Spinning out of crime

Marydell, in a comment to a post about Ray Bradbury, writes: "it's interesting how SF, fantasy, and horror always seem to get grouped together. It wouldn't be hard to put together a SF list of 50 books that are purely SF without other genres creeping in, but I've never seen one.

Since you're a crimefic fan, is there another genre that seems to naturally tag along?"

It's a good question. I'm never too sure about the term "crime fiction", or how precisely it is defined. There are mystery stories ("whodunnits" or puzzles); thrillers (cliffhangers); detective novels (characterisation often taking precedence of the "solution", indeed sometimes the solution is forgotten as the book progresses).

Blurring of the boundaries beyond these three main categories does indeed happen. Horror is one common example - a supernatural element explains or is part of the explanation for events (Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins, Susan Hill, John Connelly). Law is another. These days we have John Grisham, Scott Turow, Philip Margolian and many others, categorised as "legal thriller". In its day, would "To Kill a Mockingbird" have been classified as such? Nowadays it is in with the classics.

There is also "SF crime" ;-), for example J D Robb (Nora Roberts's Eve Dallas series), and that police procedural futuristic series set in Scotland by an author whose name I forget (detective begins with Q?). And what of magical crime (J K Rowling)? Historical crime (Lindsey Davies, Ellis Peters)? Literary crime (Ian McEwan, Kate Atkinson)?

Impossible to pin down a genre in any event that includes a spectrum from Elvis Cole to Miss Marple as "core" . But once one starts to answer Marydell's question, the head starts to spin.

Comments

[Karen M from Euro Crime]

Paul Johnston's Quintilian Dalrymple series which I still haven't read. I enjoy J D Robb though an SF fan I know doesn't think the SF bit is up to much.

[marydell]

I'm a jack-of-all-trades reader, meaning that I read books from all over the place and don't know a lot about a particular genre. Until now, I had no idea there were so many different kinds of "crime fiction" since I see that phrase as being a catchall for everything you mention above. I suddenly feel better read now that I've been educated on the subtle distinctions. :)

BookBlog covered a SF crime book called Noir by K.W. Jeter. The story is about a retired cop who has his eyes surgically altered so he sees everything as if he were in a noir detective film. I had always thought of it as purely SF, but now I see how it falls into both genres.

[Maxine]

Sounds like an interesting book, Marydell. And I agree with you on the JD Robb SF, Karen; indeed the detection is also a bit formulaic once you've read the 20th in the series. I once made the decision to buy them all via Amazon and read them one after the other. So I think I have OD'd somewhat on them -- probably better read one at a time, once a year.

[Maxine]

PS Karen, I read the first two Quintin Dalrymple books but didn't like them much so haven't read more (and had forgotten their name, so thanks for the memory jog). The idea is good but I found them rather slow and plodding, and confused in plot. They cover paranoid societal comment as well as SF and police procedural -- they probably try to cover too much ground.