CRIME UNMASKED
Think you haven’t written a crime novel? Take a closer look, suggests Claire McGowan
Are you writing a crime novel? Are you absolutely sure about this? You might be surprised by the truth.
Often, when I’m teaching workshops, I’ll suggest to a student that their novel idea could work well as crime. This may cause surprise, worry, and even, yes, disdain. I’ll admit it – I had a similar reaction when I sold my first novel, The Fall. Being slightly clueless about the genre, I thought I had written women’s fiction, which happened to have a murder in it. I do believe there are many women’s fiction elements in that book, but what I didn’t realise was that in today’s market it’s very common for books to be sold as crime when they definitely didn’t start out that way. Especially if, like mine, the entire plot centres around a murder (I really was clueless). Why is that? Put bluntly, it’s because crime sells. There’s a huge readership out there, so publishers like to tap into it where they can. If you take a look in a bookshop, you’ll notice how many covers are starting to resemble those of crime fiction, even when they’re not.
GRIP LIT
In recent years, we’ve seen the crime market merge and blur with women’s fiction, to the extent that we need new terms to define it. Domestic noir. Grip lit. Femaleled suspense. Broadly speaking, many of these books are psychological thrillers, though they may focus on the emotions as much as the thrills. They might have quite a slow burn, a sense of creeping worry, and might take place in limited locations and with a small cast. This may seem quite far away from an end-of-the-world action thriller, but they share DNA. The most common shared trait with traditional crime is suspense. Read one of these books and notice how the author uses withheld information, flashbacks, and often rotating viewpoints to draw us into the mystery of what has happened. They may then switch to putting the characters in jeopardy, perhaps because the mystery has been solved. This can involve car chases, murder attempts, and even shoot-outs. Quite often, however, when we reach the payoff, it will not be as dramatic or gory as we might expect in crime. Many readers actually prefer less gore.