Thursday, December 31, 2009

Now that Secret Santa is Over

by Dave White

2010 awaits.

It's New Year's Eve, and you're all out buying Champagne and beer and making dinner reservations, so I'll keep this one short.

The '00s was a hell of a decade for crime fiction.

Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, James Ellroy, and Laura Lippman really showed me what the pinnacle of a mystery novel could be.

Hard Case Crime brought the pulps back and made them cool again.

Blogs were the place to find all sorts of discussions on any subgenre of the mystery.

DO SOME DAMAGE was born.

So for my this decade was fantastic. I've learned so much and can't wait to see what happens in the next ten years.

But the thing that never changes is what a book needs to be successful. Readers.

We here at Do Some Damage want to thank you for keeping up with our blog over the past few months. And we hope you'll stick around for the next few years.

This post is dedicated to you.

Happy New Year.

And, we have a question for you, dear reader. What do you want to see happen to crime fiction in the next decade? How can it change and what will make it better?

2 comments:

Dana King said...

First, congratulations. This is an excellent blog, and a daily read for me.

What would I like to see change? I'd like to see publishers take more interest in crime fiction that doesn't always insist on clear cut right and wrong, and "happy" endings. (By which I mean the resolution always seems fair or just.) There are plenty of writers who do this kind of work, and I think there are more readers for it out there than is commonly acknowledged. Let's have the publicity engines work on finding more of them.

It's not likely to happen, but you only asked what I'd like to see; not would it happen.

Mike Dennis said...

I have to agree 100% with Dana. I think there are readers who would be very receptive to murkier endings, endings which more closely mirror the human condition.