Crime and mystery fiction comes in all shapes, sizes and degrees of violence, sometimes with a helping of humour, often with a cast of characters which make finishing a book feel like saying goodbye to old friends. And we all have our favourite kinds – call them prejudices if you like, though I think I prefer comfort zones.
I have pretty eclectic tastes when it comes to sub-genre. Contemporary or historical, whodunit or whydunit, police procedural or amateur sleuth, psychological chiller or straightforward mystery – bring it on, all of it.
In other respects, my leanings are towards interesting female characters who can get themselves out of fixes without crying, ‘Hay-elp, hay-elp!’ in Penelope Pitstop fashion, but nevertheless don’t mind showing their flaws and vulnerabilities. And I do enjoy that helping of humour, however dark it needs to be to remain in keeping with the genre. Absolute musts are a great story, and writing that flows well and doesn’t make me go ‘ouch’.
On the other side of the coin, in particular I’m not fond of graphic descriptions of mutilated bodies or methods of torture; not because I’d rather believe it didn’t happen, but because too much gore on the page and hard-core violence suggests lazy writing. Subtlety works much better; the human imagination is capable of visualizing far worse horrors than the most up-front writer can describe.
There are also certain locations I find hard to connect with. Scandi-noir has never captured my attention, though I know mine is a minority view on that. Likewise Eastern Europe and the Middle East, possibly because we see enough appalling stuff going on there in real life courtesy of the TV news. And for some reason I’ve never understood, Ireland, though I may be mellowing there.
OK, I know that narrows my horizons to north America, the UK and a few bits of Europe. (Books set in the southern hemisphere are thin on the ground around here, though there’s one Australian author, Felicity Young, who I’m always glad to recommend.) But since I read mainly for pleasure and entertainment, not education or the good of my soul, I mostly stick to what I like.
Mostly. I’m always open to recommendations from friends whose taste I trust. I also review for a crime fiction e-zine, and that’s often where I find myself stepping outside that comfort zone. Reviewing an unfamiliar author means you never quite know what you’re getting, and the list I choose from twice a month offers only the sketchiest of three-word descriptions. Which is partly why my view of Ireland as a setting has begun to modify in the past few months; Claire McGowan and Sinéad Crowley have both had an unwitting hand in that, and I have a feeling Liz Nugent may shortly continue to open my mind.
And then there’s extreme and graphically depicted violence in Eastern Europe. Sometimes a book is simply so well written that I find I’m on page 120 without thinking about the unsavoury content, and by then I just have to know how it all pans out. Check out Tom Callaghan; he’s a debut author, but no one this good is a one-trick pony.
It just goes to show, venturing outside your comfort zone once in a while can be rewarding. Whenever I find myself settling back into mine, I try to remember than once upon a time I wasn’t keen on historical mysteries. And then I discovered C J Sansom. Without him I might have missed out on S J Parris. And Ariana Franklin. And Ruth Downie. And Imogen Robertson.
And of course Chris Nickson. Who will be filling this slot next week, while I enjoy a little R & R with good food, ice cream and maybe a little wine in Guernsey, one of my favourite places in the world. Now, when it comes to spending money on vacations, I think I’ll stay inside my comfort zones...
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