It's popular. But it is also serious. There's nothing funny about serial killers, crimes of passion or revenge murders. As a result, crime writers tend to get feted in a way romance writers don't - and while often this is unfair, you can see the reason why. Crime is a serious business.
It is also ubiquitous. There might not be mansion house mysteries every second week a la Agatha Christie, but murders do happen at a relatively frequent rate. Our news broadcasts are full of them.
The typical murder tends to be horribly banal: a drunken argument in which someone grabs a knife. We get a lot of that in Scotland.
But others are something else. You have the domestics: fathers taking revenge on their wives in the most horrific fashion. You have the criminal: gangland hits. And you have the premeditated crimes of passion.
Anyone who thinks the extraordinary only happens between the covers of a Henning Mankell novel should reflect on the Raoul Moat case - the inquest into which is currently underway. Moat was a broken hearted body builder armed to the teeth on a rampage round sleepy Northumberland. Definitely one from the you couldn't make it up category.
I'm not a crime geek by any means - there are some embarrassing gaps in my knowledge of the genre - but here's my top ten favourite crime books of the moment. I've numbered them one to ten, but they are not in any particular order. And yes, perhaps I've been a bit loose with the genre definition.
Changed the rules as far as crime fiction is concerned. Brought supermarket lists to the heart of the narrative. A lot of frozen pizza.
A glorious Gothic narrative set in the Victorian underworld.
3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
Christie excelled herself with this one: the narrative broke all the rules of the day and still reads in a startling modern way.
I came across this after a recommendation. Brilliantly clever, historical detective work.
Seriously dark, exciting and well written.
I might have picked one of several other Christies too, but this one has it all: the location, the plotting, the characters...
If you've not read it, buy it right away. Brilliant, pacy, intelligent thriller which was turned into a movie, in France oddly enough, that was just as good.
Slightly marred by the fact that I can't help think of Sean Connery as Brother William of Baskerville, but a brilliant piece of medieaval monkish detective work just the same.
Gripping book from one of the masters.
Ellroy at his best: fantastic depiction of an America steeped in corruption.
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