I had the email equivalent of a beady stare the other day from Yvonne Klein, who's currently editing the RTE site. I'd sent her two reviews, one of which muttered a lot about the writer of the book maybe wanting to give crime fiction a rest. Yvonne demanded to know whether I was wearying of the genre, as it was the second time recently that I'd suggested an author should perhaps go straight, as it were!
I was quick to put Yvonne's mind at rest, assuring her that I'd got three rave reviews up my sleeve, having inhaled at some speed The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, John Morgan Wilson's Spider Season and the audio CD box set of CJ Sansom's Matthew Shardlake series.
But it was a fair question. About 15 years ago I burned out on the genre big-time. I'd just finished an MPhil on feminist and gay and lesbian crime fiction and absolutely couldn't face another book with ever so arch references to the PI tradition or those from tiny lesbian publishers in Buttsville, Idaho, which were seemingly only published because of the author's sexual orientation and not because she could actually write …
It took me eight years to be wooed again by crime fiction. I was in Los Angeles in holiday and needed some books for the plane home. Someone had recommended a writer called John Morgan Wilson. I bought the first three books in his Benjamin Justice series, read them back-to-back, and promptly saw the light again!
Periodically I do wonder if I read too much crime fiction when I roll my eyes and get arsy about another genre cliché (ooh, surely not the boathouse at midnight again, or no, no, carry on your phonecall and tell the person what it is you know – you really don't want to answer the doorbell, honest!)
What made me wonder whether a couple of very good writers should be going straight, though, was the fact both presented the reader with a raft of wonderful characters and an inventive and vivid world around them, but were a bit wobbly on the plot front.
Morgan Hunt's Tess Camillo is one of my favourite characters in crime fiction. She's a resourceful, optimistic woman who's pushing 50 but still holds out dreams of Ms Right appearing. I love the slightly leftfield world Hunt has built around her. But in my review of Blinded By the Light, I felt the rather sketchy plot was secondary by quite some way.
I raved about Tana French's debut novel In The Woods and also got pretty enthusiastic about her latest, The Likeness. But in the review I commented that I thought her inventiveness as a writer was being held back by the constraints of the genre.
I'm just about to break one of the rules that my first editor drummed into me – as a journalist, don't ask questions, answer them. But I'd like some comments from the floor, please! Do writers get pigeonholed? Once you've gained exclusive membership of the crime fiction guild of writers and have perfected the funny handshake, are you there for life? Will people point and laugh if you try other things? Does your publisher pat you on the hand and humour you if you talk about branching out? Well, unless you're Sara Paretsky or Dennis Lehane … And do writers go into crime fiction because they reckon it'll be easier to get published? Except, boys and girls, we know it isn't. And we know, as well, that you can't just knock out genre fic because it seems easy (remember that bloke I blogged about last May who needed dosh quickly . . .)
Some idiot suggested after Harold Pinter's death that he couldn't write poetry. Having been in the audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature some years ago when the great man talked about his work and read some poems, I can confirm that said idiot was talking out of his back passage. Pinter delivered the poems with the pacing and menace that characterised much of his playwriting.
I bet his publisher never told him to restrict his pregnant pauses and three dots to the stage …
