I remember
at high school, there was a teacher who insisted that we had
to learn to read properly. She was a strict woman, one of
those people with leather skin stretched taut across a cutting
bone structure. She wore half moon glasses as well and when
you’d done particularly poor work she’d peer at
you over the top of these glasses and you just knew what she
was thinking. She used to stand at the front of the class
and say that there’s no point in reading unless you
read well. You do not read romances. You do not read science
fiction – it rots the brain and destroys the critical
faculties of the mind – and above all you do not read
crime fiction which, according to her analogy, was only one
baby-step away from pornography.
Like most
normal people, I graduated from high school and went to university
where I studied English for a couple of semesters. The rule
there was the same: unless it’s literary and endorsed
by the establishment, then don’t fucking read it!
So for
years I read literary best sellers. I read Rushdie, Amis and
others. And I got bored. Worse than that I began to forget
that I enjoyed reading. And then a good friend of mine left
a battered paperback copy of “The Way Some People Die”
by Ross McDonald in my house. I meant to return it to them
(and to this day I still have it on my bookshelf!) but I made
the mistake of picking it up and reading the first few pages.
Lew Archer appeared in my head fully formed that day. A few
sentences in and I had a concrete ideal of this man in my
mind. And I could feel my old English Teacher standing over
my shoulder looking disapprovingly over the rims of those
glasses. You know what? I didn’t give a damn. This guy
was good. This guy picked you up, swallowed you whole and
didn’t spit you out until he was and truly done chewing.
And I
began searching out Ross McDonald in every bookshop I could.
I devoured the man’s ouvre, leaving those half-finished
literary “masterpieces” to gather dust on the
bookshelf. And, of course, from Ross McDonald, I graduated
quickly onto the other true masters like Leonard, Chandler,
Ellroy and others; crime fiction is not so limited as many
people think. In fact it is far more wide-reaching than many
literary books and often the thriller writer has a great deal
more to about humanity – and indeed a more subtle way
of saying it – than your average university-educated
literary novelist.
It sounds
almost like reverse snobbery, but its true. And that’s
not to say that the worlds of literature and crime cannot
mix. Look at the output of one James Lee Burke, for example.
This guy started out wanting write literary novels but he
ended up writing crime novels full of poetic imagery and grand
philosophies mixed with blood, sweat and violence that one
associates with the darkest thrillers.
With crime
fiction – above all other genres – what excels
is almost always character. The crime story is a fantastic
forum for getting into someone’s head and seeing how
they think. There are rules of drama trotted out by every
Teach-Yourself book on Border’s shelves. Most of these
centre on taking your characters down to the darkest places
you possibly can and what other genre can accomplish this
so completely as the crime story? Even the criminals are rarely
happy, deluding themselves that their lifestyle brings them
happiness when all it does is bring them closer to death not
only of themselves but of thoe around them. The “heroes”
of crime – cops and PIs – are brought into contact
with death and despair every day, and that contact helps bring
them down to their darkest. And there are so many variations
of loss and despair in the crime novel. We all think of murder,
but even a simple theft can lead to an intriguing and engaging
story. Recently, on the advice of the editor of this very
zine, in fact, I read Val McDermid’s “Clean Break”
wherein the major crime was the theft of a painting. And this
theft reverberated and echoed throughout the character’s
lives, opening up the conduit for revelations and confrontations
some more respectable novelists could only dream of.
Of course,
I’m glad to say that these days crime is making a better
name for itself. James Ellroy has already broken free of the
label and several other writers are following suit. But those
writers breaking free had better not forget what makes crime
fiction so compelling: that element of darkness that exists
in all of us. Crime fiction affects because the actions of
these despicable characters often touches something inside
us; the wild animal waiting to break free or the rebel who
wants to crack the fabric of society, to escape from the rules.
And the most compelling thing about crime fiction: sometimes
even the bad guy wins. The morals of a criminal world are
defined in greys that create not only ambiguously intriguing
characters but situations that can appal, enthral, captivate
and resonate with a reader with an intensity few other genres
can match.
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