The great debate

I had a really sad conversation with a literary agent the other day. She’d taken on an author who she was clearly very, very excited about: great writing, brilliant storytelling, first novel a real pageturner, you won’t be able to put it down – the praise just kept on coming. But every big publishing house she’d approached had come back with the same answer: it’s cosy crime, and cosy isn’t selling; tell the author to ramp up the bloodshed and violence.

 

Well, this wasn’t going to happen; the novel worked just fine as it was, and the author prefers to leave most of the bloodshed and violence to the reader’s imagination – which she actually does a great job of stimulating.

 

So the agent was doing the rounds of us smaller guys, in the hope that we might be willing to look a little further than yet another ingenious form of graphic torture.

 

It appears that, here in the UK at least, the explicit stuff that leaves nothing to the imagination is what sells best. The question I ask myself over and over is – why?

 

I know reading, like theatre, is about the suspension of disbelief – but surely criminals who spend their time dreaming up ever more creative and disgusting ways to damage or kill their victims is a step too far? The odd psychopath maybe – but not your common garden variety murderer.

 

And – small digression coming up, but it really is only a small one – am I the only person in the world never to have sat through a complete episode of MASH because I couldn’t take the fountains of blood or the horribly realistic maimings created by the props department? (Or is everyone reading this too young to remember MASH?)

 

I sometimes get the impression that authors who produce that kind of thing regard it as a competition: a test of who can cram the most violence into 80,000 words, or invent the goriest, most appalling fate for their victims. And the result is that it moves beyond imaginative: way beyond viable, in fact. I’m all for a bit of escapism, but surely fiction has to stay within the bounds of the possible?

 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m the last person to tell someone else what they ought to be reading. If graphic violence lights your candle, that’s your prerogative. But cosier varieties of crime fiction have a lot going for them too. Maybe, just for a little light relief, you could move past Simon Kernick and take a look at, say, Kaye C Hill? You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

It appears that in the USA the trend is different. I don’t claim Crème de la Crime is a totally typical case, but we try to come up with something for most tastes (though I have to say we steer clear of anything that actually makes me feel unwell), and our grittier strands, for some reason I’ve yet to figure out, are not the titles that do best over there. People seem to love Kaye C Hill’s sparky accidental PI Lexy Lomax and Kinky, her chihuahua who thinks he’s a rotwelier. They like most of the others as well, but not quite as much.

 

I hope the story I began with ends well for the author. There were various practical reasons I couldn’t take her on for Crème de la Crime, but after I’d read the first few chapters it became plain that the agent’s praise wasn’t just hype; my reasons for rejecting it had nothing to do with the writing or the storytelling.

 

The tide has to turn on ever more graphic violence soon. Doesn’t it? Please?

Comments

[Mike]

You must be the change you want to see in the world. --Mahatma Gandhi

[Steven T.]

Well... I tend to write harder-boiled fiction though I don't find any great virtue in explicit storytelling per se. Sometimes crimes are relatively bloodless affairs - people do get poisoned. Often, however, crime is bloody.

Some readers like puzzles and don't want to be emotionally affected by the tale they read. Others want to experience a more visceral story. The difference between merry-go-rounds and roller coasters, no?

Mind you, I don't like either carnival ride, but they provide different types of dizzy...

[asabo_56@yahoo.com]

I'd rather watch a Columbo rerun than a Criminal Minds new episode. Seems to me things are getting more and more twisted. The Saw franchise has me horrified.

[Mary]

I guess a book is "cozy" if you have to imagine the gore. It's a "thriller/horror" if the author spells it out. Honestly, what I imagine as I read is at times far more gruesome than what is on the page. For me it depends on presentation -- does the gruesome belong there and move me on through or was it put there because every does it?
Both have always been with us and both will remain.
Mary
Giggles and Guns

[Maria]

Love Kaye C Hill and cozies! Hope the author finds a home.

[Chris Redding]

I'm an American who has lived in England and I found that even with news stories,the Brits did not need so many salacious details. When I was there a child had been abducted and killed by some other kids. It wasn't until I got back to the US that I knew the intimate details. I would have chosen not to know frankly.

[Maxine]

I love crime fiction but I don't like cosies or gore. I love Scandinavian and other European translated crime fiction, which is neither (sorry, I know you don't like it!). I have had a wonderful time reading books eligible for the international dagger this year, I have read 33 so far and none of them is gory or horribly violent (or cosy).

In the UK, we have authors like Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards who sell well and don't fall into either category. Aren't there lots of crime fiction authors like these who are neither overly "cutesy" nor overly "ghastly"?

[Lisa Alber]

I agree with Maxine--I tend toward the non-ghastly and the non-cozy. Isn't Laura Lippman one of these? And Minette Walters? And Elizabeth George? Give me psychological depth every time!

[Kevin R. Tipple]

Cosy crime sells. And gets reviewed. :)))

Kevin

[Kim Malo]

Interesting confirmation what a Brit friend reviewer has said - that there's no such thing cozy there (meaning the old fashioned kind, not just the sort of themed book that has taken over the subgenre). Pretty ironic given that it more or less originated over there with people like Christie when the US was all pulps and hard boiled / noir. Wonder if what they're calling cozy is even cozy by today's themed mystery mores. And *sigh* more tired than I can say of publishing people deciding what I will and won't read for me (they usually get the what I will read wrong too)

[Lynne Patrick]

I'm trying, Mike, I'm trying!

[Lynne Patrick]

Different kinds of dizzy is fine by me, Steven. The more different kind the better.

[Lynne Patrick]

Me too. But that's just me. Each to his own, I suppose.

[Lynne Patrick]

Agree in spades, Mary. The human imagination can be a very dark place - which is why all the detail doesn't have to finish up on the page.

[Lynne Patrick]

Maria, thanks, as ever.

[Lynne Patrick]

Strange that explicit crime fiction is more popular over here, then.

[Lynne Patrick]

Maxine, you just picked out two of my favourite authors! Lots of people steer the middle course, and it works for me too.

[Lynne Patrick]

Agreed.

[Lynne Patrick]

Yes, but less so than the gorier kind. And less prominently.

[Lynne Patrick]

Yes, it is ironic, Kim - but we Brits are dab hands at inventing something which someone else goes on to make into something big!
If our US distributors send you something inappropriate from our list, let me know and I'll have a quiet word with them!