Below, you’ll find part two of our roundtable discussion on the state of the crime genre. 40 Edgar nominees and special award winners contributed to the following conversation, for a wide-ranging snapshot of the mystery world. You can find the first part here.
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What is the role of genre fiction in a time of political turmoil?
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Abbi Waxman (Nominated for Best Paperback Original – One Death at a Time): Propping up the leg of the table you’re banging your head against.
Alasdair Beckett-King (Nominated for Best Juvenile – Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum): Mystery stories have a reputation for being cosy, conservative and escapist. But I can’t help thinking that there’s something a little subversive about a genre in which high-society types go around murdering each other all the time: a genre that invites the reader to be sceptical of everything they hear, especially if it comes from a well respected pillar of the community. I would say that a good whodunnit is often a social satire, disguised as a brain-teasing mystery.
Tim Maleeny (Nominated for Best Short Story – “Lucky Heart”): Reading builds empathy, because we’re experiencing the world through the lives of so many different characters. Therefore, more books and readers in the world means more shared experiences and common ground. Remember, politics thrive by tearing us apart, but great stories bring people together.
Vikki Wakefield (Nominated for Best Paperback Original – The Backwater): As a reader, I used to think reading genre fiction was a form of escape—stories about characters who are not like me, doing things I’d never do and taking risks I wouldn’t take. It was obvious who the villains were. To some extent that’s still true but, as a writer, now I see more parallels between the stories we’re telling today and our political and social decline; I experience these stories as mirrors, not portals, and the lines between good and bad are getting blurrier.
C.M. Kushins (Nominated for Best Critical/Biographical – Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard): As a fan of many genre writers, and having just written the biography of my favorite of all, I think it’s fair to say that working in a genre has always given the author an opportunity for good, solid social commentary—if that’s something that they want to incorporate. Someone like Graham Greene would be able to slip in and our of genre writing and always seemed to get his own political and philosophical views somewhere in there very prominently—full characterization dependent upon the political landscape at the time, or maybe even the entire plot itself (think The Quiet American—which contained both of those elements). Although, I think postmodern genre work has better way of commenting on historical time periods retrospectively than would be allowed to an author writing during a particularly turbulent time.
Elmore very rarely got political in his work—I think, maybe, he didn’t think that was his job as a writer who, as he once put it, “leaned toward the commercial.” Although he certainly had his views, and they do peek out here in there in the portrayal of certain characters and scenarios, it was always done in a very sly way. Bandits, for example, very subtly comments on the Reagan Administration, while Elmore’s later works, like Pagan Babies, very unceremoniously opened with a startling depiction of Rwandan genocide. However, his last book—the recently published Picket Line—has plenty to say about bigotry and the need for major social reforms, although Elmore waited until 2005 to agree to its eventual publication. He’d also gone through his own shift in priorities and personal beliefs during the late 1960s and early 1970s, so his progressive nature is usual tucked away somewhere in the details.
Jo Nichols (Nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award – The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective): After we turned in the manuscript for our second book in the Marigold Cottages Murder Collective series, our alarmed editor called to ask, “Did you write this right after the election? Because your characters are all seriously depressed.” Oops! We had go back and rewrite, so that our characters weren’t bogged down with reality. Apparently cozy mysteries are meant to be a break from political turmoil, not an opportunity to wallow in it.
Sulari Gentill (Nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award – Five Found Dead): Once upon a time crime fiction was all about the return of social order—perpetrators were caught and punished, and the world was safe once more. In a time of political turmoil those old tropes are no longer as satisfying and reassuring as they once were. And yet crime fiction’s readership continues to grow. I have long believed that the strength of the genre is not that justice will be served and order returned but in the notion that on the worst day, when it all goes to Hell, someone will stand up and say “No, this is not right.” The power of crime fiction is in the good the fight, the noble cause, the resistance against evil, and in a time of political turmoil that is inspiring and far more reassuring than a mere return to social order.
Kelley Armstrong (Nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – Cold as Hell): Entertainment is always enough value on its own, especially in uncertain times when small oases of escapism are very much needed. That doesn’t mean that genre fiction isn’t by its very nature political (at least in the current sense of the word.) Fiction is political in the way it portrays the ethics and belief systems of its characters, the choices that they make. It’s usually woven in subtly, though, allowing readers to take what they want and otherwise just enjoy the story.
“[T]he most fundamental idea of what constitutes a “crime” has become suspect in this era of American politics.” –Hannah Deitch
Hannah Deitch (Nominated for Best First Novel – Killer Potential): Genre fiction has always been a harbor for more explicitly political fiction, because it has so many keys to play in—allegory and satire are often go-to registers in horror and dystopian fiction, for example, and that gives you a grand stage to narrativize and make visible the more subtle dramas of modern politics. It can serve a kind of trojan-horse function, too: you can smuggle radical ideas into the mouth of a story that on its surface may appear to be pure entertainment.
To speak on crime fiction specifically, the most fundamental idea of what constitutes a “crime” has become suspect in this era of American politics. “Legality” has been pretzeled into meaninglessness, the powerful continue to bend the law to suit them, and the most vulnerable continue to pay the price. Crimes are playing out every day on a national and international stage, but it’s conscientious objectors and journalists and student protestors and children who are being jailed or detained, rather than the elected war criminals or the police state. Crime fiction puts “villainous” or “antiheroic” or “morally grey” characters in the protagonist seat more than any other genre: I think now more than ever, it’s a ripe space to stretch our imagination of who is deserving of pathos, versus who is engaging in truly harmful “criminality” at scale.
Joanna Schaffhausen (Nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – Gone in the Night): I don’t think fiction’s role ever changes, regardless of the political climate. The goal is always to tell a good story, and the best stories widen our worlds to include places and perspectives we wouldn’t otherwise encounter. They build empathy. They’re an outlet for our anger and a call to action against injustice. They’re an escape, a hope, a light in the dark. A mirror and portal all at once.
Tiffany Plunkett (Nominated for the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award – “Bloodsurf,” Hollywood Kills): Genre fiction can address issues sideways, like a flirting glance at a party. Whole genre fiction may be inspired by political turmoils past and present, its roots are in imagining all the different ways humanity explores inner and outer universes—that’s what gives it a timeless appeal.
Caroline Fraser (Nominated for Best Fact Crime – Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers): Genre fiction—and nonfiction for that matter—are ideal for handling material ripped from the headlines. Mysteries, thrillers, and true crime arguably incorporate these issues as memorably and incisively as literary fiction, investigating cases that involve assassinated politicians, historical scandals, or wars: Think of Graham Greene, Robert Harris, or John Grisham.
Jay Martel (Nominated for Best Young Adult – Codebreaker): Genres like mystery and thriller provide essential escape from the real world at any time but, when the real word feels dangerous and mysterious without any help from fiction, genre can provide a way of looking at the real-world from a new angle. We once had a mentor explain travel like this: “You don’t travel to see the world, you travel to better see where you come from.” And the same is true for genre fiction. It can provide a new, better way to look at the problems we’re facing today.
Donna Andrews (Grand Master): It can either play the role of a weapon or an escape. Sometimes both. During difficult times, I hear a lot from readers who find my books a good way to escape the stressful world–and I often feel that way about writing them. But if you’re paying attention when reading my books, you’ll notice that my fictional county of Caerphilly is a pretty darned progressive place—a place I’d be pretty happy to move to if it really existed.
Daniel G. Miller (Nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – The Red Letter): To use story to open readers’ eyes to injustices residing below the surface. I’m particularly interested in the way the powerful take advantage of the powerless.
Jakob Kerr (Nominated for Best First Novel – Dead Money): The role of genre fiction is always vital and, in my opinion, undervalued. People love stories. It’s how we perceive the world. For millennia, story has been the primary method of disseminating information across generations. And today, the structure of a well-plotted, entertaining story can be a peerless vehicle for delivering deeper messages or themes. My favorite genre fiction has always left me thinking about things that I didn’t necessarily realize I was processing while swept up in the story.
Robert Rotstein (Nominated for the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award – “Grand Theft Auto in the Heart of Screenland,”): Genre fiction can frame hot-button issues in a way that allows readers of diverse backgrounds and political views to contemplate rather than argue. My legal thriller The Out-of-Town Lawyer tells the story of a young woman on trial for murdering her unborn twins because, for religious reasons, she refused to undergo a relatively simple in utero medical procedure, and the twins died. Some readers from each side of the political spectrum have said that the story made them think. Sometimes, only fiction can accomplish that. Full disclosure: one Goodreads reviewer said the book deserved five stars, but she had to dock me a star because of her political views!
[“The role of genre fiction—of all fiction—in a time of political turmoil—which is all times—is to tell gripping stories that illuminate the human condition.” –Andrew Klavan
Andrew Klavan (Nominated for Best Critical/Biographical – The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness): Although I was nominated in a non-fiction category this year, I’ve spent my life writing crime fiction, for which I’ve been nominated for Edgars five times and won twice (though under pseudonyms). Over the years, I have sometimes felt dispirited by the increasingly narrow-minded view of politics in the literary establishment. The Manichaean notion that our divided politics represents a battle between good and evil is simplistic and works against the purposes of art. As a fiction writer, my job is to delight the reader while I explore what Immanuel Kant called “the crooked timber of humanity.” Nowhere in my job description am I called on to lecture the audience about which party they should vote for or policy they should support. I would consider it prideful and absurd to presume my opinions are any more expert or correct than theirs. So to answer the question, the role of genre fiction—of all fiction—in a time of political turmoil—which is all times—is to tell gripping stories that illuminate the human condition.
Lee Goldberg (Nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – Fallen Star): The same as it is at any other time—to offer entertainment and distraction, an escape from all the stress in a reader’s life. I never write to change the world, or make an argument, I am strictly an entertainer.
Lisa Unger (Nominated for Best Short Story – “The Kill Clause,” Amazon Original Stories): The role of crime fiction in a time of turmoil is to help readers (and writers) metabolize darkness. Crime fiction reflects the chaos in society. Within the pages of a book, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some type of justice is generally served, even if it’s not the exact brand of justice we expect. Generally speaking, good triumphs and evil is punished. This is not always so in the real world. On the page, we control the outcomes, creating a safe space to deal with feelings like fear, tension, and uncertainty. So I think there’s a certain comfort that writers and readers take in this type of fiction during the darkest times.
Amanda Chapman (Nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award – Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library): Stephen Sondheim said it best. Sondheim loved mysteries, which he often used in his work. He was quick to point to Agatha Christie, who wrote, he said, “the kinds of things where you know that it’s all going to be neatly wound up at the end and everything’s going to make logical sense. I think that’s why murder mysteries are popular, is this defense against chaos.” As a writer of traditional mysteries in a time of political turmoil, I comfort myself that I am doing my small bit in the defense against chaos.
Allison Epstein (Nominated for Best Novel – Fagin the Thief): In a political moment that discourages nuance and encourages people to dehumanize their enemies, I think genre fiction, and crime fiction in particular, has a huge role to play. Authors of crime fiction are asking readers to look beyond the statistics or the fear-mongering headlines and ask the harder, messier questions of “why” and “how” and “to whom.” Sure, we’re writing a story to entertain. But fundamentally, crime fiction is about power. You can’t write about crime without thinking about the individual and systemic forces that decide what is a crime, or who is expected to commit them. Really excellent crime fiction can help readers start thinking about the world in new ways—and make sure they’re having fun while they do it.
Gregg Hurwitz (Nominated for Best Short Story – “Orphan X: A Mysterious Profile”): To assiduously avoid the partisan, the propagandistic, and the ideological, and to strive to capture instead what is human.
Lee Child (MWA Grand Master Award): The same as ever—to provide closure, satisfaction and consolation in an uncertain world.
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Tells us your favorite classic mystery or crime novel.
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Abbi Waxman: Impossible question, you might as well ask for my favorite baked good. It depends on the day.
Jay Martel: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. We suggest you read it at 14 for maximum effect. It will shock you, delight you, confound you and inspire you.
Daniel G. Miller: The Daughter Of Time. I’m in awe of the skill it takes to make the story of a man solving a centuries old mystery from his hospital bed riveting.
Richard Kopley (Nominated for Best Critical/Biographical – Edgar Allan Poe: A Life): Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” is my favorite classic mystery. It offers a beautiful formal complexity and a thoughtful resolution to his concern, evident in all three Dupin stories, with a woman of uncertain reputation.
Lee Goldberg: I don’t have a single favorite. I can say that Gregory McDonald’s novel Fletch, and Robert B. Parker’s early Spenser books were a big influence on me… but so were the many Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard, and John D. MacDonald books I devoured as a kid. You can never go wrong with a Thomas Perry novel. And I think John Sandford may be the best all-around crime writer working today—he just gets better and better with age.
Scott Turow (Nominated for Best Novel – Presumed Guilty): The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene was the first novel that showed me how suspense and literary fiction can exist in the same book. It now seems a little sentimental to me, but it remains a great book by a writer who did not deserve to be snubbed by the Nobel Committee.
Lee Child: Probably “Daddy” by the French author Loup Durand.
Donna Andrews: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Even once you know the final twist, you can enjoy the humor and the deft way Christie crafted that twist.
Dave Zeltserman (nominated for Best Short Story – “Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush”): Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. Hammett featured the Continental Op in 24 stories and two serialized novels: Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. The Op is a nameless PI who works for a Pinkerton-type agency called the Continental Detective Agency. He’s a short, stocky, middle-aged, balding guy who is dogged in his pursuit of the answers. In the short stories he does some pretty morally ambiguous stuff to get the job done, and he does far worse in Red Harvest. He is brought into a town called Personville, which he calls ‘Poisonville.’ There are lots of different criminal elements working there. The Op is sent to meet with the one honest person in this town—the newspaper publisher—who is then killed. He’s then hired by the newspaper publisher’s father, the wealthiest man in town, to find out who killed his son.
He figures the murderer pretty quickly but decides that’s not enough. He wants to clean up ‘Poisonville’. He’ll do whatever it takes to flush out all the criminal activity, hitting one gang after another, and manipulating them to kill each other, which is how you get the title. There are lots of deaths in Red Harvest.
Sacha Bronwasser (Nominated for Best Paperback Original – Listen): Although not listed as a classic mystery novel, I would certainly consider 1984 by George Orwell as one. I found (and find) the tension and anguish in that book heart-gripping.
Jo Nichols: Joel loves the hard-boiled Parker novels by Richard Stark, while Lee prefers the humor in Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series.
Katharine Schellman (Nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award – Last Dance Before Dawn): All the Miss Marple mysteries. I think she is one of the most delightful sleuths ever created: constantly observing, constantly underestimated, cynical and sassy and insightful… There’s no other classic mystery character like her.
Libba Bray (Nominated for Best Young Adult – Under the Same Stars): the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin. I was a huge Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys/Agatha Christie reader as a child. I secretly hoped there were nefarious crimes being committed in my neighborhood that I could sleuth out which would then result in getting my picture in the paper while attired in my red-white-and-blue Bicentennial knee-high boots. Obviously, the greatest crime being committed there was one of fashion.
Erin Soderberg Downing (Nominated for Best Juvenile – What Happened Then): I grew up on a healthy dose of Nancy Drew, and having a seemingly endless supply of books in that reliable and comforting series is the reason I remained a reader into my adult years. Also, in trying to predict those stories, I learned how to craft a compelling mystery!
Ally Russell (Nominated for best Juvenile – Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave): I don’t have a single favorite book in any genre, but The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is one of my all-time favorite classic murder mysteries.
Andrew Klavan: I have too many favorites to name, but the most important novel in my life is Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The mind of a murderer explored; suspense out of Hitchcock before there was a Hitchcock; and a blueprint of the interrogation scene currently featured on every cop show on TV. When I was 19, reading its depiction of murder convinced me that the then-popular notion of moral relativism was a nonsense. That set the course of my thinking life against the intellectual current of the times — which has made it all the more interesting! No small achievement for a crime novel.
C.M. Kushins: In my very humble opinion, there was only one other crime or mystery author whose dialogue could carry long, well-crafted scenes with very little dependency on exposition, and that would be the late Gregory Mcdonald. If I’m not recommending Elmore as the go-to for excellence in crime fiction, then Mcdonald would be my favorite genuine mystery writer. I’ve loved the entire Fletch series since I was a newspaper intern in my teens, and I’ve re-read the whole series multiple times over the years. So, I guess the original Fletch would be my favorite in the genre.
Caroline Fraser: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. It’s an unusual mystery novel, since there’s no murder. But there are many terrifying and violent crimes, all centered on a women’s college at Oxford, and I love it for its incredible cast of characters (mostly women) and witty evocation of the struggle to transform academia and redefine possibilities for journalists, writers, and scholars of all genders.
Rick Marcou(Nominated for the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award – “Baggage,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine): I read Presumed Innocent when it came out back in 1987, or maybe the following year, too far back to remember exactly, and read it in just a few sittings. Very unlike me and my lousy attention span. Gripped me. I will always remember turning the page and seeing “Kindle County v Rozat K. Sabich” on the next page, and my jaw dropping. One of the few times I had a visceral movie-like reaction to a book. It’s still one of my favorites because of the impact it had on me.
Gregg Hurwitz: Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. My God. I still remember checking all the closets in my then apartment midway through my read.
Cindy R.X. He (Nominated for Best Young Adult – This is Where We Die): We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I love a good unreliable narrator. Is that mystery enough? If not, then Gone Girl.
Jakob Kerr: For my money, And Then There Were None is the best mystery of all time. I read it when I was twelve or thirteen, and it was the first time I realized a book could feel like a puzzle I was solving as I read it. I credit it with giving me a lifelong love of mystery novels.
Tim Maleeny: Only one, that’s not fair! Feel free to pick your favorite:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, and Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard are my top three.
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What’s on your nightstand/TBR list?
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Jay Martel: We’ve read all of our fellow nominees’ books, which was such a blast and really reinforced what incredible company we’re honored to be in. Currently, we’re looking forward to the latest Colson Whitehead, the next Sarah J. Maas, and anything by S.A. Cosby.
Robert Rotstein: Alex Finlay’s The Anniversary. Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat.
Kathryn Harkup (Nominated for Best Critical/Biographical – V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death): All the Remains by Sue Black, The Trial by Rob Rinder, The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
Libba Bray: The Witch Elm, Tana French. What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher. Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth, Stephen Graham Jones. You’ll Grow Out of It, Jessi Klein.
Tim Maleeny: Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz, Illusion Of Truth by James L’Etoile, Hollywood Payback by Jon Lindstrom, The Skeleton Theory by Joe Clifford, and Cruel Dawn by Rachel Howzell Hall.
Holly Kennedy (Nominated for Best Paperback Original – The Sideways Life of Denny Voss): One Death at a Time by Abbi Waxman, Hard Town by Adam Plantinga, It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica, Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Erin Soderberg Downing: I recently read my first Alice Feeney novel (listened on audio, which was spectacular), and have now added the rest of her stories to my TBR! I am also looking to read more of fellow Juvenile nominee Tiffany D. Jackson’s YA novels—she’s so talented, and her stories are beautifully written!
Tiffany Plunkett: It’s almost summer, so time for another re-read of DANDELION WINE.
Dave Zeltserman: As much as I like physical books, as I’ve gotten older my eyesight has made reading paper books more of a challenge, so almost all my reading is on my kindle where I can control the print size. The one exception to this is I have a stack of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and every few days I’ll take a break from the novel I’m reading to read one or two short stories. Right now, I’m reading Rex Stout’s Read Threads, which is his Inspecter Cramer mystery. The next five novels loaded up behind that on my kindle are The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown, and Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder novels: Why Me? and Good Behavior.
C.M. Kushins: Well, I had to make it a rule for myself that if I wanted to stay an active reader, I’d have to pick topics to write about that included a lot of interesting reading. I’m going to have to read absolutely everything about my subject, anyway, so I always hope they had an interesting bookshelf of their own; Warren Zevon and Elmore Leonard didn’t let me down in that area at all. For what I’m working on now, it’s a little different; I do have to read a bunch of fun genre stuff (primarily science fiction pulps from the 1940s and 1950s, as well as occult writing written by the other authors I’m profiling), it’s all in the name of research.
Amanda Chapman: My TBR list is embarrassingly long. But I’m starting with Tana French’s The Keeper, the third in a terrific series featuring a retired Chicago detective now living as an ex-pat in a very insular Irish village. Once I’ve put that down, I’m on to Elle Cosimano’s latest – Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line. Because who doesn’t love Finlay Donovan? On the international front, I’m eager to try Masateru Konishi’s My Grandfather, the Master Detective and Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Final Problem, both of which are getting rave reviews. And finally, I’m really looking forward to Evelyn Clarke’s The Ending Writes Itself, billed as: “Six authors. One private island. Seventy-two hours to write the ending that will change their lives.” I mean, what mystery writer could resist that plot line? Not this one, that’s for sure.
Kelley Armstrong: I’m currently reading—and loving—Anne Bishop’s Turns of Fate. It’s exactly the sort of crossover mystery I mentioned above. The protagonist is a police detective, who has moved into a small town adjacent to an island inhabited by the otherworldly. It takes a very familiar setting—a police procedural about a young detective, new on the job—and gives it a fantastical twist.
Lee Goldberg: Revenge Prey by John Sandford, Spies and Other Gods by James Wolfe, Missing by E.A. Jackson, White River Crossing by Ian McGuire, The Dark Time by Nick Petrie, I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home by Fergus Craig…and so many others.
Michael Cannell (Nominated for Best Fact Crime – Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation): My big spring read will be London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe, an intricate story of corruption and crime hidden beneath a veneer of glamour. Keefe is our generation’s version of Robert Caro, a reporter capable of elevating non-fiction to a literary plain.
Cindy R.X. He: Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack, The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee, Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino, Boring Asian Female by Canwen Xu, What Kind of Mother by Clay McLeod Chapman. I actually read a lot more adult than YA, and a lot more horror than thrillers nowadays.
Allison Epstein: Next up on my list is Ruth by Kate Riley, because I will read absolutely anything where the pitch is “a woman in a cult starts asking questions.” I’m also looking forward to digging into Anna North’s Bog Queen, featuring an anthropologist working to solve the murder of a perfectly preserved bog body from 2,000 years ago. Crime fiction is a big umbrella, man. You can fit a lot of good, weird stories under there.
Abbi Waxman: Nothing right now, because I’m working on a book. I don’t read very much while I’m actively writing, because I’m worried I’ll steal.
Lee Child: Looking around my room, I would say practically every book published last year.
Donna Andrews: Oh, please; don’t make me feel guilty! All of my friends’ books, except for the ones I’ve already read. That’s all you’re getting out of me.
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What is the classic crime novel you can’t stop recommending?
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Alasdair Beckett-King: I’m very keen on Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger and I think the 1946 film is a terrific adaptation. Coming up with one solution to an impossible mystery is hard enough, and I am always in awe of the way Brand comes up with multiple solutions in her books. But Green for Danger is less satirical and less cruel to its characters than some of her other works. You get the sense that Brand has a great deal of respect for the doctors and nurses who kept working during WW2 bombing raids.
C.M. Kushins: Here, I get to be a tad obvious and admit it’s been Elmore for most of my life. If someone is new to his work, I always ask which films or television shows they may have seen based on his work, and to start there for familiarity. For someone looking to really get into his books from scratch, I always go with his stuff from the late 1970s and early 1980s; you can’t possibly go wrong with Unknown Man No. 89, Stick, LaBrava, or Glitz.
But if it’s cheating to go back to Elmore, I’ll say I usually have a deep dive for hardcore crime fiction fans who may have already read all of Elmore’s work—and no, they’re not similar in the slightest. It’s a 1974 novel called Dead City by Shane Stevens (good luck finding anything on him!), but it’s the most terrifying crime novel I’ve ever read about the mafia. I mean, it’s got the feel of elevated horror, while being a mob book—yet, it’s also rather poetic, which makes the narrative voice all the more startling.
Tim Maleeny: Poison Blonde by Loren Estleman.
Abbi Waxman: Any of the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout, they’re flawless.
Donna Andrews: Well, if you want my idea of a book that SHOULD be a classic, check out Alan Gordon’s Thirteenth Night—he takes the characters from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night fifteen years after the play ends and spins a wonderful new tale with them. (His current series isn’t too shabby, either, but I have a sneaking fondness for the Twelfth/Thirteenth night crew.)
Robert Rotstein: Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. The book not only redefined the legal-thriller genre but is also a work of literature worthy of Sophocles.
Adam Plantinga (Nominated for Best Novel – Hard Town): The exceptional novel November Road by Lou Berney. Lived-in characters, high tension, haunting atmosphere. You ever feel like a novel has been written just for you? That’s how I feel about November Road.
Libba Bray: Not sure if they are old enough to be classics but they feel like classics to me. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow is a book I adore. When I say L.A. werewolf noir written in verse, the folks who say, “Tell me more!” are my people. For a recent book that also feels classic, Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows is one that I absolutely devoured! (Another L.A. noir. The land of eternal sunshine and ubiquitous Lululemon does lend itself to that quite nicely.)
Joanna Schaffhausen: The classics are classics for a reason. They offer so many riches. I could name a dozen books, but today I’ll go with Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. Never trust a dame, right? Heck, she’s named as a devil right in the title, so the point of the noir has to be the characters and the atmosphere, and on both fronts, Mosley delivers in spades. Easy Rawlins makes for a reluctant, complicated hero who is (ahem) easy to root for as he navigates the mean streets of Los Angeles. The crackling dialogue and the sly commentary on black/white race relations make this book a terrific entry into the genre.
Matthew Spencer (Nominated for Best Paperback Original – Broke Road): Peter Temple was a wonderful Australian crime writer. I’m sure he’ll be well known to American readers. He wrote perhaps 10 books. But my favourites are The Broken Shore from 2005 and its loose sequel Truth a couple of years later. They’re about cops and corruption, but they’re also about people and place. The Broken Shore, in particular, is a beautiful depiction of a wounded, big-city Homicide cop returning to a small coastal town to recover from his injuries. There’s a plot, sure. But what’ll you’ll remember is the man and his dogs and his ramshackle place.
Jay Martel: It’s not fiction, but In Cold Blood is still the undisputed champ of true crime. As for fiction, Clockers is pretty incredible and, at 34 years old, feels like it’s earned the title of classic by now.
Tiffany Plunkett: I can read the hilarious, twisting, summer-hot novel THE DIAMOND BIKINI by Charles Williams a thousand times and never get tired of it.
Daniel G. Miller: I don’t know if this qualifies as a classic, but I always recommend Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.
Lisa Unger: Well, it’s not a novel. But the book I credit with being my greatest influence as a writer is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. This is the first true crime book. But as a writer I was deeply influenced by Capote’s ability to delve into darkness and do so with deep compassion and breathless beauty. I read this book too young and have re-read it several times. And every time I’m awed by its depth and intensity, the richness and gorgeousness of Capote’s writing.
Lee Goldberg: The Grave Digger Jones & Coffin Ed Johnson novels by Chester Himes. I just rediscovered them after reading them decades ago and am astonished by how brilliant they are. I also love the Wyatt novels by Garry Disher…sort of an Australian take on Donald Westlake’s Parker series.
Kathryn Harkup: The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie.
Tiffany Plunkett: The French Key by Frank Gruber, because writing a Johnny Fletcher movie is a dream.
Hannah Deitch: Recently it’s been Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, which is on the thriller (or even horror) side of the genre. I’m a total freak about perfume, I collect them, and the descriptions of the fragrances in this book are so erotic and decadent. The main character is a perfumer, and a completely repulsive and deranged one at that, and I love the way the novel intertwines the pathology of being an artist and the pathology of being a murderer.
Allison Epstein: I adore Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca and try to read it once a year. On every reread, I’m more convinced it’s a perfect book. It’s a murder mystery that spends three-quarters of the book gaslighting you into believing it’s not a murder mystery, and I’ve been haunted by the perfection that is Mrs. Danvers the quasi-vampiric housekeeper for well over a decade. If any of the crime authors in this roundtable want to write a novel about a young Mrs. Danvers trapped in a terrible marriage to Mr. Danvers while pining for Rebecca, I will personally give them all of my money.
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Tell us about the subgenre you enjoy the most, and define it for us. What, to you, is a mystery? Or a noir? Or a thriller? And how has that meaning changed over time?
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Alasdair Beckett-King: I’m a huge fan of film noir, and it’s a genre that is often reduced to its superficial elements: taciturn sleuths and femme fatales who simply will not stop walking into offices. But the darkness in noir screenplays and hardboiled fiction wasn’t an affectation. Film noir was a product of people returning from war and fleeing Nazi persecution and finding that regular life no longer made sense. In spite of that, the writing was often very funny. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Leigh Brackett and Billy Wilder wrote terrifically witty dialogue, and they created characters who were a lot more than two-dimensional silhouettes.
Abbi Waxman: I’m Golden Age all the way. Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Wentworth et al. And I’m not sure anything has changed, except technology makes it increasingly difficult for people to miss each other at train stations, etc.
C.M. Kushins: I love real noir fiction, perhaps modern novels that play with that genre and try to subvert it. Since noir is more of an atmospheric genre—to me, at least—you don’t necessarily have to have all the tropes to make it fit the circumstances of the characters or the situations they find themselves in (the real defining elements of noir). I would even go so far as to say there are elements of noir in some of Raymond Carver’s stories, or even The Catcher in the Rye. A sense of alienation can be as suspenseful as a crime story, if the characters are in trouble because of it.
Daniel G. Miller: This is a gross oversimplication but: A mystery is when a crime needs to be solved. A noir is when a crime committed by broken people needs to be solved by a broken person. A thriller is when a crime needs to be solved by someone who is being hunted.
Jay Martel: We’re suckers for thrillers with big casts trapped in a single location. Since we’re a writing pair who try to balance plot with character, we tend to love novels that do the same, and these types of “locked-room” stories — where the room is anything from a rest stop like in Taylor Adams’ No Exit to a slowly sinking airplane like in T.J. Newman’s Drowning — tend to do just that. Anytime you get a group of people with different desires, hidden backstories, and secret motives all in one spot where they can’t leave or call for help, you increase the tension and pressure to a point where we just can’t stop turning pages. We’re specifically a sucker for big, old houses where a group of strangers have gathered. What do you expect? We were raised on Agatha Christie.
Tim Maleeny: I love capers and heists, which I would broadly define as crime novels where everything goes sideways as characters collide in pursuit of a common goal, plots driven by colorful misfits with different agendas, and a story with a moral compass that keeps spinning till the very last page.
Dave Zeltserman: I love reading and writing noir, which is why many of my early short stories and five of my first six novels were noir. I have a strict definition of literary noir which matches closely to this definition from Otto Penzler:
Noir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they’d be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let’s face it, they deserve it. Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape. They couldn’t find the exit from their personal highway to hell if flashing neon lights pointed to a town named Hope. It is their own lack of morality that blindly drives them to ruin.
My one quibble with this definition is labeling the tales “nihilistic.” I understand why Penzler included this—the noir protagonist’s worldview is almost always nihilistic, but the world that he (or she) operates in is certainly not. Once our noir protagonist crosses that moral line—whether it’s murder, betrayal, cowardice, or some other act that can’t be forgiven—he’s doomed. His doom may not result in his death—it might be psychic disintegration or some other terrible fate—but as Penzler states, our noir protagonist would be better off dead.
What makes noir such a fascinating read is the way in which it opens up the human psyche and leave bare the dark impulses that can drive us to do the unthinkable. What makes noir such exhilarating and dread-inducing reads is being sucked into the noir protagonist’s private hell and hoping he can somehow escape the abyss waiting for him while knowing there’s no escape.
Scott Turow: Well, this is a great question, but mostly because it is so hard to answer. All fiction depends on suspense of a kind, that is a reader’s avid curiosity to find out how things turn out for a character, but the thriller often puts the character’s survival in doubt, even if it’s ‘just’ as a moral being. ‘Mystery’ to be means there is a crime to be solved. In the end, though, the boundaries and labels don’t really matter, except to the bookstore owner who has to figure out which shelf the volume goes on.
Katharine Schellman: Amateur sleuth mysteries will always be the crime fiction I love the most. At their heart, these are stories of everyday people working towards justice when the official justice system isn’t serving them. Usually, these everyday people are outsiders in some way, often because of gender, race, age, social status, or sexuality. But the same thing that sets them apart is usually what helps them find allies and solve their mystery. It’s a genre that’s a powerful testament to who is and isn’t served by official power, and to the strength of outsider communities when they come together to help each other. I wish it wasn’t so constantly relevant!
Rick Marcou: I love courtroom dramas (following on the answer to #3 above, which was my first of these). I’m not an attorney, never wanted to be, but something about them does even more for me than a good detective story. I love Michael Connelly, fantastic writer, and to that point I prefer the Lincoln Lawyer series to Bosch. Grisham as well. I’ve read tons of courtroom mystery novels from the past 70 years or so.
Libba Bray: In terms of subgenre, I am an unapologetic horror-mystery fan. A mystery in a small New England town? Great. A mystery in a haunted New England town? Total. Book. Cocaine. Some horror-mysteries that come to mind are Peter Staub’s Ghost Story, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. (I have a sugar bowl that reads: Sugar. Not Arsenic.) Silvia Moreno Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians.
On the flip side, I also love humorous mysteries—anything with a subversive, arch, or surreal tone. (Carl Hiaasen. Janet Evanovich. Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious series.)
As for how my perception of mystery has changed over time, I suppose I’d say that it was a shift from the external to the internal, that I’ve come to understand that what we seek in a mystery/thriller/noir is a deep dive into how we humans are such mysteries to ourselves. We are the unreliable narrators of our own stories/histories and that this fear of standing in the light, of acknowledging our complicity in that unreliability, of coming to a reckoning with the inevitability of death, both actual mortality and ego death, is a huge driver of our own misfortune. And it might go a ways toward explaining why we are where we are politically at this moment in time.
Of course, if one were to combine a mystery (What is going on here?), a noir (Jeez, this is some dark shit…), and a thriller (how can I get out of here without anyone knowing?)—well, that would have to be a family reunion, wouldn’t it? 😉
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For Nonfiction Writers:
Do you have a biography or true crime book that you recommend most?
Or that you see as the most iconic in the field?
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Kathryn Harkup: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold.
C.M. Kushins: Ah, I sure do—and it even ties back to your question regarding my favorite subgenre. I may have rambled a bit about how noir can be subverted, well, my answer to this one is a prime example. In fact, I’ll cheat a bit and make it a tie—they’re both by the same author, anyway. They would be Hellfire and Dino, respectively, both by the late, great Nick Tosches. These are two of the best, most unique music biographies I have ever read—and I often pick them up and read a few pages just for fun. Hellfire is the story of Jerry Lee Lewis, up until about 1980, and reads more like a Southern Gothic crime novel than anything else. With Dino, I felt like I was watching Dean Martin’s life though the lens of Robert Rossen, or one of the great noir directors. Tosches was able to adapt his narrative voice just enough to match the, perhaps, philosophical vocabulary, their mannerisms in thought, to make them feel incredibly intimate. And they both felt like novels—not easy for biography.
Caroline Fraser: I’m always recommending the classics—Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Bugliosi & Gentry’s Helter Skelter, Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac, and Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me. These books tell urgent stories with incredible panache. Of course, Capote and Bugliosi played fast and loose with the facts, and their work might better be described as true crime novels (like Mailer’s Executioner’s Song), but all these books try to get at something more expansive than simply the solving of a crime: They’re describing violence as a fundamental cultural and moral breakdown.
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What is the greatest issue facing the world of crime writing today?
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Sacha Bronwasser: That world politics and institutional crime are beyond imagination.
Tim Maleeny: Crime fiction, like comedy, only works when it has sharp edges. The dual threats in the market today are AI-generated content—which is inherently derivative—and the consolidation of the publishing industry—which is inherently risk-averse—both threaten to push editors and publishers into increasingly safe bets and sure things, which means mediocrity at scale instead of memorable and sharp-edged storytelling. If you consider what’s happened with so many movies produced quickly and cheaply for the giant streaming platforms—derivative, predictable, disposable, and forgettable—it’s a cautionary tale for book publishing.
Lee Child: The same as every genre – will readers be satisfied by AI facsimiles, or will they demand ongoing human innovation?
Donna Andrews: Hard to choose one issue, but perhaps the predatory corporate use of AI. (Not, to be clear, AI itself, but the entities that are using it in ways that hurt both writers and readers.)
Tiffany Plunkett: Neuroplasticity—the minds of audiences are literally being shifted toward shorter, video-driven attention spans. Either that, or the rising cost of bourbon.
Jay Martel: Readers are smart. They always have been, but as the mystery genre has evolved, so have readers’ ability to spot your tells, sniff out your red herrings, and solve your mystery before you want them to do so. It’s not really an issue, this whole readers-are-too-good-at-reading thing, but it is a challenge for mystery writers. The audience has read more than one locked-room mystery by the time they get to yours, so how can you upend their expectations and give them that thrill they come to the genre for?
Lisa Unger: The greatest issue facing crime writing and all writing is AI. On the road for my book tour this year, the question of how AI is going to impact us as writers and as an industry has come up again and again. I’ve been clear with the readers who are curious about this. And I think it needs mentioning whenever this topic comes up. Any story generated by AI is plagiarism, pure and simple. These companies have stolen the work of authors to teach AI how to write a novel. AI is not telling its own stories; it’s reassembling and regurgitating those that we have written. It cannot create, only mimic. But it’s not up to authors or even publishers to protect the human imperative to tell and narrate. It’s up to readers to reject AI generated content. If people pay for AI generated content — whether they do so in the bookstore or the movie theater or in an art gallery — then they are supporting and enabling hollow, non-human rip-offs of artistic creation. Clear labeling on AI generated content, and consumer rejection of these products is the only way to contend with this issue.
Kelley Armstrong: To me, one of the biggest issues crime writing faces is the challenge of bringing in new and younger readers, many of whom see mysteries and thrillers as something their parents read. The current interest in YA thrillers helps with that, as does crossover mystery, where younger readers may enter through a side door (such as mystery with fantasy elements) and branch out from there.
Lee Goldberg: The disappearance of the mid-list…books that may not score big, but are strong, dependable earners… and the tragic impatience of publishers, their unwillingness to stick with a good series long enough for it to find its audience. It can take three or four books before momentum builds. if memory serves, it took a few books for Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone and Robert B. Parker’s Spenser to catch on. The same goes today for Mick Herron. His brilliant Slough House/Slow Horses series was dropped by his initial publisher…and might never have become the phenomenon it is not if not for Soho taking a risk with continuing it some years later. There can be big profit in patience.
C.M. Kushins: I suppose the greatest issue facing crime writing, both fiction and nonfiction, is the one facing every other facet of the publishing industry: the use of AI in nearly everything. While I don’t think Artificial Intelligence can possibly replicate the work of a human writer, I do fear that the dependency will become normalized enough that future generations of readers won’t care about that difference. AI-generated genre music is already playing on peoples’ earbuds by choice, so I’m curious if that could be an eventual acceptance of compromised work by less-than-human authors.
Sulari Gentill: I don’t know about “the greatest issue” but what I personally worry about is the devaluation of human life in times of war. How do we get readers to care about the death of a single fictional person when thousands are slaughtered daily. Should we even try to do so? I have to remind myself that a crime novel is not really a tale about murder, but the story of someone standing up against injustice; that its relevance now, is about the value we place, or should place, on every human life.
Adam Plantinga: I don’t know if it’s the greatest, but one pressing issue is keeping up with technology. A computer can do things today that it couldn’t do six months ago. There’s accurate facial recognition programs now and geo-location capabilities and AI-powered “Ghost Murmur” tech that can detect heartbeats from a distance. It’s a lot to try to stay current on.
Daniel G. Miller: Getting people to put down their phones and read.
