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Crime Fiction Genre

Select the face of a crime fiction author that you find interesting and discover more.

Not only can you tell a very, very entertaining story... but you can explore societal issues.

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Personally, I’m a big fan of vengeance and I’m convinced forgiveness is vastly overrated.

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I don't know if you can generalise by gender: some men are squeamish, some women are squeamish.

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Writers have an obligation to the characters in their books, especially their victims.

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Bad characters are always fun to write about because they can do horrible things.

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I write novels in a converted oast house in 'Conan Doyle country', near Rudyard Kipling’s old home.

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I think of myself as primarily an entertainer. I never think of myself as a literary figure.

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If the last thing you read was Miss Marple and the Middlesex Mangler then the way I do crime will be more shocking than a well-marinaded corpse.

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We are all dying to do the very best that we can everyday.

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I often say I’m a famous author in a country where no one reads.

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I look under rocks, and wait for terrible things to come slithering out.

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I do very much visualise my plots as if they’re playing out on the screen – I find it helps with achieving pace.

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I have always been an avid reader, and from childhood always assumed I’d write books some day.

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I wouldn't tell readers what to think. I'm just a storyteller.

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In most crime novels the violent act, usually the murder, is the engine.

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Most of my villains feel misunderstood so there is a universal theme we can all subscribe to.

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Definition of the Crime Fiction Genre

Crime fiction is the genre of fiction that deals with crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. Most - though not all - crime novels crime novels share a common structure. First there is the crime, usually a murder; then there is the investigation; and finally the outcome or judgement, often in the shape of the criminal's arrest or death.

Crime is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred. The genre's flexibility is perhaps one reason for its wide and enduring appeal and means different things to different people at different times. Unlike some literary fiction, the crime novel retains many of the time-honoured techniques of fiction character, theme, narrative, tension, etc

There is now such a huge variety within the genre, it also has several sub-genres, including detective fiction (including the classic whodunnit), legal thriller, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, Police Procedurals, Private Eye, Suspense, Thrillers and any other sub-genre in which a committed crime is the leading motivator of the plot. Indeed There are novels where the hero is the criminal not the detective.

All one can with any certainty is that the label crime fiction is a resilient convenience for those who use it, not an exact term.

Brief History of Crime Fiction

Looking at the history of crime fiction as a serious genre, it didn't begun to be considered a serious genre until around 1900. Crime fiction generally started in 1841 with the publication of Edgar Allan Poe's story 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'. From there it gradually spread over the United States, Great Britain and France. By the turn of the century crime fiction was generally acknowledged as a new and special kind of literature.

The position of the most famous crime fiction author in this brief history must surely be Arthur Conan Doyle 1880 - 1920 (a medical practitioner from Edinburgh) who invented Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries are said to have been singularly responsible for the huge popularity in this 'locked room mysteries' genre. The evolution of locked room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the history of crime fiction.

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in serial form in the monthly Strand magazine in Britain. The series quickly attracted a wide and passionate following on both sides of the Atlantic, and when Doyle killed off Holmes in The Final Problem, the public outcry was so great and the publishing offers for more stories so attractive that he was reluctantly forced to resurrect him.

Equally as important in the history of the crime fiction genre was Agatha Christie(1890-1976) who was born in Devon and educated at home, studying singing and piano in Paris.

Agatha served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Torquay during WW1, and worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital, London, during WW2. Her best known detectives are Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple and Mr. Parker Pyne.

The evolution of the print mass media in Britain and America in the latter half of the 19th century was crucial in popularising crime fiction and related genres.