I Promise to Read

 Q: What are your most and least favoured sub-genres of crime fiction. And, in both cases, why? Since it’s this time of year, is there anything you’re exhorting yourself to read more of?

 

- from Susan

 

First, Happy New Year! I fear 2024 is going to be big, messy, and probably nerve-wracking on a macro level and we have to hold onto whatever compassion and faith in humankind we possess. Maybe reading and talking about books will provide some comfort, distraction, and – hopefully – pleasure. We’re welcoming two fantastic authors to Minds this month and I can’t wait to begin reading their posts.

 

Before I try to answer Catriona’s question – you knew it was Catriona, right, because of the spelling? – I need to make the disclaimer that even when a sub-genre isn’t my favorite, there are always exceptions, books that delight, challenge, or spook me because of excellent, engaging writing, imaginative plots, and characters I can’t turn my back on. 

 

With that said, I resonate most often with traditional mysteries. Not too cozy, not too dark. I think about crime fiction by Sue Grafton, Naomi Hirahara, Reginald Hill, Terry Shames, Timothy Hallinan, P.D. James, Deborah Crombie. Some feature police, but these authors have built fully-formed individuals with compelling lives outside of their work, which pulls them away from more routine police procedurals. 

 

I love crime fiction set in different cultures. Writers like Colin Cotterill (Laos), Donna Leon (Venice), Martin Walker (the Dordogne, France), Catriona (Scotland), Kwei Quartey (Ghana), Cara Black (Paris), and Jim Ziskin (India) have the talent to pull me right into those environments. Laurie King’s series about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes include some I ate up, set in the Middle East and South Asia.

 

Humor well done is something I relish. It can be broad or subtle, self-directed by a character or a lens through which to view large portions of society. Carl Hiaasen is crazy-funny. John Mortimer’s Rumpole was a sly treat. Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series can elicit giggles. Mick Herron’s sense of humor is so sly, so subversive. Dave Barry makes me laugh out loud; his use of inappropriate juxtapositions is the best ever. I’m not in their league, but I was warmed by a reviewer who called one of my books “wickedly funny.”

 

Least favored? I don’t gravitate toward the dark terror sub-genre that focuses on serial killers, sexual predators, torturers, and their ugly like. Too much like reality. But I can be surprised when a strong recommendation from a reader I trust persuades me to open a book I might not otherwise approach. Ditto courtroom dramas, although Sheldon Siegel’s long-running series features such a lovely cast that it works for me. Paranormal crime? Not for me, thanks. Real life is dangerous enough. 

 

And 2024? More of same, with a reminder to myself to stay open to work that at first I might not be sure I’d like. I would have missed Josh’s Tricky and Dietrich’s Under an Outlaw Moon among other highly praised crime fiction books. I already have more than a dozen crime fiction books stacked on the TBR pile, and a dozen on my Kindle. I have promised myself to browse as much in my own library as in stores this year. It’s crazy to see so many mysteries I haven’t read right here on my bookshelves. But I won’t make a resolution not to buy new ones. That’s not possible!