Stayin' Jigless, by Catriona

Love is in the air. How do you feel about writing sex scenes in crime fiction? Give a sample of your favorite love or romance scene from your own work and tell us your method for handling these relationships.

I have written sex scenes. Four of them, to be precise. In the first one, the protagonist imagined her mother, retching with disgust, and she had to stop. The second sex scene was in the same book and this time the mother's image stayed away and the sex got completed but it was disappointing and left both feeling miserable. Third time lucky, a chapter later. It was satisfactory for the two characters and I don't think it was too bad as far as writing went either - the floweriest image was "a flooding sort of feeling like dipping ink in water", then one of them made a noise like a camping kettle, the kid woke up in the next room, and my heroine got the giggles.

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The other sex scene was in a different book and the first person protagonist was leaning on the frame of the bedroom door, watching her husband's bottom, thinking it looked like a small animal chewing something bouncy, and preparing a killer line to deliver to whoever that was whose pedicured feet were waggling in the air. In the end she went with "Ta, love. I don't suppose you'd like to do my ironing for me as well while you're at it."

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I stand by these sex scenes. The marriage-ending one seemed like the funniest way to end a marriage and giving my heroine all that wise-cracking dialogue was pure wish fulfillment. I've never come home from a cancelled bookclub to witness this scene in real life but if I did I hope I wouldn't squander the dramatic potential by saying something dull.

The three sex scenes in the psycho-thriller were no less essential. And here's where I think sex in crime fiction can really earn its keep. It's a great place to hide clues. Second only to humour, sex scenes are the most ideal clue-cloakers. They appear to be there for other purposes, so you can smuggle pretty glaring stuff into the reader's brain without them noticing. 

Having said all that, my favourite love scene - hardly deserving of the description "sex scene", as you'll see - has nothing to do with the plot of the novel at all. But then this novel has as much love in it as it does crime. It's Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers, and it's one of the Peter and Harriet books where the murder intrudes onto their courtship, rather than the other way round. Poor old Dorothy; her husband was such a dud. I can forgive her writing Lord Peter and letting Harriet be happy.

They're in a punt on the Cam, Wimsey reading case notes and Harriet watching him. She considers "the flat setting and fine scroll-work of the ear", the "glitter of close-cropped hair where the neck muscles lifted to meet the head", "faint laughter lines", the "gleam of golden down on the cheekbone", the "wide spring of the nostril" a bit of sweat, a bit of sunburn, and she's just got to the "hollow above the points of the collar bone" when he looks up. 

She turns "instantly scarlet, as though she had been dipped in boiling water. Through the confusion of her darkened eyes and drumming ears some enormous bulk seemed to stoop over her. Then the mist cleared. His eyes were riveted on the manuscript again, but he breathed as though he had been running. So, thought Harriet, it has happened." 

So, thinks every reader who has been following them from Strong Poison, to Have His Carcase, to The Nine Tailors, despairing when Harriet disappears in The Five Red Herrings and Murder Must Advertise and just about ready to scream because it's p.281 of this book too . . . it has happened at bloody last!

Talk about a slow burn!

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