend, a buying choice. Again with ‘shallow’, I don’t mean it necessarily as a bad thing, just a thing, a quality of not being deep or complex. When I was doing the creative writing course at UCT, an American lecturer, a woman, an excellent teacher, except at this particular moment (I felt), shoved Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code across the table in the old boardroom where we had classes, and said: “Somebody gave me this, get it away from me. I don’t want to read this shit.” I never saw a person respond to a book with such venom. Hey, I’m not a Dan Brown fan, it’s not my thing, I can’t get past the first paragraph of Da Vinci Code, but my dad loved it, he loves a page-turner with some mystery and history, he’s a Ludlum, Harris and Dan Brown addict, and when the lecturer said that, the way she said it, so superior, she was not only disparaging of Brown, but of his readers too, my dad being one of them – my dad (and I have real soft spot for this fellow whose dog keeps eating his hearing-aids) and also the man who put my dad onto Brown in the first place, that man a self-made millionaire who invented a internationally groundbreaking market research system. In my odd head, I find fiction is so human, like a ghost imprint of our souls, it almost needs to be treated (analysed) like a person, in its every form accorded respect, mmm, yes, one minute to ten on Sunday night the 18th of October on a low-caffeine ebb and I’m declaring a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Fiction, that All Fictions are created free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should co-exist on our bookshelves in a spirit of brotherhood. … to bed, to bed I must go to bed … judging only certain types of fiction as ‘good’, near moralizing of a fiction’s worth reflects negatively on the readers and the authors of the other kind, which must by default then be ‘bad’ - it’s kind of an academic ‘ivory tower’ stance, smug, elitist, intolerant, and implies inferiority of the authors who write and the readers who read this ‘bad’ fiction (including ‘bad’ crime fiction) and the fiction Margie, you call ‘unreadable’ – unreadable to some, to a few, but not to all, so not really ‘unreadable’, that’s not a true description of a type. Likewise ‘good’ applied to a class of fiction, like a class of people, is not an accurate description, not a helpful, objective term. … I’ll surely regret this, ignore it all, except this:
**A total aside, about the dazzling script, here’s some proper writing from a screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L Diamond:
October 19th, 2009 @11:02 #
Alex - you might want to show this to your dad - it's part of Stephen King's acceptance speech when he won the National Book Award, and he really takes literary snobbery to task (and makes me feel almost guilty for ragging on The Da Vinci Code like I do...although I think that book, like Twilight is fair game - they are phenomenons and not just escapist literature):
'...But giving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that in the future things don't have to be the way they've always been. Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction. The first gainers in such a widening of interest would be the readers, of course, which is us because writers are almost always readers and listeners first. You have been very good and patient listeners and I'm going to let you go soon but I'd like to say one more thing before I do.
Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, "Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists." It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.
What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you.'
Hehehe. I LOVE Stephen King.
October 19th, 2009 @11:09 #
*grins* esp at the line about Russell Crowe...
October 19th, 2009 @12:53 #
Brilliant quote from the maestro, Sarah. Thanks.
October 19th, 2009 @19:49 #
I'm only catching up with this now - was busy online with the journal all weekend, but I have to admit a total crush on Simon Serrailler in Susan Hill's detective series: The Various Haunts of Men, The Pure in Heart, The Risk of Darkness and The Vows of Silence.
Hill's characters evolve over the series, and the description of Lafferton is so dense and textured that one struggles to emerge from the book at the end. In fact, I feel a real sense of grief as the book draws to a close.
That's not to say that her criminal protagonists are not disturbingly twisted and destructive - and it's uncomfortable sharing head space with them: one almost empathises for a little while.
October 20th, 2009 @07:03 #
Priceless Mr King – a splendid quote Sarah, said all I wanted to say in my Sunday night ramble, but with far superior clarity, lovely that, and I will keep it stored, thanks…Dad though would yawn, he’s not one to give a fig about the philosophies of writers and the categories of fictions…he’s a hearty story addict, his favourite genre: ‘rattling good yarn’, and if not gripped by the second sentence he’s snoring (that’s why he can’t get through Dragon’s Well, there’s no rattle in it…though dearheart He, for my sake, is making a valiant effort at it, about a page a fortnight).
October 21st, 2009 @11:47 #
http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=4914
October 21st, 2009 @13:29 #
@Sven I love the shows but that sort of thing makes it very difficult for me to watch:
http://twitter.com/mandyjwatson/statuses/2372043312
(Also:
http://twitter.com/mandyjwatson/statuses/2095170428 )
With regards to crime fiction - I don't read it very often. I don't know why, but it doesn't appeal to me. Perhaps that would change if I actually picked up a book, but I have piles of (primarily) science fiction books to get through and I suspect that will take the rest of my life. I loved the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew (in that order - the Three Investigators had a secret hideout, after all) when I was a kid, as well as Sherlock Holmes, but I never made the leap to adult fiction. I think I've read one Erle Stanley Gardner (if not, then a similar author), which I absolutely loved because I am a film noir and neo noir fan and this was an environment in which there were femme fatales and typewriters and no forensics or cellular phones and people were smart and <i>deduced</i> things... but when it comes to the kinds of novels you're all talking about (and many people I know love them), it just does not appeal.
I would probably like Elmore Leonard's work and the <i>No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency</i> series however.
October 21st, 2009 @14:06 #
No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is all and only deduction. And observation of human foible. It's what I like about Sue Grafton as well: she deliberately sets her Kinsey Malhone alphabet novels in a pre-internet and cellphone age so that her heroine quite literally has to do the legwork of knocking on doors and assessing stories.
October 21st, 2009 @15:06 #
Nice Mandy, I find that popular culture has become a bit like object oriented programming. All the basic modules are written, people are just attempting to arrange them in formations that emulate novelty and originality. The good news is you can now watch this in higher definition than ever before. Yeeeeah.
October 21st, 2009 @15:14 #
@Helen: I loved the TV series but I know the two don't necessarily compare, as much as the author was involved (if I remember correctly). It's good to have confirmation of my suspicions that I will enjoy the books. Also, noted about the Sue Grafton books. Thanks.
@Sven: I see. That [sunglasses] is huge. Yeeeeaaaah!