The Patriarchy of Crime Fiction

Two quick announcements up front. Snubnose Press is open for submissions for the first time in 2012. We want your good stuff. Also, our latest release, Pulp Ink 2, is out now.

Crime fiction tends to be a male dominated fiction. Lot's of male writers, lots of male characters, lots of male perspective.

Female characters tend to be the victims. Female characters tend to get pigeon-holed into convenient categories (femme-fatale, damsel in distress, something to be fucked, conquered and fought over, something to be rescued) rather then given a personality or even a third dimension.

Female characters in classic noir fiction tend to fall into one of three categories: the murderous femme fatale; the long-suffering wife who keeps asking the hero, “Why can’t you just let this case go?”; and, of course, the beautiful victim.

The lens that a lot of crime fiction is viewed through is the presentation of masculinity in a world where gender roles have changed. But if the definition of masculinity is changing shouldn't crime fiction change as well. If it doesn't will it be left behind? Is it an anachronistic presentation taking the place of protest in the face of these changes.

Daniel Mennaker stated that the modern incarnation of the tough guy is a "sociological outgrowth of some gender-role ambiguity introduced beginning in the '60s or '70s, when the way a young guy ought to be became less clear."

What I've been concerned with lately is that I've read some manuscripts where narrative possibilities are presented then not explored. In one manuscript a sheriff in a small town has a, *ahem*, business relationship with a local crime boss. They are each getting long in the tooth and each have daughters. It's hinted that the one daughter is a lesbian. I was really hoping that the two daughters would get together, knock off their respective fathers and be the next generation running the town.

That didn't happen though.

 I'm not arguing for some sort of hedonistic, pulpy story where two lipstick lesbians get together and do hot crime things. What I am saying is why can't the girls have the reins of power sometimes. And sometimes, why can't there be no dudes in the picture. Or if there is a dude he doesn't have to rule the roost. Remember that chilling moment at the end of Mystic River where Annabeth reveals her Lady MacBeth side. Now there was a story just dying to get out.

It also doesn't have to be about the women getting together. How about a more recent example. Yesterday we saw Savages (really liked it too!) and there was a point in the movie where Elena says to O that Ben and Chon really love each other and that's why they are able to share her. Imagine the narrative possibilities if Ben and Chon reached the same conclusion and decided to not save O. Then O becomes the daughter that Elena wanted and they team up. All of a sudden the rug has been yanked out from under the viewer, the entire premise has been realigned and, because this is all I'm really arguing for, new narrative possibilities have opened up.

I'm not pulling these narrative possibilities out of my ass though because they were already there to begin with.  They were just left unexplored.

Thought exercise: Think of a crime novel that you read recently, or even a favorite. Now imagine if all of the genders in it were reversed. What would it look like. What if all of the genders were the same. I think either of those simple shifts in perspective would/could open up a new realms of possibilities.



what if women started stepping up to fill the traditional male roles? The tarnished knight? The stone-cold amoral thief? The wisecracking sex machine? Would a Black Dahlia-style victim-obsession plot work if the genders were reversed?

Readers: Keep an open mind because only then can new things be tried.

Writers: Don't be afraid to add new spices to your story. Who knows what will open up.

Currently Reading: The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett

What do you do with your books?

by: Joelle Charbonneau

No.  This isn’t a trick question.  Yes.  When you buy a book, you read it.  (Although if you are fighting schedule crunches like me, you buy a book and it sits on the nightstand for quite a while before I finally eek out the time to read it.)  Sometimes you’ll love the book.  Other times you’ll wonder what the heck all the hype was about.  Then you sit the book to the side and…

What?

What do you do with your books that you have read?

For me, I admit I keep LOTS and LOTS of books in my house.  My shelves and drawers are a testament to the number of books that I purchase.  And as many of you know, I am a fan of printed books.  We own an e-reader, but I seem to be a traitor to my generation and can’t seem to relax when I read off a screen.  I’m odd that way.

While my dream is to have a house big enough to convert a room into my own personal library with one of those ladders you push around the walls….the house I live in now can’t hold all the books that I buy.  Which means if I don’t plan on rereading a book, I have to find it a new home.

So, what do I do with my books?  A few I give to friends who I think will enjoy the.  The rest I box up and take to my local library.

Ok, to some of you that might sound funny.  I mean, the library is already full of books.  They probably don’t need mine to keep the shelves full.  And while that is often true, they do need my books.  And they need yours.  Most library districts are fighting huge budget crunches.  Not a surprise, right?  Which means they need funds from other sources.  One of the biggest sources of extra income is book sales.  My local library has a great room where all paperbacks are $.50 and hardcovers are $1.00.  (Except for some of the newer hardcovers that they charge a bit more for.)  While those prices don’t seem like a lot, the money adds up.  In fact, some libraries earn over $50,000 a year in book sales.  Which means more story times for our kids, more books and DVDs for us to check out and more services for the community.

A win-win.

So, if you have books sitting around the house that you never plan on reading again…please consider supporting your local library and making a donation.  They’ll even give you a great form that allows you to write the donation off you’re your taxes next year.  You’ll get the deduction and the benefit of thriving libraries which are so very necessary to us all.

The Mount Rushmore of Mystery and Crime Fiction

by
Scott D. Parker   

Yesterday morning, as I am wont to do most weekdays, I watched MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. Over my cup of, um, joe, I enjoyed watching the two hosts discuss the American presidency with Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, and Evan Thomas. The host, Joe Scarborough, asked the three authors which presidents they would put on the "modern" Mount Rushmore.

For those of y'all that don't know, the current Mount Rushmore has the likenesses of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, four of America's greatest presidents. The ones the historians named are obvious--FDR and Reagan--while they debated who should fill the other two positions.

That got me thinking: who would be on the Mount Rushmore of Crime/Mystery fiction? Sticking to four, here are my choices.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - While Washington (1st president) made the real mountain, I would not put Edgar Allan Poe on the Crime Fiction Mount Rushmore. Sure, he invented the mystery story, but he only wrote 3 tales. Doyle was not the next one on the list (Wilkie Collins was certainly a prime mover), but, to me, he was the one who popularized the idea of a mystery story. And, of course, he created perhaps the greatest fictional detective ever in Sherlock Holmes. For over 125 years, Holmes and Watson in the pages of Doyle's stories have lived on and endured and, with modern reimaginings coming along, it's probably a safe bet that they'll last another 125 years.

Agatha Christie - If Doyle popularized the mystery story, Christie perfected its formula. The puzzle-type mystery was the story at which Christie excelled, and her shadow looms large over all those who came after her. Add to this two extraordinary detectives--Poirot and Marple--and Christie's place on the mountain is, um, set in stone.

Dashiell Hammett - For all the good the previous two English authors did for mystery fiction, there was a certain level of unreality to it all. Christie's poisons and Doyle's trained snakes, while entertaining, seem a bit esoteric. Crime, as any cop or beat reporter knows, is committed by normal people for normal reasons: money, sex, power. As has been famously said by Raymond Chandler, "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse." Hammett brought a rough, American sense to crime fiction, ushering in the hard-boiled era of mystery fiction and, for all intents and purposes, split the genre into "mystery fiction" and "crime fiction." Like Christie for the mystery side, Hammett's shadow covers just about all hard-boiled writers in his wake. Plus, he gave us the quintessential hard-boiled detective (Sam Spade) and the quintessential man/woman team (Nick and Nora Charles). Throw in the Continental Op and you've got a powerful quartet of stars.

Raymond Chandler - Crime and Mystery Fiction, for all the talent that can be brought to bear in the writing of the tales, still suffered from a lack of flourish. Chandler was the author who showed that lyrical, artistic prose and crime fiction could go hand in hand. When we think of voice overs in movies, with the typical tough guy language replete with the occasional simile that really sings, you can thank Chandler. He showed that crime fiction could also be literature, and he did it with finesse. That his major creation--the PI Phillip Marlowe--is, with Hammett's Sam Spade the quintessential type of private detective is just further proof of his impact in the field.

Those are my four for the Mount Rushmore of Crime/Mystery Fiction. There are, of course, other ones that are important--Robert B. Parker comes to mind for "saving" detective fiction--but, like John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Lyndon Johnson, and George H. W. Bush, merely being important doesn't get your face on a mountain side.

What do y'all think?