Stories have been told since time immemorial. Some detailing real events, some ‘made up.’ In the beginning was the campfire, with oral tales told by elders. Then came written stories on clay tablets, papyrus and finally, books. It was a way to learn. About past lessons, about relationships, about advantageous behaviours that benefitted individuals and communities, and about the consequences of social wrongdoing. Stories are more effective, less threatening than lectures on ‘How to’ or ‘How not to’ live. Stories can entertain, amuse, and thrill. They offer escape. They are good for us. There is academic research that proves so.
They reduce stress, a bonus needed more than ever in our rapidly changing world of political and ecological challenge. Science shows that reading fiction de-stresses, lowers BP and heart rates and has found evidence that reading two and a half hours a week can lengthen your life by two years. It’s thought this is because it ‘exercises’ large areas of your brain: you live in written stories, imagination is necessary. TV or film stories are less beneficial, more passive experiences. Actual physical books are also known to be better than electronic device stories in aiding sleep – and in being able to retain what you’ve read.
Crime stories in particular, have been popular since Edgar Allan Poe’s iconic Murder in the Rue Morgue in 1840. In 2020 Amazon sold almost $750 million dollars’ worth of crime, second only to Romance at $140. In the UK in 2018 at the London Book Fair, Neilsen showed crime book sales were overtaking romance in the UK - up almost 20% in 3 years. Women buy it most- especially true crime. It is also booming. It seems we can’t get enough of the details of how actual crimes were committed and how criminals were caught. And books by pathologists and forensic scientists like When the Dogs Don’t Bark by Prof Angela Gallop and All That Remains by Dame Sue Black were both best sellers. As much as 65% of the purchasers of true crime are women. Why the gender difference? No one yet knows…
But there’s been lots of research at universities here and across the Pond about why readers love Crime books. Theorists list several factors.
Puzzles. We like a puzzle, love guessing to find the truth (especially if proved right!)
Good Overcoming Evil. We love this, relish a villain’s comeuppance and justice being done.
Series. These are particularly popular. Seems readers like to repeatedly read the same characters solving crimes, often in the same atmospheric setting as previous books. While often denigrated as less worthy by critics and reviewers, formulaic series are in demand. In a bewildering world of thousands of titles, we do like a sort of guarantee of what we are getting.
Death. We are all fascinated apparently, by death. It can be considered a human obsession. Anthropological studies suggest we’ve always been drawn to blood/injury/deaths of necessity in order to understand what’s happened and how we can avoid it. Think how executions always drew crowds!
Authors have had their own ideas as to why crime literature is so popular.
PD James thinks we like analysing psychological subtleties and ambiguous morals. (I do…)
HRF Keating suggests crime books win by putting readers first: crime books entertain and are accessible. I agree. Like Caesar salad, literary books have their place in the scheme of things, but like fish and chips, sometimes you just want a treat that doesn’t make you feel smug or think too much.
But why is crime so critically denigrated? I’ve heard Iain Rankin say he hates his ‘crime writer’ label. Some have suggested ‘running down’ the genre is akin to literary snobbery. The shortlists of the big prizes rarely feature crime stories, rather preferring titles showing innovation, inclusivity or stretching the novel form. Personally, I’ve found many prize-winning novels are a bit weird (sorry), replete with over analysis of thought and emotion and philosophising that stretches on for pages without any particular action. Might be clever, but personally, I have to be in the mood. If I want to relax and just be distracted from the stress of everyday life, Anne Tyler’s six page analysis of one conversation where nothing actually happens doesn’t do I for me.
But there is a complexity to crime novels if you analyse them. They are not all the same. For the crime novel has many forms, sub-genres. There’s the straight detective novel. They in turn can take different forms, starring say a drunken sot, a priest or a nosy old lady. Then there are Police Procedurals, with action based largely within police departments, though the formidable screenwriter Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) says most portray quite a false picture of police methods which has perpetuated itself into a trope all of its own. Dramatic licence, I suppose. There’s Cosy Crime like MC Beaton, kind of crime for the squeamish as the gory details happen, so to speak, ‘off screen.’ Or try a Serial Killer novel. Serial murderers can be classified by their motives: thrill, power, elimination of victim for whatever deluded reason they imagine, or the psychotic visionary who justifies his/her actions. As I didn’t know this when I wrote Not The Deaths Imagined, I had a villain who was, in fact, a bit of all four.
One listed genre that puzzles me is Thriller/Mystery. How do you know when a mystery becomes a thriller- what degree of threat must you have? What criteria are used to decide want is thrilling? Tartan or Scandi Noir is easier, and a reminder that setting can be a character too.
So, modern crime writing has many forms. It’s history is a fascinating story in itself. In Victorian times we had Gothic tales of murder, in the early twentieth century we had the hard boiled macho action of Dashiel Hammet, the thoughtful Raymond Chandler and the scientific Conan Doyle before an international element crept in with Alistair McLean and John Buchan. Today you have a vast choice of Scots crime from William McIlvanney onwards - and multiple gripping screen versions to watch if you don’t necessarily, want to lengthen your life. For further reading see Tartan Noir, Len Wanner’s masterly treatise on Scottish Crime Fiction.
Finally, if you want to write crime, it seems you need an empathic hero, strong females nowadays (some romance is fine), lots of puzzles/red herrings, a decent detective back story (not just the worn trope of a troubled home life) and a satisfying end. Good must triumph over Evil, however unfashionable it is in Creative Writing Classes where the literary trend is to leave an ambiguous end.
But one man’s meat is another’s poison (or dagger or gun or cliff to be pushed off). I read what I like!