This year marks the 50th Anniversary of Bouchercon, North America’s premiere mystery convention, an event that brings together authors, publishers, and readers alike to celebrate the wide world of crime literature. Bouchercon is much more than a convention with a funny name (in case you were wondering, the “Boucher” part is for legendary mystery critic, editor, and writer, Anthony Boucher)—it’s a prime opportunity for fans to gather together and celebrate the wide world of crime and mystery.
Each year ahead of the convention, we reach out to all the nominees for the year’s Anthony Awards, which honor the year’s best achievements in mystery, to ask them about the past, present, and future of the genre. (You can find the full list of this year’s nominees for the Anthony Awards here.) Just like last year’s discussion (and like the books themselves), the answers we received were thoughtful, engaged, and provocative. In fact, we couldn’t have found a wider array of opinions, and being open to multiple interpretations is a sure sign that the crime world is thriving. Below, you’ll find their answers assembled, for a comprehensive discussion on the state of crime fiction today—a cultural snapshot of a crime writing crossroads.
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WHAT’S THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE FACING THE CRIME COMMUNITY?
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Laura Lippman (nominated for Best Novel—Sunburn): Diversity—across race, age, gender, sexual orientation. We have to keep broadening the genre in every way.
Lori Rader-Day (nominated for Best Paperback Original—Under a Dark Sky): Because you said the crime community and not crime publishing, I’ll say it this way: If we want to continue to meet up for Mystery Camp at crime conferences, we need to look at the aging of our genre and support new, exciting writers who engage with crime fiction in any form at an earlier age. I know we feel protective of our community, but we have to crack it open and make sure others find their home here: YA writers, writers for young readers, young authors. Plenty of them write mystery stories or about crime. We should buy their books, invite them to speak at our events, and hope they’ll come hang out with us and fill the pipeline with readers hungry for all our kinds of stories.
John Copenhaver (nominated for Best First Novel—Dodging and Burning): We need to continue to encourage a diversity of voices in the genre. We need to actively support crime writers of color and LGBTQ writers, especially trans writers and intersectional writers. Crime fiction at its heart—and its best—wrestles with social issues, so we need a range of perspectives telling stories about those issues. Welcoming, supporting, and promoting diversity in our community is a way of keeping the genre fresh and relevant. I’m a high school teacher, and students are reading across difference in a way older audiences never did. It’s hopeful and reassuring, but as they grow into adulthood, they’ll want to read writers from all backgrounds, races, and identities. We need to have those books for them.
Leslie Klinger (nominated for Best Critical or Nonfiction Work—Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s): Stabilizing the publishing world, so that publishers support emerging writers.
Greg Herren ( nominated for Best Short Story—“Cold Beer No Flies” by Greg Herren, in Florida Happens): As far as publishing is concerned, I’d say ebook piracy. As far as the community of writers, I’d say ebook piracy. We also need to be more inclusive and welcoming to minority writers. And I’d like to see people stop giving cozy writers so much grief! They are the backbone of our genre! Some respect, please!
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DO CRIME NOVELS HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO GRAPPLE WITH REAL-WORLD ISSUES?
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Alex Segura (nominated for Best Novel—Blackout): I’m not interested in crime novels that don’t grapple with the world as it is today. The best crime novels, for my money, also serve as cutting social commentary—they put a mirror up to our world, and show us how we live and are, warts and all. I don’t think crime novels should—or can, really—come up with solutions to all of society’s ills, but they should damn well try to show us a world that is like our own, so readers can at least take their vitamins with their dessert.
Sarah Weinman (nominated for Best Critical or Nonfiction Work—The Real Lolita): Without a doubt. Crime fiction can do so with moral authority and clarity that eludes too much of literary fiction. When the real world is in high tumult, genre can often be at its finest.
Alison Gaylin (nominated for Best Paperback Original—If I Die Tonight): I don’t know that it’s a responsibility, but I couldn’t imagine writing a work of crime fiction that didn’t. Our genre more than any other depicts and inhabits the world we live in, for all its tragic flaws. I think we tend to write—and read—crime fiction as an attempt to give shape, meaning and structure to senseless acts. So grappling with real-world issues is a part of the genre. (I include historicals in this, because the best tend to focus on issues that still resonate today.)
Laura Lippman (nominated for Best Novel—Sunburn): A responsibility? No. It’s fine for crime novels to aspire to be nothing more than entertainment. Fine for every genre of novel, including literary novels, to have that as their only mission. But I do think crime novels have a responsibility to think about violence.
John Copenhaver: In a word—yes. I mean, what’s the point otherwise? That being said, there are a thousand different ways of approaching a real world issue. You can hit it head-on with police procedurals or psychological thrillers, or a softer touch with cozies, or a more measured approach with traditional mysteries—or really anything in between. The beauty of crime fiction is that it’s flexible, and by its nature, it engages with real world issues. After all, criminal acts always bring up the question of how we assign moral responsibility and carry out justice. The question we should wrestle with is: which issues have been thoroughly covered by crime fiction and which have been overlooked? Where do we go next?
James W. Ziskin (nominated for Best Paperback Original—A Stone’s Throw): Not at all. Sometimes we want to be entertained and other times we want to change the world. There’s room enough under our tent for pure escapist fare, farces, capers, and comedies of manners as well as fiction with social themes or conscience. Graham Greene differentiated his “entertainments” from his literary fiction, which he said “carried a message.” I love all his books, by the way. And even if Our Man in Havana is an “entertainment,” (not sure I agree there’s no message, by the way), it’s still intelligent, witty, and illuminating. Entertainment doesn’t have to be frivolous or lowbrow, and “serious” literature—whatever that is—doesn’t have to be boring.
Lori Rader-Day: A responsibility? No. It’s OK to write novels that people can just enjoy—my God, can we not just enjoy something once in a while? We’re being punished in so many ways right now. That being said, mine usually do engage with some current social issue, because as I’m writing what I worry about sneaks in whether I want it to or not.
Leslie Klinger: Inevitably.
Jane Cleland (nominated for Best Critical or Nonfiction Work—Mastering Plot Twists): No, that’s why they call it fiction.
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HOW HAS CRIME FICTION CHANGED SINCE YOU STARTED YOUR CAREER?
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Sarah Weinman: More inclusive. More female. More weird. I love vintage crime fiction, obviously, but the genre has never been more exciting or vibrant.
Alison Gaylin: It’s changed quite a bit—for women in particular. When I published my first book, in 2005, crime fiction by women (with a few exceptions) tended to be marketed as either cozy or romantic suspense. If you were a female author who wanted to write, say, noir, thriller or straight-up suspense, you were encouraged to use a pseudonym or initials. Now, in this exciting, post-Gone Girl era, everyone reads women. Psychological and domestic suspense are huge, and it’s the male authors using androgynous pseudonyms, initials, and writing books with female protagonists. I really love this change. People complain about books with “girl,” in the title, but I’d put “girl” in all my titles if it meant writing the type of crime fiction I like to write, rather than masking my identity or trying to squeeze into a sub-genre where I don’t belong.
Leslie Klinger: Crime fiction is now more about the detective than the crime, as it should be.
“We still have a ways to go, especially when it comes to more inclusive psychological suspense, but I’m super excited for how things are evolving. The next step is to make sure this isn’t a trend like it was in the ’90s and that our stories become status quo, not an exception.”—Kellye Garrett
Kellye Garrett (nominated for Best Paperback Original—Hollywood Ending): When my first book came out in 2017, I could count on one hand the number of writers of color who had new books out with a traditional publisher. Now a lot of publishers (including the Big 5), editors and agents are putting an emphasis on #ownvoices stories featuring marginalized main characters written by marginalized authors. In June 2018, Walter Mosley, Gigi Pandian and I started Crime Writers of Color as a way for writers of color to come together to support each other. In a little over a year, we’ve grown to over 160 members. We have monthly good news threads, and it feels like every week someone is announcing signing with an agent, releasing a new book and/or signing a new book deal.
We still have a ways to go, especially when it comes to more inclusive psychological suspense, but I’m super excited for how things are evolving. The next step is to make sure this isn’t a trend like it was in the ’90s and that our stories become status quo, not an exception.
Jennifer Hillier (Nominated for Best Novel—Jar of Hearts): When I started working on my first book, police procedurals and legal thrillers were all the rage. Over the past decade, there’s been an amazing rise in psychological suspense and women-centered novels. I love that characters in crime novels don’t have to be detectives or attorneys to be the stars of their own stories (though I will forever enjoy reading those books). I love reading—and writing—about “ordinary” women like me, women who have no special skills or expertise, but who still have to solve their own problems and save their own lives.
Greg Herren: I laugh about this all the time. I wrote my first book in 1998-1999, and there’s a scene in the very beginning of the book where my detective has to find a payphone to call in a corpse to the cops! He didn’t have a cell phone or a computer; all he had was a beeper and a typewriter. Technology has changed the genre forever, and has made most of us have to scramble. As a genre overall, I am seeing women writers get more credit for their amazing work these days than they did back when I was first getting started—and they are knocking it out of the park! I have read the most amazing books this year—and they were all by women. Alison Gaylin, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Steph Cha, Elizabeth Little, Angie Kim, Lisa Lutz, Rachel Howzell Hall, Kellye Garrett, Wendy Corsi Staub…and so many, many others are doing such amazing work!
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WHICH AUTHORS PAVED THE WAY FOR YOU TO WRITE WHAT YOU WRITE?
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Sarah Weinman: There are so, so many, which means I’ll stick with true crime/nonfiction: Dominick Dunne, David Grann, Dorothy Kilgallen, Pamela Colloff, Meyer Berger, Ann Rule, and William Roughead.
Alison Gaylin: Edgar Allen Poe, Patricia Highsmith and Mary Higgins Clark—all masters of psychological suspense. I’ve said this before, but I honestly feel that without Mary Higgins Clark’s Where are the Children, modern domestic suspense as we know it wouldn’t exist. It’s such a wonderfully dark book—expertly paced, shocking even by today’s standards and so very underrated.
Leslie Klinger: William S. Baring-Gould, whose Annotated Sherlock Holmes (first published in 1968) changed my life.
Alex Segura: I think the classics—like Chandler, Macdonald, Hammett, Millar—are a given, so I tend to tip my hat to more modern PI writers, who basically taught me how to create novels with flawed, conflicted heroes living in cities that felt real. People like George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman (who I have the honor of being nominated alongside), Dennis Lehane, Lawrence Block, and James Ellroy’s early books. I’m amazed I can say I even know most of these people now. But their prose really inspired me at a time where I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life, creatively, and it felt like they flicked the light on and showed me how to get to the other side. I’ll be forever grateful to them, and I continue to be inspired by them.
Jane Cleland: I’ll answer this in two ways: fiction and nonfiction. Regarding my novels, the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries: Robert B. Parker, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Liane Moriarty, and of course, Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew books. Regarding Mastering Plot Twists, which is the book that’s been nominated for the Anthony: I read more than 200 exemplars as I researched the topic, and I’m awed at how many excellent examples I found. Without these wonderful, twisty stories, I would not have been able to write this book. That said, the authors who most inspired me are (in alphabetical order) Lou Berney, Dan Brown, Jeffrey Deaver, Chuck Hogan, and Irwin Shaw.
Lori Rader-Day: Beverly Cleary to EL Konigsberg to Judy Blume to Agatha Christie to Mary Higgins Clark to Gillian Flynn, Laura Lippman, Tana French, and Megan Abbott.
Tracy Clark (nominated for Best First Novel—Broken Places): There would be no me without mystery writers like Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Barbara Neely, Eleanor Taylor Bland. They set down the trail. I’ve learned from them, read their work, and then I jumped in bound and determined to write my own stories, craft my own characters.
But, honestly, I’ve gotten something from every writer I’ve ever read, from Dr. Seuss on. Who can beat the sentence rhythm of Green Eggs and Ham? Nobody. By reading a lot, before putting even a single word on paper, I learned about plotting and pacing, characterization, voice. I saw how an effective descriptor can lift a passage straight off the page and how a bad one just lies there like a dead carp. Hammett, Christie, Marsh, Grafton, Muller, Maron, Wesley. Thievery, you say? Hmmm. No comment. I mean, I’m not pocketing plots or stealing characters, but when I read a writer who can say in six words what it took me two sentences to convey, you better believe I’m trying to figure out how he or she did it, and then I’m whittling every one of my sentences down to the bare bones.
James McLaughlin (nominated for Best First Novel—Bearskin): Decades ago I read James Dickey’s Deliverance and thought man, I’d love to make something like that someday. Then I read Peter Matthiessen’s first Watson book, and Jim Harrison’s Dalva, and when someone in grad school sent me to Cormac McCarthy I had to decide whether to be inspired or defeated—thankfully No Country came out right about the same time I was starting to reimagine my book, and I went with inspired. I mention these authors because they managed to publish the kind of novel that I wanted to write, and while they’re not typically considered writers of crime fiction, crimes are definitely committed, and the setting is rural and/or wilderness, which is where my imagination lives. And the violence, while sometimes extreme, always felt real to me, and emotionally and morally credible (see below). More recently I’ve found Tana French’s atmospheric crime fiction incredibly inspiring, though I wouldn’t say I’m trying to do anything like what she can do.
Greg Herren: Without question, Joseph Hanson and George Baxt opened the door for queer crime writers, and they were followed by Nathan Aldyne, Michael Nava, John Morgan Wilson, J. M. Redmann, Mary Wings, Barbara Wilson, Katherine V. Forrest, Ellen Hart, Michael Craft, Grant Michaels, R. D. Zimmerman…there was a long and proud tradition of gay and lesbian crime writers when I first was getting started, and many of them were very kind, gracious and helpful to me! I’ll always be grateful to them for being pioneers and for their help.
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WHICH AUTHORS GIVE YOU HOPE FOR THE FUTURE OF CRIME WRITING?
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Sarah Weinman: Steph Cha, Elizabeth Little, Ivy Pochoda, Amy Gentry, Lisa Lutz, Tara Isabella Burton, Kellye Garrett, Attica Locke, to name but a few.
Leslie Klinger: Joe Ide, Naomi Hirahara.
Jennifer Hillier: Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver, Chelsea Cain, Gillian Flynn.
Tracy Clark: I am so happy about the fresh wave of writers of color hitting right now. There are so many talented writers out there who are claiming their seat at the table, getting their stories out there. These stories are rich, varied and oh so good. We’re writing cozies and thrillers and traditional mysteries, series and standalones, historical and contemporary fiction. We’re traditionally published and self-published. We’re out there doing it, making it. I can’t say enough about how deep the bench is, and I want more people, more readers, to know more about us. The best place to find your new favorite mystery writer of color would be Frankie’s List. It’s on the Sisters in Crime website. Check it out. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.
Alex Segura: I don’t feel like I’m part of any “old guard,” but I do know I’m no longer a young buck, or hungry upstart. Seeing authors like Kristen Lepionka, Kellye Garrett, E.A. Aymar, and John Vercher—diverse, vibrant, unique and driven voices that are telling crime stories from these really important perspectives—motivates me to keep challenging myself, my writing, and how I advocate for other writers, which is something I feel very strongly about. I think as writers, we need to lift each other up as much as we can, and make sure we’re amplifying the voices of those that might not be as loud as ours yet.
Kellye Garrett: There are a lot, but someone like Shawn Cosby is a great example. He’s a Southern black male author who’s been in the community for years, primarily as a short fiction writer. But his career really popped off in the last 18 months or so. In that time, he published his first full length novel with a small publisher, met his agent, Josh Getzler, at Bouchercon last year, and just announced a two-book deal with Flatiron for an #ownvoices crime novel. He’s also up for his first Anthony award this year. Seeing stories like Shawn’s are so inspiring and makes me excited that publishing is embracing so many talented marginalized writers who were getting overlooked five years ago.
Laura Lippman: Quite a few women who also happen to be my friends—Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Alafair Burke, Lisa Lutz.
Jennifer Hillier: Caroline Kepnes has a strong, hypnotic voice, and her books are so well-written, she gives me something to aspire to. Riley Sager and Alafair Burke can craft thrillers like nobody else. And I can’t wait to see more from Kathleen Barber, Kellye Garrett, Tara Laskowski, Shawn Cosby, Joe Clifford, and E.A. Aymar, who are all refreshing and unique in their own way.
Lou Berney: That future is bright! I could list a couple of dozen, but here are a few writers that have me especially amped: Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay is sensational), Elizabeth Little (a new one in February that blew me away), Joseph Schneider (look for his coming debut, Michael Connelly meets Thomas Harris); Oyinkan Braithwaite (believe the hype); Bill Beverly (hurry up with the next book, man); and Lyndsay Faye (she’s been around for a bit, but I need her to keep writing forever).
Greg Herren: The women I mentioned earlier, of course. Lou Berney blows me away with every book he publishes, as do Owen Laukkanen, Ace Atkins, Lori Rader-Day, Elaine Viets, Donna Andrews…we have so many terrific writers publishing today it’s hard to keep up! Hilary Davidson, Lisa Unger—I could go on for days.
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HOW DO YOU DEFINE CRIME FICTION?
DO YOU THINK OF YOUR OWN WORK AS CRIME?
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Sarah Weinman: My work embodies everything about crime and I could not write what I do if I were not steeped in crime fiction reading, still my first love and favorite genre.
Leslie Klinger: I focus on the history of crime writing, and my definition is expansive to include books about criminals, detectives, police, and amateurs.
John Copenhaver: Crime fiction is fiction that revolves around a crime. I like that definition because it’s expansive and can include works as wide-ranging as To Kill A Mockingbird, Murder On the Orient Express, and Crime and Punishment. Novels like Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, or Louise Erdrich’s Round House aren’t typically thought of as crime novels, but they are. Each novel concerns a transgression and a transgressor. By the end of each, the details of the transgression and the motives of the transgressor have been revealed. The story pivots around a crime; it’s central to its plot. My debut, Dodging and Burning, is definitely crime fiction. It begins with the murder of a young woman—and the photo taken of the crime scene—and spirals out from that incident, as the story unwinds the way the reader views the crime (and the photo) continues to shift.
Laura Lippman: A crime novel is one in which a crime drives the plot and, yes, my work is squarely in that category.
Greg Herren: I tend to use the definition as set forth by Mystery Writers of America: fiction that is centered around the commission, solving, or aftermath of a crime. I think my books fall definitely under that umbrella—although my two series are private eye novels. My short stories aren’t really mysteries—but they fit that definition of crime fiction.
Art Taylor: My classes at George Mason University (I’m an associate professor in the English Department) often focus on genre fiction, and our first-day discussions regularly try to figure out how to define and describe “crime fiction” and “detective fiction” and “mystery fiction” and “suspense fiction”—terms which many of us writers might interchange (at least loosely) but which each carry some very specific implications. Crime fiction to me seems the biggest umbrella here—with some kind of crime being the only real requirement: a crime being planned, a crime being solved, a criminal being hunted, a criminal reflecting on the crime, and a whole range of other permutations right on down the line. While my own fiction doesn’t always have a detective (or clues) and while some stories rely more on suspense than others, I like that phrase “crime fiction” for its breadth and potential diversity—and for the way that all my stories fit the term, one way or another.
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HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH WRITING ABOUT VIOLENCE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES RESPONSIBLY?
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Sarah Weinman: I have to tell the truth, but I always have to remember I’m writing about real human beings, and so there is no need to be unnecessarily lurid and graphic if it doesn’t serve the narrative.
“Violence for violence’s sake doesn’t make for a compelling story. What really interests me is the aftermath of violent acts.”—Alison Gaylin
Alison Gaylin: I think the key word here is consequences. Violence for violence’s sake doesn’t make for a compelling story. What really interests me is the aftermath of violent acts. How they resonate throughout lives and generations, how they can change people, communities and families. The scars they leave. I think that’s a lot more interesting—and scary—than a play-by-play violent scene.
Kellye Garrett: Stories where the focus is on investigating bad behavior, be it a murder or your lying, cheating husband. A cozy mystery is as much a crime fiction novel as a noir. Just like a domestic suspense novel is just as much crime fiction as a spy novel. My Anthony nominated book is a light weight, funny traditional mystery. And I’m very proud to call myself a crime fiction writer.
Jennifer Hillier: I’m not known for shying away from the heavier, darker elements of crime fiction, but I always ask myself: does including a violent scene move the story forward? If it feels necessary, I’ll write it, but only if it’s impactful on the larger story and serves a purpose. I try to be extremely careful and sensitive about what I describe. Less is definitely more.
James McLaughlin: I decided early on that I wanted…given severely limited personal experience…to try to make perpetrating violence as unpleasant as it is in reality, at least for most people. Of course for some folks hurting other people is going to be more or less inconsequential, and those characters show up a lot in crime fiction, but for anyone relatively normal it’s damn disturbing. I wanted to portray violence in a way that gives it its psychological and moral due, given the nature of the characters in question.
Lou Berney (nominated for Best Novel—November Road): It’s different for every writer and every kind of novel, but for me I try to make sure every act of violence has emotional weight. If a character is going to die, I want that character to be real for both me and the reader—it want the death to count.
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WHEN WRITING, HOW DO YOU BALANCE RESEARCH AND REAL-LIFE INSPIRATION WITH INVENTION?
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John Copenhaver: Dodging and Burning centers on a gay WWII photographer and the photo he takes of a crime scene. On one hand, I had tons of resources about the second world war. On the other, I had few resources about gay culture during the war. I had to decide when to say when with the generalized war research and fill in the gaps about gay life using my imagination, searching for emotional truth when factual truth was hard to come by. Oddly—or perhaps appropriately—when I discovered a lack of resources about LGBTQ life, I felt it even more compelled to invent. Where facts leave off, fiction must complete the story.
Sarah Weinman: Well, I’d better not invent! But what I will say is that it’s so important for me to write books that people want to read, using the techniques of great suspense fiction. Everything has to be true though!
James W. Ziskin: Yes, I do, in the form of a simple rule: No “Dead Hooker Number 1.” Or, if you’re more of a science fiction buff, No “Star Trek Landing-Party Guy in Red Shirt.” If readers are to care about your victim, so must other characters in your book. And so must the writer. Nobody weeps over a plot device.
Jane Cleland: I use facts to write fiction. The premise of each of my novels (#13 in my series, Hidden Treasure, will be published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in fall 2020) revolves around an antique—my protagonist is an antiques appraiser who uses her knowledge of antiques to solve crimes. Everything I write about the antique itself is based on carefully researched facts. What those antiques mean to people, well, that’s all invention. I love research, and I find it nearly irresistible… it keeps me from writing. I’ve had to make a rule for myself: I will only conduct research until I find the answer I seek. Often, I have to drag myself away from a fascinating article or deep dive into statistics about something intriguing. I know, I know, you share my pain. Following the random path where research takes me is now a hobby.
James W. Ziskin: Think of research as the dream kitchen on Pinterest that gives you an idea of how you’d like to remodel your own. You can’t simply copy it because the dimensions of your space don’t match it. But it’s a great, inspiring starting point.
It’s also important to check your zeal. It’s tempting to cram every cool detail you’ve uncovered in your research, but it’s TMI. Tell your story, get your facts straight, dispense them sparingly—like salt—and hold your readers in your thrall.
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WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST PET PEEVE IN A CRIME NOVEL?
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Lori Rader-Day: Bad point of view decisions and execution. Nails, meet chalkboard. Of course someone else might say “sentence fragments,” and they are yelling at me right now. There are styles for all tastes, thank goodness
Sarah Weinman: Characters I don’t care anything about. Whining/TSTL behavior is a peeve for sure. And I’ve read too many books that rely on incest as a plot twist so…let’s not do that anymore.
Leslie Klinger: Thin characterization, sloppy research.
James McLaughlin: Guns and nature. So many writers mess these up. I’m at best a dilettante in both of those worlds, but I did try in my novel to give a realistic portrayal of the difference between a bolt action rifle and a semi-automatic pistol. And I did my best to get the trees right, the salamander species. I think some people expect a bear attack of some sort in my book, like at the end of the movie of A River Runs Through It…Brad Pitt with a knife and a grizzly bear. Not happening. Though I did hear a few years ago about a couple of guys in Virginia who were attacked by a large black bear that later was found to be rabid. Which is extremely—vanishingly—rare. If I’d read it in a novel I would have scoffed. These guys jumped up on the roof of their ATV and somehow managed to grab a shotgun and shoot the bear. Even a rabid raccoon or fox can be a scary creature, but a rabid bear?
“I think the onus is on crime writers to give voice to victims of crime, as much as it is to show bad people doing bad things.”—Alex Segura
Alex Segura: I hate the unearned twist—basically, the big reveal that isn’t that big. “It was the guy you saw for a split second in Chapter Four!” All of my books are crime novels first, mysteries second—but by accepting that they’re mysteries, I feel a great need to make that twist or reveal count, or feel earned. So when I read a book that sets up the pieces and tries to build suspense for a reveal, only to have the reveal fall flat—it kills me. I also can’t stand the trope of the hard-drinking PI—where the protagonist drinks to dangerous levels, but is then able to shake it off and save the day with little concern for anything else. It’s the kind of thing only Chandler could pull off well. Also, if a book features a dead, beautiful woman in the opening chapters with little mention or time spent explaining who she is or glorifying violence against women—that’s a big “pull the pin” moment for me. We live in a violent world and a lot of that violence is directed, sadly, at women—but that doesn’t mean we have to show it viscerally or with little thought about the woman being victimized. I think the onus is on crime writers to give voice to victims of crime, as much as it is to show bad people doing bad things.
John Copenhaver: A lack of style. As a reader, I hunger for voice in writing. I want the language to feel complex and textured and human. Once I’m hooked on the voice, I want to care about the characters, which means, like the voice, they need to feel complex, textured, and human (by which I mean, flawed). It’s funny, even though I love and admire the mechanics of a brilliantly designed plot, I’m willing to forgive a plot hole or too many coincidences over flat prose style.
Kellye Garrett: Inactive investigators in mystery novels! I want to be with the main character while they’re digging in other people’s trash and asking questions that are really none of their business. I hate it when the character just happens to stumble upon a clue or doesn’t really try to investigate at all.
James W. Ziskin: I find factual errors jarring. They break the spell and take me out of the book. Same goes for narrators who don’t play fair with the reader. No deus ex machina climaxes, please.
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WHAT’S YOUR WRITING ROUTINE?
DOES IT INVOLVE CIGARETTES, WHISKEY, AND A TYPEWRITER?
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Lori Rader-Day: My writing routine is haphazard and ridiculously squeaky clean. Sometimes, when the word count isn’t done by evening, there might be a glass of wine. I use my laptop unless the words are stuck and then I use a notebook and pen. No fountain pens, sorry.
Leslie Klinger: Ha! Writing is work, and for me, it involves sitting in front of my computer surrounded by books. Like my day job, I fit it into the available time—evenings, weekends, holidays.
James McLaughlin: I have a non-routine. I’ve been writing for thirty years and I still have no routine. Which might explain why I’ve only published one book. There are unavoidable distractions: cats and dogs wanting this or that, and an app that tells me to stand up every 37 minutes and do something physical for 3 minutes. I get up early in the morning but spend the first hour or more ingesting enough coffee to keep me from falling back to sleep; I use improvised standup desks made of chairs or cardboard boxes on tables; I take long walks in the mountains; I flee the computer and work with pen and paper, then I go back and dictate what I wrote into voice recognition. And as a last step, very late in the process, I’ll read work aloud to my wife, who has been bribed with a glass of wine and who always hears something I’ve missed.
Jennifer Hillier: I used to write late at night, on a desktop in a home office with the door shut, music playing, a candle burning, and a mug of herbal tea. Now I write whenever I can, wherever I can find a quiet spot, on my laptop, with no candles (that’s a fire hazard), no music (because I need to hear what possible catastrophe might be happening in the house), and an oversized tumbler of coffee. I have a four-year-old, so things are very different now.
Tracy Clark: That image of the nicotine-stained, half-buzzed writer sitting at his or her typewriter staring at a blank page with a steely, desperate look in their eyes makes me so happy. It’s so noir. Sadly, for me, only the desperate look factors in.
I still have my day job, so my routine’s a bit segmented. During the day, I write on my lunch hour in a quiet room with a glass front (like a museum display). The door’s closed, but I can hear muffled phone calls as staffers outside take down obituary information. The stopwatch is going on my phone. One hour’s all I have. I show up to the table with a plan for that session and write like a fiend in between bites of whatever I brought for lunch. At the end of the day, a quick dinner, and then I’m back to the laptop for another two or three hours. On the weekends, it’s full-on writing Saturday and Sunday. I start in the morning, break for lunch, and then get back at it until around four. I may as well put an old school time clock on the wall.
Art Taylor: Ha! I’ve smoked only one cigarette in my whole life (it didn’t go well). I love a cocktail (but not while writing). And I do have a typewriter in my office (but purely decorative). All that said, I wish I had a more regular routine. I write in bits and snatches and usually not in any programmatic direction. Maybe this is why the short story has ended up my preferred form and why I’m struggling with this second novel?
Jane Cleland: No cigarettes, plenty of Jack Daniels, and an old version of Word.
Lou Berney: My routine centers around the carrot-and-a-stick approach. The stick: if I don’t get the day’s writing done, I will feel make myself feel guilty for the next twelve hours. The carrot: if I get the day’s writing done, I get to have a stiff drink.
James W. Ziskin: I write on my iPad anywhere I find myself. At home with a cat on my lap, in a coffee shop, at the library, or even in my car parked at the lake. If I start early, I might have a particularly productive day of 2,000 words or more. I don’t smoke or use a typewriter, but I’m know to enjoy a cocktail or two while writing in the evening. I also listen music as I write, usually orchestral. No vocals.
Over the life of a first draft, I typically average 800 words a day for four or five months. Then I revise like mad. I did ten full revisions of my upcoming book, Turn To Stone. That’s in addition to the edits by my publisher. My most effective—and dreaded—revision technique is what I call the “Robot Edit.” I read through the manuscript in a monotone in my head, enunciating each syllable carefully as I tap my finger on each word. Every syllable, every word. This takes ages to complete, but it’s the best way to catch missing and repeated words and other errors the eyes might otherwise pass over. Try it sometime.
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WHO’S A CLASSIC CRIME AUTHOR YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE READ TODAY?
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Laura Lippman: Liza Cody.
Sarah Weinman: Dorothy B. Hughes.
Leslie Klinger: Anna Katharine Green.
Tracy Clark: Josephine Tey. I got turned on to her work some years ago, and soon couldn’t get enough of it. She was such an eloquent writer, such an effective storyteller, kinda moody, which I go for. The Daughter of Time, Shillings for Candles, The Singing Sands, et al. If you haven’t read them, check them out.
Jane Cleland: Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels. My favorites are from the 1950s or 1960s. Try Some Buried Caesar, Plot It Yourself, Murder by the Book, Silent Speaker, or The Doorbell Rang. I’m an enthusiastic member of the literary society that celebrates all things Nero Wolfe, the Wolfe Pack (www.nerowolfe,org). We’re the folks that award the Nero Award, one of the premier awards in the mystery world. I’m the chair of the Black Orchid Novella Award (the BONA) in partnership with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. For more information about the wonder and majesty of Nero Wolfe, read Neil Nyren’s fabulous essay.
Lou Berney: I really love both Josephine Tey and Charlotte Armstrong. The world owes Sarah Weinman a debt for putting the spotlight back on them. I would also like to see Ross Thomas get a little more attention. There’s a TV series based on Briarpatch coming out next year, so maybe that will happen.
Greg Herren: There are so many…but if pressed to choose one I’d go with Dorothy B. Hughes. In a Lonely Place is simply a classic, and The Expendable Man blew me away–particularly given its subject matter and when it was published.
Art Taylor: I’ve just recently been reading/rereading Anna Katharine Green’s The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915), a novel in stories featuring a young socialite-turned-detective who is in many ways a prototype of Nancy Drew (in the same way that Green’s Amelia Butterworth was a prototype for Miss Marple). Green’s been called the mother/grandmother/godmother of American detective fiction—a reputation that rests mostly on her mega-successful 1878 novel The Leavenworth Case. But her other work deserves notice—and Violet Strange especially, I think, despite critic Howard Haycraft having said in 1941 that Strange was “best forgotten.” Good news in another direction: Green’s 1897 novel That Affair Next Door, which introduced Amelia Butterworth, is one of the titles that the Library of Congress is republishing as part of its new Crime Classics series. Maybe some publisher will come up with a new and noteworthy edition of The Golden Slipper too!
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IF YOU COULD CONTINUE ANY LEGENDARY CRIME SERIES, WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
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Leslie Klinger: Sherlock Holmes, of course, though it’s been done ad nauseum. The Lord Peter Wimsey series would be a close second.
Lori Rader-Day: The answer is obviously the Agatha Christie Miss Marple books—but I think that would be a huge undertaking fraught with peril. Anyone who was true to Christie’s vision of Miss Marple—who was really just a smart, nosy lady who popped into plots to tell the main characters what idiots they were, sometimes not until halfway through a novel or later—would have a tough time, and anyone who didn’t stick to that vision would be shouted out of England. It would take a brave soul.
Tracy Clark: I’d like to take a stab at Hammett’s Thin Man series. There’s nothing about that series that I do not like. Nick and Nora Charles, classic. The banter. The cocktail parties. The dog. What fun it would be to carry them through to the present day, or maybe even pick up from where Hammett left off.
Greg Herren: Another tough one…but I’d love to give writing Travis McGee a shot. I loved those novels, and it would be interesting to write them from a present day perspective.
Kellye Garrett: Dare I say the Blanche White series by Barbara Neely even though there’s no way to do it justice because Barbara is big shoes to fill. I believe she was the first black woman to win an Anthony award for her series about a black maid. She was right up there with Walter Mosley back in the day and helped usher in the wave of black crime fiction novels in the 90s. But she only wrote four books in the series. I recently re-read them and it was interesting how they still cover relevant topics today. So it would be cool to set Blanche in 2019 and get her thoughts on important issues like #BlackLivesMatter, the Flint water crisis, immigration and so much more.
