Required Reading

John Rickards on why the Genre Has No Clothes. I'd quote from it but then this post would go on for ages so really, read the whole thing and then come back and hash it out in the backblog here.

This comes just as I'm starting a Richard Price mini-binge, and I can't help but think that had his first book come out in, say, 2004 instead of 1974, he'd have been slotted as a crime writer instead of a writer of books that no one but Richard Price could write.

Comments

[Clair Lamb]

If you sit down to write a book and waste any time at all wringing your hands about the KIND of book you're writing, or where you fit in the literary pantheon, I don't want to read whatever you produce.

Tell me a story. Give me someone to root for in a setting I can believe. The taxonomy takes care of itself, after the fact.

[Clea Simon]

Thank you, Clair. A book is a book is a book. If you;re concerned about message or whateer, you aren't writing a book. You're writing a polemic. And the only way to ever write a book is (to quote Nick Lowe, again) "bash it out now, tart it up later." To which I'd add, "and let the crits sort it out."

[John McFetridge]

Yeah, but, Clair, the thing is, once the book is written and in the stores, how do you find it? Sarah's right, Richard Price's books are fantastic (especially Freedomland and Samaritan) but many readers of 'crime fiction' or mysteries might not read them.

[Charles Ardai]

I like reading a juicy rant as much as anyone and more power to Rickards for getting so much off his chest, but what exactly is the man's point? That not enough crime novels tackle issues such as abortion and teen pregnancy? (That's all we need: preachy Books With Agendas that smell like Afterschool Specials.) That not enough crime novels are set in the Third World and deal with unfamiliar cultures? (What, it's not possible to write a moving, effective, challenging, memorable work of literature that's set in the U.S. or Europe?) That crime novels should be less "1960s guitar pop" and more "punk"? (Do we really want to hold punk rock out as the epitome of quality and worth? Have you seen how much empty posturing has been done in the name of punk? And would anyone who's not an alienated 16-year-old or a diehard epataer-les-bourgeois angryman really say that art's not art unless it's snarling and radical?)

Is the point that most books are lazy and poorly written? Sure they are. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

Is the point that there hasn't been a major new movement in crime fiction since the hardboiled school took over from the classical puzzle guys? Fair enough -- I think there's a nugget of real insight here...but it's a hell of a lot easier to point this out than it is to suggest what that new movement should look like. ("Punk" mysteries about abortion and teen pregnancy are not it, I'm afraid.)

In short, I'm a bit at sea. The man is angry about something and he's expressing himself with passion, but I can't get a lot further than that.

--Charles

[Charles Ardai]

I like reading a juicy rant as much as anyone and more power to Rickards for getting so much off his chest, but what exactly is the man's point? That not enough crime novels tackle issues such as abortion and teen pregnancy? (That's all we need: preachy Books With Agendas that smell like Afterschool Specials.) That not enough crime novels are set in the Third World and deal with unfamiliar cultures? (What, it's not possible to write a moving, effective, challenging, memorable work of literature that's set in the U.S. or Europe?) That crime novels should be less "1960s guitar pop" and more "punk"? (Do we really want to hold punk rock out as the epitome of quality and worth? Have you seen how much empty posturing has been done in the name of punk? And would anyone who's not an alienated 16-year-old or a diehard epataer-les-bourgeois angryman really say that art's not art unless it's snarling and radical?)

Is the point that most books are lazy and poorly written? Sure they are. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

Is the point that there hasn't been a major new movement in crime fiction since the hardboiled school took over from the classical puzzle guys? Fair enough -- I think there's a nugget of real insight here...but it's a hell of a lot easier to point this out than it is to suggest what that new movement should look like. ("Punk" mysteries about abortion and teen pregnancy are not it, I'm afraid.)

In short, I'm a bit at sea. The man is angry about something and he's expressing himself with passion, but I can't get a lot further than that.

--Charles

[Sandra Ruttan]

Every writer has to consider the kind of book they're writing. At least, they do if they want to be published. They have to know what editors and agents to send it to, and that goes far beyond just the basic labels of crime, mystery, thriller or whatever. We aren't told to send our works to agents who handle mysteries, we're told to send them to agents who handle authors who write the same type of books we do.

And so the classification system begins.

Charles says, "That's all we need: preachy Books With Agendas that smell like Afterschool Specials."

The very best balance is a damn entertaining read that has a few things in it to make you think. I'll hold up Christa Faust's Money Shot as an example. Lots of food for thought, a book well worth reading because it entertains so very well, but isn't a forgettable read. That's what appeals to me as a reader, and as an author.

All that said, the best measurement of a book is against what it's intended to be, not against what it isn't that it never wanted to be to begin with. Someone writes me and complains that my book isn't a heartfelt cozy my response would be, "So?" Individuals are allowed to make up their minds what they want to write about and how to go about it. Publishers get to decide what they'll put their money behind. My motives for my own work can't be attributed to anyone else, and that's ultimately the problem with all of these discussions. I have the things I like as a reader, and the things that interest me as an author, but that isn't to say that other people can't like different things.

I may wrinkle my nose at the memory of Bridges of Madison County and hate the book to my dying day, but reading is a skill. End of the day all that matters is that people find books they enjoy.

[John McFetridge]

I don't think his point is that most books are lazy and poorly written -- it's that there's a huge amount of effort and hard work and very good writing going over the same ground again and again. We call it 'crime fiction,' but it's almost exclusively murder mystery and almost exclusively detective fiction which ends with bad guys getting caught.

I say 'almost' because in the past few years there have been books like Duane Swierczynski's "The wheelman" (and even "The Blonde" with its almost sci-fi) and Allan Guthrie's "Hard Man" with no cops or clues in sight.

This is a genre which once led the way ina lot of areas and Rickards is worried it doesn't anymore. He may be right.

The real danger is anything that slips just slightly out of the genre constraints becomes simply fiction and that's too bad for the genre and those of us who are proud of it.

[John Rickards]

Going bottom first (fnar, fnar)...

@ Charles:

Abortion et al. were merely examples - maybe not the best, but they happened to jump to mind at the time. My point there was that those authors who do feel, or who at least claim they feel, the need to explore some issue or other within their work only seem to do so within a very narrow range of such issues. "I really wanted to show just how traumatic spousal abuse/the murder of a child/wrongful accusations/whatever can be..." as if there aren't already a thousand books and a thousand stories that do exactly that.

I wouldn't read quite so much into the musical analogy either; as I said, 'punk' is more or less a meaningless label. The movement, more than the music, had more relevance at the time it occurred, but the actual style, posturing et al. of that movement isn't necessarily what I'm espousing. I'm certainly not saying art is only art if it's snarling and radical.

More - and one of these days I'll curb my prediliction for analogy, but not today... - that if Monet painted thirty pictures of haystacks, and then the painter after him decided they wanted to paint haystacks, and the one after them, and the one after them, eventually, surely, there comes a point where the ability to paint haystacks is no longer something that anyone should be attempting to hold up as serious, worthy art.

If that's what they're trying to do, of course. If all they want to do is paint and haystacks are what they like, go right ahead. Unless you've got a new take on haystacks that the thousand people before you missed, I'd say it betrays a certain lack of imagination, but if that's what floats your boat, knock yourself out. I just wish more of us did something other than haystacks.

Which is more or less what I was shooting at with the music/pop/punk thing, but that might work better as an explanation. :-)

I wasn't trying to suggest anything in particular as a new movement - not deliberately, anyway - just that I think there does need to be something new. It's been a long, long time since something genuinely different emerged in our genre.

@ Clea and Clair:

Uh... actually, more or less the 'haystacks' point above. My concern is that when people sit down to write a setting that's believable and characters we can root for they stop far short of where they could go. Good writing can sell just about any eventuality, but so few writers in our genre - and there are an absolute shedload of writers here who have that ability - just don't seem to do it. In short stories more often, maybe, but not in full length fiction.

@ everyone:

Worth pointing out is that I don't, personally, believe crime should be "message" fiction or anything like it. I don't think the genre deserves particularly to be taken as serious, weighty prose.

But a whole bucketload of writers seem to. There are hundreds of author interviews online in which crime writers say that they wanted to explore a particular issue in their latest book, and that they felt they had something to say. And half of them talk about the same things. I'm sure - I didn't go Googling for earlier examples - that crime writers have been making the same claim for as long as the genre's been around.

And while there are still things that remain relatively non-covered and to which there may be plenty of interesting perspectives to add, for a large number of more popularly covered issues the amount of fresh insight a writer today can add to the existing conversation is basically nil. If you're going to claim that you have something worth saying, I don't think it's unfair to expect it to be something that ten, twenty, a hundred people haven't already said first.

[John Rickards]

I spend all that time typing out an explanation and John makes one of the main points far more succinctly:

"I don't think his point is that most books are lazy and poorly written -- it's that there's a huge amount of effort and hard work and very good writing going over the same ground again and again."

That's it exactly.

[Cornelia Read]

I get really pissed off about teen pregnancy and right-to-life crap in my second book. Also butthead shrinks, stately plump whining baby-boomer hippies, and the Seventies generally.

As for what anyone else wants to write, that's up to them. i may read it, I may not.

The idea that we all need to gang up on each other in order to raise the social consciousness of the genre sounds like a bad Thirties Freudian/Stalinist folk-dancing party in a coldwater West Village walkup. Or something the MFA crowd would get all het up about during a slow February in Iowa.

And my memory of the whole punk shtick was that after a while, they all seemed as blandly conformist as Deadheads--just trade the tie-dye and Birkenstocks for Doc Martens and a few spiky cockbelts around your wrist. (Black Flag! The Circle Jerks! The Germs! Mom and Dad will *have* to pay attention to me now!!)

Ho hum.

[Cornelia Read]

Ah, John, you beat me to it on the punk posturing. Well said.

[Charles Ardai]

In fairness, I do get tired of seeing the same scenes and the same characters over and over -- Hard Case Crime gets more than 1000 submissions each year, and probably 90% of them have nothing new to offer, just haystack after haystack after haystack. I agree that it gets wearisome and feels, frankly, like a waste of the writers' (and their readers') time.

But I don't believe that the solution is for writers to insert more Big Issues or set their books in Ethiopia instead of Ohio. A great book can be set in Ohio; a great book can be written about the murder of a child or about wrongful accusations; a lousy book can be written about teen pregnancy (or whatever) in Addis Ababa. Frankly, I think that telling a writer to choose a different topic or setting is giving him or her a crutch and an excuse to focus on something truly non-essential, when what you should be telling him or her is to pick any damn topic and setting in the world but write about it *well*.

Just my 2 cents, of course. And I'm sincerely grateful for a posting like this which, however much I may disagree with this or that detail, accomplishes its purpose, which is to get people thinking and talking and maybe pushing themselves to do better work. I'd just encourage people not to fall into the trap of thinking that the problem of uninspired or unsatisfying or unambitious writing would go away if we added a dollop of Social Relevance to the stew.

[Clair Lamb]

I'm all for pushing oneself, but iconoclasm for its own sake is pointless.

It is possible to make the conventional feel new. Off the top of my head, I can cite Louise Penny, Kevin Wignall, Laura Lippman, Chris Grabenstein and, yes, Charles Ardai as authors working within time-honored structures who are still showing us fresh things about *people* -- because people are what they're interested in, not genre or memes or Issues or where they belong on the shelf.

If people can't find Richard Price because he's not shelved in crime fiction, maybe they need to be shopping the whole store.

[Sarah]

Here's some food for thought. I saw GONE, BABY GONE a few weeks ago with a friend of mine. The consensus is pretty much correct and it's a very good movie. After it was over, I said to her, "you know, that book would not get published if it were just coming out now." And as much as it pained me to say it, I stand by that sentiment. Why? Because - and sure, it's got flaws, is probably too long and the like - GONE travels a certain amount of darkness with a certain amount of visceral quality that makes people really uncomfortable, especially with the ending. Let's say GONE had been Lehane's first novel, shopped to editors in 2007. I'd say most would have turned it down based on the ending and the tone (just like many blanched at the sequence of events in A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR)

But of course, it's a moot point to bring up a hypothetical. Writers adapt to the publishing climate they break into and hope to survive in, more so than ever. My concern, as someone who, being gifted with a freakish ability to read a lot of "meh" books, is that a lot of writers ranging from competent to extremely talented are letting the constraints define their work, when all I want is to read a book that will make my brain ring out with some derivation of "FUCK YEAH!"

Clair brings up some excellent examples of such. Christa Faust's MONEY SHOT too because it is clear, so clear she knows the world she writes of and her character brims with authenticity within those pulpy confines (more anon, closer to pub date and all that.) But as I've said before and will say again, it really boils down to making me (or the reader) care. Emotional authenticity. Everything else, well not voice, but almost everything else then, is details.

[Stephen D. Rogers]

Lo and behold, over on Buzz Balls & Hype is a post from the other side: http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/2007/11/the-doctor-is-i.html

I'm not sure, but I think John is also addressing the fact that many writers feel that they are Authors creating art, rather than writers satisfying customers. If you want to write to entertain, then do so, but do it well. And if you want to create art, then do so, but do that well. Just don't do one while claiming to be doing the other.

Stephen

[Steve Allan]

"Preachy Books With Agendas that smell like Afterschool Specials" - I'm thinking new YA series dealing with issues like birth control, name it "The Dental Dam Diaries". I'm predicting big seller.

Books, even the basest, lowest form of schlock entertainment, are about something. They all have a message, even if their creators never intended it. This is a big aspect of genre theory. That being said, there's nothing wrong with a writer utilizing theme when they write, as long as that message doesn't get in the way.

But I agree with Rickards that the genre can be stagnant more often than not. I recently finished a book that was just average; nothing particularly wrong with it, a solid C effort, but I was disappointed and a bit reluctant to reach for the next crime novel on the shelf. I wanted something to shock the system. Give me a stream of conscious crime novel, or something postmod (as for the MFA crowd that Cornelia was talking about - guilty. Yes, we walk among you), I need an experimental book the same way I need a bubble gum page-turner; one is a challenge, while the other gives my brain a break.

[Laura]

I'm reading quickly -- I take Internet breaks as I copy edit -- but I have two things to say:

1) Richard Price started out writing the kind of semi-autobiographical fiction that was once common. (Now, it's just as likely to show up as memoir). He turned to writing broader books when he, in his parlance "ran out of life." I don't think The Wanderers would be published as crime fiction in 2004, or any year. And I can't imagine a world in which Clockers is someone's first novel. Or Gone, Baby, Gone, for that matter.

2) I love all you young guys (and girls) and I think a certain amount of punk posturing has its uses, but am I the only one who cringed at the reference to middle-AGED? Okay, middle-class, you've got me dead to rights on that, although I happen to be a middle-class person who spent a good chunk of my adulthood chronicling poverty, homelessness and welfare reform. And, yes, I'm middle-aged, chronologically, and so are most of my readers. THAT'S the problem? In a world where a major studio head can say, "No more movies with female leads" because two films perform poorly, and my choices this weekend at the multiplex are The Bee Movie and American Gangster, the problem with crime fiction is that its audience is middle-aged? And, for the most part, is choosing comfort over challenge, the redemptive arc over the nihilistic?

I'm reading three books right now -- The Abstinence Teacher (about people close to my age, living lives not unlike my own, although I'm not the suburbs) Which Brings Me to You (a novel about two lusty young people who meet at a wedding and decide to hold off on sex and court one another via letters) and, yes, Marjorie Morningstar. Am I challenging myself? Am I outside my comfort zone? Um, no. But by the end of the day, after I've sorted through all my feelings about the war and the fact that the mayor wants to build a casino a mile from my house and the subprime mortgage crisis, which may mean that no one will have any disposable income for books anyway, and I'll probably be out of a job . . . grant me my comfort, OK? Middle-aged and middle-class as I may be, let me read in peace.

To be a writer is to think you have something to say. It is utterly grandiose and banal at the same time. Does it mean having something new to say? God, I hope not.

As I weave my way through this -- writing as I'm thinking, perhaps not the wisest thing to do -- I think John is responding to crime writers who respond to the ghetto of genre by trying to argue that there's more to crime fiction than meets the eye, etc. etc. I've fallen into that group from time to time. Today, midway through the slog of copy-editing, I would be happy with providing a reader pleasure/comfort. In fact, walking through Johns Hopkins yesterday -- no big deal, just getting my anti-tyhpoid meds -- I thought about what Earlene Fowler said about hearing from people who had read her books while sitting in hospital waiting rooms, and I thought, "That's more than good enough."

[Ingrid (I.J.Parker)]

Arrgh! In the end you write what you must write. If you want to satisfy a multitude, it's likely to be formula or crap. But anyone can see that it is a good thing for a writer to aim high and hope enough people will buy the book anyway. John is a frustrated artist. A good sign that he wants his cake and eat it, too.

[Gabriel Hanaud]

The main problem I think with contemporary crime writing is academism, not just in themes and characters but in tone and style. A lot of authors stick to the nineteenth-century model of naturalism, traditional psychology and social relevance. Tony Hillerman unwillingly summed up that situation in his introduction to Otto Penzler's "The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century". Here is what he says:

"His use of the work of a private detective to illuminate the corruption of society has attracted into the genre many mystery writers who wish to produce "literature of expression" and shoot for lofty literary goals. Driven out of the so-called mainstream of American writing by the academic critics and the academic trends - minimalism, deconstructionism, and whatever is next - we have found a home in the mystery form."

Don't get me wrong: I don't support minimalism, postmodernism, Nouveau Roman and the ilk. But they should have a place in crime fiction; not everyone should be compelled to follow the realistic/psychological path. Or then we shouldn't be surprised to find that Philip MacDonald or Bill S. Ballinger, though writing more than half a century ago, were actually more modern, innovative and original writers than most of the award-winning stuff we get nowadays. All this being my humble opinion, my course.

[John Rickards]

Laura--

"And, yes, I'm middle-aged, chronologically, and so are most of my readers. THAT'S the problem?"

In a word, no. Not as such. I don't know where "middle age" technically begins, but I'll hit 30 in a couple of months and I don't think that counts as young any more, and whether I like it or not, I'm middle class.

The problem as I see it, and that I was referring to, is that the majority of the genre's content is focused on that small part of the age/class spectrum.

From where I'm sitting I can see ~30 crime/thriller novels that I've read on the shelves across the room. 26-28, from memory, of them have a middle-aged, not youngish, not elderly cast of main characters. (The ones that don't are Dave's WHEN ONE MAN DIES, Greg Rucka's A FISTFUL OF RAIN, (I think; maybe not) Steve Mosby's 50/50 KILLER (and possibly THE 25TH HOUR; I can't for the life of me remember how old Monty is) - that's 3-4 with main characters a little younger than normal, and none older). DAMN NEAR DEAD was a blinding idea for an anthology and I'd kill for the crime equivalent of something like BUBBA HO-TEP, but such things - which I suppose are non-niche fiction with older characters, or "oldies for youngies", which may be the most god-awful term I'll ever use in my life - are rare. Equally rare are novels with a younger protagonist. The prose equivalent of, say, VERONICA MARS, is hard to find.

(Now, I know there are constraints of realism age-wise on a police procedural, say. But there are many stories where such things wouldn't be an issue and procedurals could differ in other ways.)

The same number of those books I can see, more or less, have a 'goodie' as the main character (or as the principle the story 'roots for' in a shared narrative), largely from similar backgrounds - police detectives, white-collar PIs, office workers, and where the baddie is the main focus these criminals are not muggers, debt collectors, pimps or street corner crack dealers but bank robbers and drug barons - middle-class criminals, if you will. Ray's SATURDAY'S CHILD would be the lone standout, if it wasn't on the other set of shelves that I can't see from here.

Now, if it's the case that an audience identifies most with characters whose background meshes closely with their own, and crime's standard audience is largely middle-aged and middle class, this all makes sense. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that - people like what they like.

But the idea that there is no audience for anything else - in those terms - is wrong, IMO. There is - it's just not the one we currently play to, for the most part. And by getting sucked into the idea that we have only one market which likes only one thing, I think that as a collective genre we've become very stale. (Much as people make the same criticism about mainstream film and its never-ending pandering to the 14-18 bracket.)

And every time publishing thinks the market is getting "tight" there's a tendency to fight over the safe, existing core audience rather than do something new. I think, anyway. The rough equivalent of modern politics' desire to avoid offending focus groups and claim "the centre ground" out of fear of losing rather than to do anything different to the other party. Pundits and politicians alike have been saying for years here that they're worried no one gives a shit about voting any more because most candidates are identical, anonymous mouthpieces. If it hadn't been for Iraq there would've been almost nothing to talk about during the last election.

... Hmm... beginning to ramble here...

"As I weave my way through this -- writing as I'm thinking, perhaps not the wisest thing to do -- I think John is responding to crime writers who respond to the ghetto of genre by trying to argue that there's more to crime fiction than meets the eye, etc. etc. I've fallen into that group from time to time. Today, midway through the slog of copy-editing, I would be happy with providing a reader pleasure/comfort."

Exactly so. I think I said it further up, but I personally write (and read) for the entertainment of myself and others. Cross-posting from the depths of my blog (damn multi-site conversations...):

I just find it intensely miserable that so many of us - so many really, really great, talented writers - all seem (post-editor, post-publisher and all the many filters that stand between the typed word and the bookstand) to want to write the same bloody thing as each other. Which could well be merely the fault of those many filters, of course, but that’s equally depressing.

I don’t mind giving up an hour and a half of my life to a movie which is cut from the exact same cloth as a hundred just like it that I’ve already seen. If it’s fun and it’s entertaining, I’ll go for it quite happily. I’m quite easy to entertain for an hour and a half.

I start to mind when it comes to giving up nine or ten hours (or more; how long does it take to read a book? I’ve never counted) to a book which is more or less a duplicate of a dozen others in the shop. It’d better be fucking gripping to make it seem worthwhile spending that long treading the same path again.

And I really, really can’t stand (these days; there was bugger all original about my early books, the first couple in particular) the idea of spending months of my life slaving away over something when I know deep down that I’ve seen it all before. That I have it up there on my shelves and all I’d be doing is reading out the same stuff again only in my voice not theirs.

To the coffee machine!

[John Rickards]

Bugger me, what a long reply.

[Charles Ardai]

You want a really outstanding crime novel with a defiantly elderly main character? Try THE CAPTAIN by Seymour Shubin, an Edgar nominee (as I recall) that is simply breathtaking. (No danger that you'd call the main character a "goodie," either -- though calling him a "baddie" would be grossly reductive).

Mickey Spillane's new novel, DEAD STREET, is about an ex-cop and a retirement community. Lawrence Block's recent Matt Scudder novels similarly are about an ex-cop of retirement age.

Want a crime novel with youngsters as the protags? How about Davis Grubb's NIGHT OF THE HUNTER? If teens and young adults will do, try Block's classic take on the Starkweather/Fugate killing spree, NOT COMIN' HOME TO YOU.

It has been done, it will be done again. But as you say, not all stories work with protagonists of exceptionally young or old age. They are not the main participants in our society and there are too many things they can't easily do. (A child can't walk into a bar; a geriatric character can't plausibly engage in a fistfight with a thug; etc.)

I'm not trying to be annoying here, I swear -- but complaining that too many characters in crime novels are in their 30s or 40s seems comparable, to me, to complaining that too many movies these days employ the color green, somewhere, in shot after shot after shot.

[John Rickards]

"I'm not trying to be annoying here, I swear -- but complaining that too many characters in crime novels are in their 30s or 40s seems comparable, to me, to complaining that too many movies these days employ the color green, somewhere, in shot after shot after shot."

Not annoying, Charles, not at all. :-)

But I'd say it's more like complaining that too many movies... well, actually, more or less what I said above - too many movies today are aimed at or sanitised for the 14-18 market, and that this consequently stifles variety. There are plenty of examples of films that aren't, just as there are examples of books that aren't, but it doesn't mean that that sector isn't over-proportionally represented in the medium. If that makes any sense.

As for "they are not the main participants in our society and there are too many things they can't easily do" - both are perfectly valid points in their own way, but they're also, equally, exactly what I was talking about.

The first, I'd say is relative. If I'm a college kid, the main participants in society as it concerns me ("society" with a little "s", I guess) are, largely, my peer group. While it's the older crowd who run the institutions and set the formal rules in society as a whole (big "S" Society), chances are I don't interact too much with those institutions and that whole section of Society doesn't overly concern me. If I'm a college-age reader, it's stories about me and my peer group which, surely, are more likely to seem relevant to me because they reflect the immediate society in which I live.

Assuming they're any good, mind.

The second is perfectly true, but I'd just say it's a challenge to the writer's skill in most cases (kids going to bars aside). People write crime novels about hyper-intelligent cats solving crimes. Kids - as an example, and not a suggestion I'd attach much weight to - shouldn't be any more difficult, surely?

[ChrisR]

Can we get a shout-out to Paul Auster? :-)

[PK the Bookeemonster]

Ohforgodssake, get over it. BTW, Laura has said it the best. Great job.

I am just a reader. I don’t like overly dark/violent crime fiction nor do I like to read the extremely sweet/cosy books. I don’t seek out crime fiction as a way to glean something new about society or to improve myself. What do I like to read? I like the **quest** whether it is to solve a crime, save a kingdom or get the girl. There’s a purpose to the story or else why waste time on running my eyes over the words.

When I look for a book I don’t look for issues. I see a title; I read the back of the book or inside flap and I read a few paragraphs inside somewhere. If the voice pricks at me in someway or not I decide to give it a try or not. It is the talent of the writer writing about people with a beginning and end to a situation. That’s it. If I can’t find it in new authors then I turn to the tried and true.

I work at a museum. My background isn't art and I've gotten into debates with other employees about some of the pieces. They argue that if I only knew the intention of the artist, knew where the techniques and history of the process was I would appreciate the item. I couldn't care less about intentions. I like it or I don't. It appeals to me or it or it doesn't.

I can read haystack after haystack because each author is different in his or her own way. I don’t need them to reinvent the wheel because that shape works the best. I’ll spend my money and time – both of which are valuable to me – on the same wheel done well.

[Elaine Flinn]

Well, hell...why join in when Laura & PK nailed it? Other than to say - or ask - isn't a writers first charge to entertain? I mean, slice of life aside...

And don't get me started on artists...

[Antony B]

More insightful comments have already been posted. I just want to add that the complaints made in the essay occasionally sounded all too similar those who complain that Science Fiction is all robots and time-travel or that Fantasy is all wizards and trolls. The difference is that this time the accusation is coming from a writer within the genre, which is why it's worth consideration.

So much depends on where you look. I've become frustrated with the identikit (geddit?) offerings in my local bookshop's crime section, but at the same time I've been surprised and delighted by authors such Christopher Brookmrye and publishers such as Mr Ardai's Hard Case Crime.

(Also, as an unpublished writer of crime fiction, one that aims to be a little different to the UK's Martina Cole, Val McDermid or Ian Rankin, I have to believe that agents and publishers are looking for well-written and entertaining stories that don't fit the more common moulds. Otherwise, why bother?)

[Daniel Hatadi]

PK, I agree with you on many points, and most of the time I love me a good haystack. But sometimes, every so often, I'm just not satisfied unless I can get me a melting fish clock shaped like a lamp.

Fast and bulbous, you got me?

(Captain Beefheart fans would know what I'm on right now)