Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

The Year in Review 2009

Well, 2009 is for all intents and purposes over.  And I have just two words about that:  Thank God.

It was a rough year for a lot of people.  Tempers ran short, bankbooks ran on empty, job security seemed to be at an all-time low.  Publishers large and small laid people off, consolidated operations and production groups.  Remaining staff felt overworked and underappreciated, more so than usual.  Book sales were down, because books are a discretionary purchase.  As I write this, things are looking up, fortunately - and I hope they continue to do so, because I don't think our collective national psyche can handle another year like 2008-2009.

I did see a number of trends this year; whether or not they become permanent is of course the question.

1. More agents are getting out of fiction markets.  This is a direct result of publishers' increasing unwillingness to pay large advances to unknowns.  More than 85% of writers don't earn out their advances, and publishers are frankly tired of it.  The economy allowed us to push back; and because agents follow the money (who can blame them? - they need to earn a living too), more and more of them stopped taking on new writers.  On the positive side, this will mean more opportunities for independent presses. On the negative side, writers of fiction now more than ever need to reconcile themselves to the vast certainty that writing novels won't pay the bills.

2. More commissioning is being done.  We've always commissioned books with authors we liked, but in 2009 I saw more of it being done than ever.  We call up an agent or author we like with our idea for a series and say, "Can you write me a mystery with this type of hobby and this type of heroine?"  We'll be seeing lots of pseudonyms in upcoming years as those lucky enough to have established themselves, or to have well-connected agents, find themselves writing commissioned work that they may or may not believe in.  Frankly this disturbs me a bit, as this could lead to a sort of Disneyfication of our industry, where corporate types make the decisions and the artists really don't matter much, as long as they look good and put out a saleable product.  But we shall see.

3. More reviewing is being done on the Web.  We did have the news of Kirkus closing down; and I think most of us viewed the decision with mixed feelings.  Very few of us haven't been burned by Kirkus reviews, which were infamous for being nasty.  Yet the journal was a reliable source of reviews, and getting a starred review there meant something.  The reviewers there were also professionals; and there is no substitute for a professional reviewer who understands the craft of reviewing.  The Web-based reviews are putting reviewing in the hands of the people, and while I have long been a fan of Amazon's willingness to allow readers to comment on books, I'm not sure that the closing of a reputable review engine is a good thing.

4. Careers have stalled.  This has been a major bummer for me and many colleagues.  Several of us had authors we felt were about to take off, people whose third or fourth book was poised to "hit."  And yet they didn't, as people fell back on the old reliables, the big names who can be counted on to provide a formulaic read that satisfies the itch more reliably than someone new or emerging.  We actually had a discussion in our office about releasing no new books in 2009, but we felt this would not be fair to authors or to our bottom line, since some sales are better than none.  Now we shall see if the writers can put their noses to the grindstone again, and do another book, and hope that 2010 sees the return to a more adventurous buying style.

We did see some highlights in 2009, so herewith my Cheers and Jeers for the year.

CHEERS to the Kindle.  This technology is helping to sell books while also giving people with limited space an option to buy and keep as many books as they want. We're having some adjustment issues here, but in the long run the much lower unit cost of a Kindle book is going to be good for publishers and authors.  I do have reservations about Amazon's market power, and how they are using it to squeeze more out of publishers, but we have to accept the reality of the marketplace, and many of us are finally coming to religion on this issue.

CHEERS to HarperCollins.  A large player, HarperCollins is launching a new imprint that pays no advances, allows no returns, and offers authors a cut of profit rather than a typical royalty structure.  Some authors (and, I'm sure, MWA) are up in arms about this; but the fact is that nobody forces anyone to sign a publishing contract, and those writers who think they can do better elsewhere have every right to go to another house to get their book published.  If publishing is to survive in our money-centric 21st century, we have to continue our emphasis on the bottom line.  And let's not forget how many people this industry employs--designers, artists, printers, warehouse folk, and so forth.  We have a responsibility to pay our bills on time; and with the work we do, we deserve to make a profit for our labors.  HC's new imprint seeks to fix the terrible inequities that we all know exist but which the current system perpetuates.  I will be watching this one closely.

CHEERS to Dan Brown.  The Lost Symbol did light up bookbuyers' eyes in 2009, though it did not seem quite as ineluctable as The DaVinci Code, which has reportedly sold more than 25 million copies to date.  I do find it quite interesting that the publishing phenomena these days belong to the children's and young adult market, what with Harry Potter and the Twilight series.  This is good news in that it shows us that young people are reading, and actively looking forward to books.  It's a bit sad, though, that those of us in adult trade haven't been able to galvanize the population with something really stellar.  Maybe we need more children's and YA editors moving into adult editorial.

JEERS to Al Roker.  I am a man of strong opinions, and I make no secret of the fact that I detest celebrity mystery novels.  Who knows whether Roker even wrote The Morning Show Murders?  Most likely not; the credit is probably due to Dick Lochte, who is credited as "co-author."  Many fine books will have been rejected so that Roker could get his large advance, and many a mystery reader will have been pulled in by celebrity to purchase this thing.  Yes, such books are good for the genre, and good for the publisher, and certainly good for the poor publicist, who can't get Joe Schmo a media appearance anywhere, ever, but will have CNBC and the New York Times banging down the door to get some of Roker's time.  And, of course, I would not be saying any of this if we were Roker's publisher--not that we could afford it.

JEERS to the Amazon Vine program.  It seemed like a good idea to some: Get in touch with the most active reviewers/readers on Amazon and offer them ARCs of coming books, to help them spread the word about new titles.  But the reviewers clearly were not vetted closely or at all, and the result is a system that gets the wrong books into the wrong hands on a regular basis, which flies in the face of all our publicists' wisdom that the key to a successful review program is making sure the right reviewers get the book, and the wrong ones don't.  I can't paint all the Vine reviewers with the same brush, as many do take the job seriously and do a fine job of pointing out the pros and cons of any particular title.  But there's also a rather large subset that has gone mad with power, that uses Vine as a platform on which to project their bitterness, anger, and "erudition."  There is clearly a glee they are taking in trashing books, now that their egos have been swollen.  Our publicist said she would quit if we took part in this program, and I am quite glad we made the decision we did.  

JEERS to Reviewing the Evidence.  Strangely enough, I have complimented this online review of crime fiction in the past.  And I do stand by the fact that the reviewing on RTE is of consistently high quality. However, it came to my attention this year that RTE follows a policy of reviewing only the books published by those on MWA's "approved" publishers list.  MWA makes no secret of its commitment to writers; and I likewise make no secret of my support for the rights of publishers. Any review engine that discriminates against independent presses and the authors published by them does not have my support.  Frankly, I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't realize RTE's policy until very recently, when our publicist said to me, "Oh, didn't you know?  MWA is the master, and RTE is its bitch."

JEERS to DorothyL's moderator.  This has been the source of quite a lot of fun gossip in the office.  Our assistant forwards us emails of interest, and this year we saw a long line of nasty, high-handed postings by the moderator, who, it seems, plays favorites and likes to toss those who have annoyed him off the list.  This is a far cry from the early days of DangerMouse, who ran the list with a lighter touch in the days before it became a marketing tool.  I'm always amazed at the mail I get expressing frustration with DorothyL, at the number of people who say they read it more out of habit than for any other reason, and that they tend to blip past most of the entries as the equivalent of spam.  There is nothing to be done about this, and our publicist argues that DL has been invaluable for the writers who have made their presence known on it.  But it no longer seems like the hospitable place it was, and certainly the moderator plays a large role in that.  "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

On a more personal note, in December of this year, Mysterious Matters had its 100,000th hit.  Thank you to all who take the time to read my longwinded postings and occasional diatribes; and thank you as well to those who take the time to write.  I may not always write back - partially because I do need to stay focused on my work, and partially because I need to maintain perspective - but I always read everything you send, and many of your emails have formed the basis for my musings and postings.  

In 2010, my goal is to make Mysterious Matters a bit more interactive, to try to start more forums in which lovers of crime fiction can exchange ideas and "talk back" to publishers.  I have some ideas for doing this, which I hope to get off the ground in January or February.  In the meantime, all the best for a Happy New Year and a successful, stress-free (or at least reduced-stress) 2010.

   

Required Study for Crime Writers

I am one of those traditionalists who believe that, in order to write a good crime novel today, you must have read and studied the greats of the genre. 

So I've composed a list of the books that I believe should be read by those who aspire to greatness in the mystery genre.   In an area as wide-ranging as the crime novel, this was no small task, and I'm sure there are those who will not only argue with some of my selections but also point out the great works I've not included.  Let me just say that I could have listed at least a couple of dozen more books, but I wanted to keep the list as succinct as possible.

So, in no particular order:

JAMES PATTERSON / ALONG CAME A SPIDER

Patterson takes quite a lot of guff for having become a factory; and not all of that criticism is unwarranted.  Amidst the criticism, though, it is easy to forget that Patterson wrote some stellar books.  The serial killer is here to stay, no matter how many people try to dimiss it, and Along Came a Spider is a serial-killer book par excellence.  The plotting is tight and superb; the ending is a hum-dinger.  Patterson also picked up on something Mary Higgins Clark figured out early in her career--that casual readers like short chapters--and used this format to create a maintain suspense.  I've always felt that Alex Cross and his family are a bit treacly, and I've always been surprised that Patterson doesn't get more flack for attempting to speak as an African-American man.  But Along Came a Spider, and some of the later books that Patterson wrote, deserve a place in every writer's collection, not only as a model for telling a story but also as a lesson in how to write commercial, popular fiction.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK / WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?

Clark, I have long felt, does not get the credit she deserves.  At almost every convention I attend, I hear mystery writers (whether published or aspiring) carping about her work.  The usual complaints are that the writing is not up to par or that the characterizations are simplistic.  Neither complaint is justified (I guess we'll chock them up to sour grapes). Where Are the Children?, her first novel of suspense, is a model of spare prose and intense suspense.  Clark took a simple premise--a nightmare experience happening to the same woman not once, but twice--and spun a classic tale.  I recommend this to writers who feel that complicated is better, as a reminder that a strong story can stand on its own.  Clark's books have always been of manageable length, too, and I think that's one of the keys to her success. 

GEORGE DAWES GREEN / THE CAVEMAN'S VALENTINE

Crime fiction may be, at its heart, formulaic, but the best books (and I say this especially to aspiring writers) need to stand out with something unique, different, exciting.  The Caveman's Valentine is not distinguished by its plot or its mystery, which is fairly standard.  Rather, it is a work of great imagination, a daring work that made a homeless, mentally ill man living in New York City's Inwood Park into the detective.  This is brave writing that found a wide audience; but more than that it is the type of brilliant writing that we find so rarely.  Attempts at being "literary" usually fall flat on their face; the most literary of books are often the most quiet, as people like Barbara Pym and Penelope FitzGerald discovered early in their careers.  Green's book is literary in the best way; its appeal is widespread, and I have the utmost respect for it.

 

PATRICIA MOYES / WHO IS SIMON WARWICK?

The crime writer's mind has to work somewhat differently from that of the average person's mind.  In fact, it is the writer's job to approach stories and characters from an angle that is simultaneously recognizable to the reader and completely unexpected.  Moyes was a very competent writer of cozies featuring happily married Henry and Emmy Tibbett, but with Who Is Simon Warwick? she hit a home run that I believe should be read by all serious mystery writers.  The book, published in 1978, was far ahead of its time, presaging news that would make the headlines and become a staple of tabloid gossip and daytime TV talk shows decades later.  I hesitate to go into more detail because I really want more people to read this book.  I just will say that Moyes treated a sensitive subject with great respect while also using it is as the lynchpin in a fabulous mystery that completely pulls the rug out from underneath the reader.  And that's what I think the best crime fiction does--it slaps you across the face and opens your eyes.

MARGARET MILLAR / THE LISTENING WALLS

A longtime staple in crime fiction--one that we're not seeing as much of these days--is the surprise ending.  While Millar has much to recommend her as a writer (in a previous post I opined that she is perhaps the best crime writer in history), her ability to write the surprise ending is exceeded by no one.  Millar was famous not for a surprise in the last chapter, but rather a surprise in the last paragraph or last line of the book.  I consider The Listening Walls to be one of her finest books, and I list it here because this is the best example I can give of a surprise ending that knocks the reader off his or her feet.  It is the perfect mixture of a psychologically acute character study coming together with an ingenious plot.  I find it downright scandalous that the book isn't in print any longer; but this is absolutely a must-read.  (Strangely enough, it is the book for which Millar won her Edgar, Beast in View, that I find to hold up the least well in 2009.)

IAIN PEARS/ AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST

Recent years have seen a renaissance in the popularity of the historical novel, and crime fiction is fortunate to have some highly competent historical writers who also know how to tell a good crime story.  Steven Saylor does a nice job; so does P.C. Doherty.  An Instance of the Fingerpost is, to me, worthy of study because it does so many things well.  Not only does it open a window into a period of history, it also uses multiple narrators to weave its deception.  For me, it is a case study of how to write a long book that does not bore readers--that, in fact, engages readers from the first page and does not let them go.  I think that writing a long book that seems short to readers is an accomplishment that few can claim, but Pears accomplished exactly that in Instance.  As a reader and editor, I am highly sensitive to length --rarely do I read a book of 400+ pages without thinkg, "50 [or 100] pages should have been cut."  One never has that feeling with Instance.

AGATHA CHRISTIE / AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

It's the best-selling crime novel of all time, and for good reason.  This is a book that can be enjoyed by people of any age, background, or literacy level.  It's not because the book's characters are so dazzlingly portrayed; it's because the story is so perfectly conceived and executed.  I sometimes think we've come to a place in crime fiction where character takes precedent over story. That may be the result of our psychologically aware society that came of age talking about Freud's defense mechanisms.  And Then There Were None eschews psychology, pop or otherwise, to put readers into that most Jungian of terrifying situations--trapped on a deserted island with a murderer who is eliminating the cast one by one, for no apparent reason.  This is the reason horror films often find themselves at the top of the moviegoer's list, and I believe it's the reason why this book has stayed at the top so long.  It's a marvel of plotting, of a devious mind working to fool and confound you, and succeeding admirably. 

CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG / A DRAM OF POISON

Charlotte Armstrong's Edgar winner is the type of book that most editors wouldn't know what to do with.  This was actually Armstrong's strong suit--never resting on her laurels, always trying something new.  Like Margaret Millar, she got her start writing a series character, but moved away from him to do stand-alones that allowed her to explore her creativity.  I wonder if A Dram of Poison would ever have been published if it had been submitted as a first effort by an unknown.  For those who haven't read it, there's no crime in it--just a frantic race to find a misplaced vial of poison before it does any real harm.  Armstrong's contribution here was not only her set of winning characters but her taking the idea of crime fiction and turning it upside down.  Almost all crime fiction has at its heart a negative reality--the fact that there are murderers running around who are willing to kill people or commit dastardly deeds.  A Dram of Poison sees a motley group of people banding together not to commit a crime, but rather to prevent something bad from happening.  In this way it was a forerunner of films like Speed or television series like McGyver, where the good guys race against the clock to prevent disaster.

RAYMOND CHANDLER / THE BIG SLEEP

Novels are written with words--including most graphic novels.  This is no great insight, but I encourage aspiring writers to think about their approach to their words.  Certainly having an ear for dialogue helps to convey important things, such as character and setting, but Chandler is one of the greats who created an entire language in which to write his books.   His world of grunts and gun molls is evoked not so much by physical description as by simile and metaphor; one might say that he created the language of the mystery during its ascendancy.  

AGATHA CHRISTIE / MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Mystery is a tricky business, especially commercial fiction.  From the earliest days of pulp, crime fiction was marketed and sold to a wide audience, and this continues to be true today (which explains why so many publishers end up acquiring books that they believe will sell the most copies, rather than the books that deserve to be published).  At its heart genre fiction exists to meet the expectations of the reading public.  Mystery readers want a crime, an investigation, a solution, and the perp brought to justice.  How does a writer work within those expectations while also doing his or her job--which is to mislead readers?  Murder on the Orient Express takes a semi-exotic setting and pulls of a denouement that breaks a simple rule of crime fiction by being so thoroughly believable and based in reality as opposed to the expectations imposed on fiction.  Of course, Christie did this many times, and I was tempted to put The Murder of Roger Ackroyd here instead; but I think Murder on the Orient Express is the better example for the modern era.

SCOTT TUROW / PRESUMED INNOCENT

The legal thriller waxes and wanes in popularity, probably on the basis of society's tolerance for lawyers at any given time.  (For example, I doubt we'll be seeing any Wall Street or Banking protagonists any time soon.)  Let's face it--anyone who's served on jury knows that courtroom procedure and trials are anything but interesting.  They are long, drawn-out, slogging affairs that can go on forever.  So it takes a particularly skilled writer to re-envision the entire process and turn it into something gripping and suspenseful, even if the fictional creation bears no resemblance to reality.  For those who will write courtroom scenes, as well as those who wish to explore modern family dynamics, Presumed Innocent is a must-read, a case study in turbo-charging the criminal justice system into something dynamic and interesting. 

CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG / THE GIFT SHOP

Some (many?) of the manuscripts I see forget a key point about popular fiction: It should be about the reader's experience of reading it, not about the writer's experience of writing it.  Writers are often so hell-bent on making their protagonist lovable, or complicated, or haunted, that they forget to have fun.  And while there are those who want a steady diet of depressed heroes and heroines, I would maintain that most people turn to escapist reading to have some fun and enjoy themselves with a good book.  The Gift Shop shows Armstrong at the top of her form, clearly having a ball with her story and bringing her readers along for the ride.  For me, this is the model for a caper.  The sensibility is slightly outdated, as a result of women's roles changing over the last few decades, but the plucky heroine hits just the right notes as she glob trots and tries to ditch the villains. 

CORNELL WOOLRICH / RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK

I close with Cornell Woolrich's Rendezvous in Black, because Woolrich is particularly good at one thing that I am always suggesting to writers: that they make their villains' motivations more transparent, even quasi-sympathetic.  I am not talking about fostering sympathy or understanding for twisted psychopaths like Hannibal Lecter; I'm talking about making the villain or murderer a person with more substance and/or conflicts.  Woolrich's prose is powerful, making him one of the masters of noir.  But he is equally good with character, and with conflicted villains.  In Rendezvous, the killer is a man avenging the senseless death of his beloved fiancee years earlier.  We feel his pain even as we condemn his actions; and this sort of complexity makes for a much richer reading experience than the typical venal, self-centered villain.

Please note that a lack of inclusion on this list doesn't mean that there aren't many other writers worthy of study.  Pick up any Sue Grafton book and you'll get a good tale, well told.  If you're writing police procedure, any of Dell Shannon or Ed McBain's books will suffice.  Ross McDonald never wrote a bad book.  Josephine Tey was a fine writer, but I just can't join in the litany of love for The Daughter of Time, which I have always found dull--I like The Franchise Affair, even Brat Farrar, much more.  Sara Paretsky is a worthy practitioner; so are P.D. James and Ruth Rendell.  With Dame James, I'd start with Death of an Expert Witness, though Dalgleish is starting to becoming annoying by that point;  and with Rendell I'd recommend the non-Wexfords over the Wexfords.  The one book that should probably be on here, but isn't, is Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L. Sayers.   Certainly I admire Sayers, but I don't think that Gaudy Night would get much in the way of agent or editor interest here in 2009/2010.

Pining for a Subgenre, Part 3: The Gothic

This will be the last in my series of subgenres I've been missing (I think).

Back in the 50s-70s (before what old-fashioned types call "women's lib"), we publishers could simply not satiate the public's appetite for the Gothic, a subgrene that went by different names, including "romantic suspense."  Some of those less tolerant of this type of book labeled it "fem jep" (short for "female in jeopardy), a pejorative and somewhat dismissive way of describing the book and the type of person who chose to read it.   There is a kernel of truth in this description though, as the books of luminaries like Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Phyllis A. Whitney, et al., did center around an innocent, sheltered, or naive woman thrust into the world to make her own way, where she finds herself at the center of a plot that often culminates in an attempt to kill her.  Very often the books include elements of the faux supernatural, by which I mean spooky legends, ghosts, goblins, and dark shapes on the moor that seem phantasmal but end up with perfectly reasonable explanations, most of the time.  By the end of the book, the heroine has emerged victorious against her captor or enemies while managing to find true love.

Some would say that as a society, we have moved to a point where these types of books seem hopelessly naive and pre-feminist, and that nobody wants to read them any longer.  And yet I think the remarkable success of Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale proves that statement untrue.  I think that book shows the pent-up demand for Gothic-type tales; and as far as I can tell, the demographic for the book has been widespread, not limited to the older women who were reading this type of book back in the 50s.  (To be fair, Setterfield did update the subgenre with a bit of kink and schatology to make it more modern.)  I actually have two friends who passed on the book and who are now kicking themselves (as we all do, from time to time), because they thought it old-fashioned and doomed to failure, the type of book that should be published by a romance line, since it seems that the Gothic readers moved more into reading that type of book.  What they didn't realize is that Gothic lovers also like a good mystery and a nice bit of suspense.

So what is the appeal of the Gothic?  For me, and for many, I think it is not the idea that such books "set women back" but rather a desire for a return to innocence.  Sounds corny, but bear with me on this.  The young women who are the protagonists of these books have lived sheltered or charmed lives, though sometimes they're the poor relation who gets thrown out of the house by a dastardly uncle.  With very few resources--just an intelligence underlying their naivete--they manage to get to the bottom of things, even if they make mistakes that put their lives in jeopardy, mistakes that are the result usually of a lack of sophistication rather than stupidity.  In this way, these texts are really more feminist than they appear on the face of it.  These young women also seek love and romance; and I refuse to believe that these types of women do not exist in reality.  Today's readers may like their commitment-phobic Kinsey Milhone and others who play approach-and-retreat games with the men in whom they have an interest; but I wonder if Gothic heroines tap into a lot of women's secret (and rarely expressed, due to fear of ridicule) desire for a romantic hero with whom she walks hand in hand into the sunset.  Of course, the Gothics were not series books, so they did not have to feature an endless game of cat-and-mouse between the heroine and the man/men of interest, a la Stephanie Plum, to sustain dozens of books.  Holt et al. could bring closure to their books with a happy, warm ending in which good triumphs and evil is defeated, with plenty of pulse pounding along the way as a shadowy creature chases the heroine through a shadowy grotto.

And we are, I think, in an era where people both fear and long for innocence.  Young women fear being perceived as unintelligent or unambitious if they do not appear sophisticated and even somewhat cynical.  (Check out the bar scene in Manhattan, or any major city sometime, and observe what goes on.)  And yet many pine secretly for the innocence they lost somewhere in their teenager years, as a result of the betrayal of a friend, or the breakup of an early relationship, and so on.  For myself, I remember feeling very depressed after my wife and I had to talk to each of our children (we have boys and girls who are men and women now) about sex for the first time.  My wife, all brisk efficiency and pragmatic on this topic, would say to me, "Agatho, what is with you?  You've got to let the kids grow up."  And I don't dispute that, but I would reply the same way each time:  Life changes forever once your hormones kick in, and not necessarily for the better.  Nothing complicates life like sex, and once you start, life is never the same again.  I felt a similar sadness when each of the kids worked up the nerve to ask me if Santa Claus was real.  Of course I told them the truth (which they knew already, anyway), but I felt as if the end of the Easter Bunny, Santa, and the Tooth Fairy were their first steps out of a sweet childhood into a cruel and competitive world.  As always, my wife would yell at me and tell me to snap out of it, but she really hasn't changed my mind about it.

So I come back to the Gothic novel, which lets people remember a time in their life where they were more innocent and perhaps more idealistic, where life seemed like an adventure on which to embark rather than a rat race in which only the strong survive.  The supernatural elements in the Gothic bring us back to a time when we sat around on Halloween or campfires, telling ghost stories and getting that pleasant sensation of fear--while mixing it with the reality of adult life, which is that most phenomena have logical explanations, and the things that we fear are best conquered by facing them head on.  And a happy ending never hurt anyone; was and is, in fact, what many people read for.

Maybe the success of The Thirteenth Tale will spur a Renaissance of the Gothic.  I hope so.

Pining for a Subgenre, Part 2: Psychological Suspense

(The second in Agatho's Series of Subgenres that seem to have fallen by the wayside)

For a while, a lot of crime fiction was carrying the subtitle, "A novel of psychological suspense."  As with domestic suspense from last week's post, I think we need to begin by defining our terms.  By psychological suspense I mean a novel in which the mental status of one or more characters is questionable.  The plot is driven by the fact that readers remain in the dark about who the good guys are, who the enemy is, and the motives that drive both parties.  In the best novels of psychological suspense, readers can't quite figure out whether a character is actually sane or whether some serious psychological issues are going to cause unexpected behavior or plot turns.

For the best examples I have to turn to some of my favorites.  In Margaret Millar's Beyond This Point Are Monsters, we have a daughter-in-law facing off against her mother-in-law.  Both are emotionally wounded; but is one of them a villainess?  The fact that Millar keeps the reader in the dark regarding the answer to this most basic of questions propels the narrative and keeps tripping the reader up (in the best of ways).  Ruth Rendell has done some very nice portraits of people unraveling; I particularly like The Killing Doll, in which a brother and sister who engage in some mischief as children part ways, with the boy going on to a relatively normal life and the girl developing a more lasting psychosis as she enters adulthood.  

But my all-time favorites are the early novels by Rosamond Smith, pseudonym of Joyce Carol Oates.  These are some very fine novels--Lives of the Twins, Double Delight, and Nemesis are my favorites.  In each of them, the protagonists get in way over their heads, finding themselves questioning even their most basic identities.  Smith has a good deal of creepy fun with the psychology of twins, of people crossing economic and class barriers in ways that aren't good for them, of revealing the past bit by bit to provide pieces of insight into why the characters are behaving as they do.  More recently, Oates adopted the pseudonym of Lauren Kelly for her suspense novels, and I like these as well.  In Take Me, Take Me With You we come to see how a young woman finds herself in the position of being stalked by a dangerous man and enjoying it.

From what I've seen lately, we're not getting a lot of really good psychological fare.  On the one hand, we have a lot of books in which the novelist works overtime to make the protagonist 100% lovable and adorable.  ("Yes, I have quirks, but I'm so funny, and so witty!  You're dying to read more books starring me, aren't you?")  On the other hand, we have those dark case studies (Ellroy, Vachss) that are so bleak as to allow no sunlight whatsoever.  While I like both writers, I feel that neither is subtle psychologically; rather, the villains are simply depraved and the good guys "haunted" by unpleasantness from their past.  The psychology is slathered on rather thick, but there's little questioning as to what will happen or how the characters will behave, or how things will play out in the end.

Then of course we have those serial killer books that like to masquerade as psychological suspense.  There is no suspense, and no psychology in the vast majority of them.  Just an endless supply of dead bodies, each marked by the killer's "inexplicable" calling card, such as a peony, or a sundial, or a piece of a medieval manuscript, or a coin from ancient Rome.  The give and take between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, and Hannibal's ability to manipulate Clarice, had been spectacular in the early books before becoming an embarrassment in later books. 

So, I say - Let's try to bring back some good psychological suspense, with some characters who have a bit of subtlety and whose mental status is not pounded onto the page and into the reader's head by a hamfisted author.  Let's get into the vagaries of character and let the lines blur a little instead of making things so black and white.  A couple of current writers who are doing this well are Jason Starr (Panic Attack, The Follower) and Dennis Tafoya (Dope Thief, in which one of two bad guys decides to go straight, with interesting results). 

Pining for a Subgenre, Part 1: Domestic Suspense

A phrase used quite a bit in yesteryear, but not heard much any longer, is "domestic suspense."  These books were quite the rage for a while, and some of their purveyors were among the best our genre has to offer. 

How does one describe domestic suspense?  Agatho's Dictionary of Mysterious Terminology (not yet published, but written in my head) defines the term as "a book in which the primary source of mysterious goings-on is the nuclear or extended family, in which (1) each member has important secrets that they try to keep from one another, or (2) one family member is quite a rotter, unbeknownst to the others, who don't recognize, or willfully ignore, the dangers posed by that less-than-sane individual."

In the former category I would put many of the works of Margaret Millar, who explored family dynamics and relationships (often between husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters) that have a menacingly dysfunctional quality about them.  In one of Millar's best, The Listening Walls, she closely follows an overprotective brother whose feelings for his sister border on the incestuous.  Margaret Yorke wrote some really fine portraits of families whose members can't stand one another--Criminal Damage, in which a long-suffering mother does her best to avoid her wacky daughter and shiftless son, is one of her best.  More recently, Gillian Flynn did a very nice job with family secrets and a chilling atmosphere in Sharp Objects. 

In the latter category I would put Charlotte Armstrong's classic Lemon in the Basket, in which Armstrong explores a ticking time bomb within an ostensibly happy family filled with successful children.  Another great one is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, about a couple of creepy sisters and what happens when a long-lost family member decides to show up for a visit.

Yet despite the massive applicability of the domestic suspense subgenre to contemporary society, we see very little of it.  We have become a genre of lone wolves, alcoholics, commitment-phobes.  Our sleuths like to work alone and not get too romantically involved, lest they get hurt.  And certainly they're not having children, unless the series has run long enough to allow children to be born (Wexford's unpleasant kids come to mind).  And while it's certainly fun and interesting to explore the psychology of one key character, I can't help but think that we're missing out on a lot of really interesting premises by not exploring those deep, dark family dynamics that affect all of us. Need I quote Mr. Tolstoy? "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

And aren't the crazy-family stories in the media the most suspenseful, the most high-interest?  For a couple of recent (or at least memorable) examples, think of the Menendez brothers and what went on in that wealthy household.  Or Susan Smith, drowning her children so her lover wouldn't leave her.  The O.J. story was at its heart a domestic family drama with a great deal of mystery thrown in.  The death of Michael Jackson has made that completely insane family stand out in relief, yet again. 

So I say--bring back sleuths who are married, who fight with their spouses, who have affairs, whose children are drug addicts, who have siblings who are perverts, who have parents who are controlling, who have cousins who are liars and grandparents who are thieves, as well as long-lost unknown half-siblings from their father's never-admitted affairs while he served in the military.  Give me a familly where the middle sister kills her oldest sister and frames her baby sister for it, and whose father knows it but hides the fact because the middle girl is his favorite, while the mother also knows what's happened, but hides the truth because she hates the youngest girl and wants her out of the house--which a good conviction will provide.  Give me an onboxiously upscale middle-class family whose trashy relatives show up at inopportune times and get them into really hot water by exposing things that the botoxed mother and prostitute-visiting father would rather keep secret. 

Forum: Tell Me What to Read

Occasionally I like to venture into uncharted waters--you know, those books published by large houses.  (Yes, they are indeed worthy despite not being published by small presses....)

I'm about to take off for a trip and have narrowed down my choices to 3, all of which are sitting on my shelf, awaiting me to pull one off and stick my bookmark in.

Readers: Please tell me which of these three you would recommend, and why.  Use the "Comments" button below so that everyone else can see your comment, or email me directly.

CHOICE #1

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, by Alan Bradley

I have heard good things, but this one seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it book.  I usually like such books.  Have heard it can be a little precious; I don't have a taste for the saccharine, so I worry.

CHOICE #2

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson

I was crazy about Smilla (of Smilla's Sense of Snow Fame, back in her heyday) so I'm liking the idea of this one.  But I'm also hearing that it's slow to start and that the pacing doesn't necessarily pick up.  And I need a good absorbing read for my trip.

CHOICE #3

THE THIRTEENTH TALE, by Diane Setterfield

I love a good Gothic, and this one is supposed to be Bronte-esque homage to the genre.  But I've heard detractors say it's pretentious and long-winded, with an unappealing heroine.  I like a complicated heroine, but have heard this one described as a "bore" by several people whose opinion I respect.  So I worry.

Overblurbing, Underselling, and the Dustbin of History

Well, I have to thank the readership of Mysterious Matters for making me feel as though I have arrived as a blogger.  I'm late with this most recent blog, and a few readers have written to ask me if I'm doing OK.  Doing fine (thanks for asking); I just tend to write when the spirit moves me as opposed to on any specific schedule.  And a few things have come up....

A couple of weeks ago I talked a bit about blurbing.  I forgot about what may be the most massive case of over-blurbing I have ever encountered.  Check out the hardcover of Celia Fremlin's Possession, published in 1969 by Gollancz.  By the way, I should go on record as saying that I think Fremlin is simply a superb writer, one whom I go back to annually just to sharpen myself on her prose. 

Now, several things come to mind about this cover:

1. Have you ever seen the front cover of a hardback, by such a respected and established writer, so overdone?  What I find most odd is that the blurbs do not even mention the titles of Fremlin's previous books, which the public is more likely to recognize than the names "Pat Wallace" and "E.D. O'Brien."  Certainly such praise is worthy of the back cover...but all of this on the front cover, instead of an interesting image or type treatment?  (Hey, at least the author got her name in red.) 

2. Check out the names on the back cover. Some of these names have survived the intervening 40 years and remain in circulation.  The late Dell Shannon still has a following, as does Emma Lathen.  Michael Innes and Hillary Waugh are also in the "firmly established, if less read" league.  But what became of Judson Philips, Edmund McGirr, V.C. Clinton-Baddeley, Lynton Lamb, and Jean Potts?  If any readers have had experience with these writers, please click on the COMMENTS button below and tell us about them.  I admit I've not heard of any of them, and I wonder what I have been missing.  The greater question is, of course: Does this list represent a microcosm of the mystery-publishing world, where some gain fame and readership, while others quietly fade away or are consigned to the dustbin of history?  And, most importantly, does quality have anything to do with it? 

3. The above thoughts are relevant to this week's internal dialogue because it's occurred to me recently that today's mystery authors are working harder than I've ever seen to establish themselves.  The crop out there right now is fairly desperate to achieve a level of familiarity, sales, and royalties that will provide them with continued contracts and livable income.  The word "desperate" may have a pejorative connotation, but I don't mean it that way.  What I mean is that so many writers want so badly to be best-sellers, or at least good-sellers; more so than at any time in my career.

And I think I know why this is the case, and I think it has to do with the economy.  Let's face it, life in the working world has become pretty complicated and annoying in the last decade.  There's no longer the concept of "corporate loyalty" as jobs go overseas and workforces are shredded.  Meanwhile, we continue to get other bad economic news.  This has been going on for a while, so can anyone blame people who want to chuck it all?  The dream of being able to stay at home, sit at your keyboard and tell stories, and have people scoop them up as soon as they're published, is a powerful one.  What an idyllic life it would be, all the more so because it would pay the bills and avoid the hassles of commuting and/or an idiotic boss.  Yes, there would be those pesky editors imposing their deadlines and forcing covers on you that you don't like, but all in all, it would be a pretty darn lovely lifestyle--the antithesis of what most people go through to make a living in this day and age.   

Of course, it isn't realistic, for all the reasons discussed not only on Mysterious Matters but also all over the Web.  As we all know, everyone loves a free book and does everything in their power NOT to buy new ones.  Reviewers think nothing of selling books they've received but haven't reviewed.  Advances are getting smaller (and rightfully so), with something like 85% of first-timers not even earning out their advance.  The dream of a large royalty check will remain a dream for most people, which is why we see so many "older" writers submitting manuscripts.  With their golden parachute or with the aid of a spouse who supports them, they can take the time to "write," but more than that they can afford to jump through the really ridiculous set of hoops that they have to in order to get published.  And then what happens?  The books disappear, like those of Jean Potts and Helen McCloy, never to be seen again.  This is why I have said in the past, and I will say again, that writing fiction should never be considered anything beyond a hobby--especially if you have a family to support.

I realize this sounds a bit downbeat; and honestly I curse the Internet for its ability to endlessly resell books, which have deprived publishers and authors of reasonable revenue and income.  That said, I do think we'll be around for at least a while longer.  I myself could not afford to do this job if I were a younger man attempting to pay a mortgage and feed my children.
 

Subtlety Gets Us Nowhere

With all that's being written about the Kindle, and the future of publishing, and books vs. electronic products, I thought I should go on record as saying I have no idea how it will all pan out.  I HOPE that more options means more books sold, regardless of format, which would mean more revenue for publishers and more royalties for authors.  I fear, as many do, Amazon's Microsoftian attempt at world domination in this arena, but that's another whole story not worth getting worked up about, at this time.

I use this as a starting off point to talk about a mild fetish of mine, which is that from time to time I just like to feel hardcovers published in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  First, I just love the paper.  Some of my first printing Charlotte Armstrongs (Lemon in the Basket, Seven Seats to the Moon, The Protege) have paper so thick that the books could survive a nuclear holocaust.  There is just something so satisfying about turning those thick pages.  Ironically, the paper, while thick, feels light, which is a wonderful paradox that makes me a little giddy.*

But what I have been noticing lately is the copy on the front covers of these hardbacks.  Nowadays, we are used to seeing author name, title, "An [insert sleuth name here] Mystery," and perhaps "Author of [fill in previous book title]."  OK, that's all well and good--no complaints.  But I see from some of my favorite books that the publishers went even further, attempting to position the book through extra verbiage on the cover.  Here are a few for instances:

Margaret Millar, VANISH IN AN INSTANT (1952):  The cover says, "Her best novel of murder and suspense since THE IRON GATES."  Now, I find this odd because Millar wrote many terrific books after THE IRON GATES, including DO EVIL IN RETURN, THE CANNIBAL HEART, and ROSE'S LAST SUMMER.  So did the casual bookstore shopper in 1952 think, "Oh, Millar's last few books stunk; I'm glad she's back in the form she was in for THE IRON GATES"?  Anyway, I've gushed about Millar here before, so won't do so again.  The only thing I can think of is that the editor really loved VANISH IN AN INSTANT and was looking for a way to convey that on the cover.

Norah Lofts, THE LITTLE WAX DOLL (1960): The cover says "A tale of modern witchcraft."  A good call on the publisher's part, because Lofts was known for her historical novels,and the publisher probably wanted to signal to readers that they were to expect something different with this title.  (This is a fabulous book, by the way.)  The history here is that it was originally published under Lofts' pseudonym Peter Curtis, then re-issued to take advantage of her fame.  That's all to the good, because this is a sadly overlooked classic.  Doubleday did something similar with Lofts' THE CLAW (1981), saying on the cover that it is "A novel about the ultimate violation" (rape).  Yes, that's truth in advertising, yet I can't say that I think it would really pull in readers and might even turn them off.

Craig Rice, THE RIGHT MURDER (1941): This one has all the basics on the cover, but the spine adds "A witty fast paced mystery," which is a good description.  I wonder if this takes into account the way books were shelved on bookstores in the 40s--or if this was more done in consideration of people who walk through the library stacks in search of something interesting to read.

Margaret Millar, THE FIEND (1964): How's this for additional cover copy: "A suspense novel in which nine adult lives are enmeshed in the horrible threat to a little girl's life."  Wow--an entire plot summary on the front cover of a hardback.  No one does this anymore, do they?

And this, ultimately, is my question:  Should we start doing this again?  People are busy, and a bookstore (especially the mega-outlets) are exercises in sensory overload.  We now have this tendency to make all of our covers look the same, with a strong central image and (when relevant) the author's name in type so huge that it overwhelms everything else.  But the modern book requires the reader to then pick it up, read the flap copy, flip through it--and in an era where people don't even want to read newspapers any more, can we really expect them to read flap copy?

So maybe we SHOULD start doing plot summaries, or positioning statements, on our hardcovers so that people can instantaneously figure out whether or not the book is for them.  That might work better than blurbs from people whom the reader may or may not have heard of; and I really have begun to think that blurbs are wasted real estate because nobody takes them seriously on a hardcover.  (A paperback's a different story.)

Just think about some of the possibilities for covers:

Janet Evanovich, Super Stupid Sixteen - "A novel in which an absolute airhead who can never learn her lesson deals with continued family shenanigans while putting the bad guys out to pasture"

P.D. James, Death of a Self-Important Poet - "Inspector Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard investigates the murder of a narcissistic, sensitive poet who is increasingly getting on people's nerves"

Elizabeth George, What Fools These Mortals Be - "The two biggest snots in the world, Inspector Lynley and his wife, deal with an intricate plot while looking down their noses at that pain in the ass Barbara Havers, who acts like a complete idiot half the time"

*Interesting note about paper: Small press books, due to smaller print runs, often use better paper because we don't qualify for the cheaper paper.  So, our books are often printed on better paper than mass-market paperbacks or even other trade paperbacks.  Ironically, the fact that our paper is better causes some to look askance at us, and to toss out the accusation of "self publishing."

Interns Taking Over the Publishing Biz

Too much going on this week for a "real post" (a certain convention is in full swing), but the following is making the rounds, and rightfully so.  The person who wrote it knows the business.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/10/19/091019sh_shouts_weiner/

What is the solution?  Some would say, "Publish many fewer books, especially in fiction." 

What can readers do?  Ask your library to buy books, and buy only NEW books from bookstores or online booksellers.

What the Hell Does "Well Written" Mean?

So, everyone says that for a book to get agented and published, it has to be "well written."  I'm not sure that is 100% true - we can all think of people who have made the best-seller lists whose books are competently, or borderline-competently written, but not WELL written.

However, I think it's fairly safe to say that if you are an unknown (i.e., non-celebrity, non-politician, non-sportstype, non-CEO), your manuscript has to be well written.  This is one of those terms, I realize, that is bandied about without ever being quite defined.  I suppose we could say it's like pornography - we know it when we see it - but I thought I'd try to come up with a more specific definition.

So, in my opinion, well written means the following:

1.  Properly spelled, grammatically correct, with punctuation in the right place.  This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for good writing.  I think a lot of us can put up with an occasional typo in a manuscript.  Everyone's human, and God knows that after looking at the same manuscript every day for a year, a writer can be forgiven for a misspelling or a missing comma.  I do think most of us see beyond that.  But multiple errors in the first few pages signal a generally low level of competence and cause us to tune out.  (Case in point, so that I can get down off my high horse - in Meredith Phillips' guest blog from last week, I had several typos in my introduction and conclusion that Meredith herself pointed out to me!  Slightly embarrassing, to say the least.)

2. Good variety in sentence and paragraph structure.  I sometimes see manuscripts that are 300 pages of simple declarative sentences.  That might be OK for children's or YA adult books (though I doubt it), but it won't fly in an adult novel.  Please give me some dependent clauses, some participial phrases, some gerunds or infinitive phrases.  Ask a rhetorical question or two.  Vary sentence style and paragraph length (especially paragraph length!  300 pages of 3-sentence paragraphs makes your book look like it suffers from ADD.  300 pages of multi-page paragraphs makes it look as though you've channeled James Joyce, most likely not on his best day.)

3. Simple, effective description.  I always feel that the best writers evoke a scene, a character, or a characteristic in a minimum of space.  I like a sentence or two of description--and then get on with it.  For more complicated locations or items that are intrinsic to plot, longer description is fine.  I like to see similes, etc., in descriptions--something other than telling me how big the thing is, and what color.  I also feel that, from a reader's viewpoint, a simple sketch lets readers fill in the details and makes the book more absorbing.

4. Sentences that stop you cold.  You might think that a sentence that stops me in my tracks is a bad thing--that it would kill the suspense or slow down the pace.  And yet I find that the books that I acquire always have sentences (usually on every page, or in every chapter) that make me think, "Wow, that was a great sentence."  Margaret Millar had hundreds of these.  I also recently read Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn, and there is a woman with the ability to write killer lines.  I think that what informs these killer lines is a sort of authorial perception or intelligence that engages my own--a way of putting an idea or description into writing that would never have occurred to me.  And I am impressed by that.

5. Good dialogue, in the appropriate places.  This is a real problem spot for first-timers.  Oh, the thousands of pages of banal dialogue I have read in my lifetime....  Dialogue should provide important information or reveal character.  It shouldn't be useless banter, a phenomenon I call "mother and daughter syndrome" (hope my wife isn't reading this).  My oldest daughter and my wife talk on the phone at least twice a day, for half an hour, about absolutely nothing.  They seem to enjoy it in life, but in a novel such conversations are useless and even annoying.  Another problem is stiff dialogue that sounds phony, or having all characters speak in the same way, which makes everyone sound the same.  The opposite problem specializes a character's way of speaking to such an extent that s/he sounds like a caricature.

6. A sense of control.  I really want my author to be in charge of the manuscript--in charge of my mind.  By giving myself up to a manuscript, I relinquish control over my time, and I want to make sure I am in the hands of someone who is using my time properly.  Writers who have a sense of control are excellent self-editors.  They can read what they've written and slash entire paragraphs or pages because they see that the cut material doesn't further the story, or develop character, or serve any other purpose.  In other words, a well-written book partakes very little in self-indulgence.  And yet some self-indulgence is to be expected and even encouraged, as these flights of fancy can really capture your imagination and make the author's unique voice stand out.  The best writers know when they can get away with it, and when they can't.

7. An awareness of the novel as story.  I really can't stress this enough.  A well-written manuscript has the reader in mind from page one.  From the outset, the reader thinks, "This is a story I want to read" (and, one hopes, "These are characters I find interesting").  A well-written book parcels out information, knowing that at its core it exists to reveal secrets little by little, rather than in huge chunks of backstory or chapter after chapter of exposition.  Someone who reveals backstory just about perfectly is Louise Ure.  Her books should be required study for how to handle backstory.

8. And, finally, a sense that the author is an interesting person whom I would like to meet.  When I read a really good manuscript, I always feel that I want to meet the author.  Now I may be somewhat disturbed by their vision or find their world view bleaker than my own, but I still want to talk to them, to see what makes them tick.  The same may be true of a cozy writer.  While I can't say that I am a huge fan of that sub-genre, I think an excellent sense of humor is a must in a cozy writer, and I imagine that having dinner with that author would be full of laughs and wry observations.  It's that sort of je ne sais quoi that builds a devoted readership.  The problem is that many of today's authors think that becoming email friends with readers is a substitute for this, when they are two very different phenomena.  I come from an era where I think writers should be slightly apart, slightly admired by their readership, rather than posting thousands of Tweets all over the Internet in a desire to expose themselves as much as possible.  Now, of course, that has been done successfully, and our publicist is always encouraging writers to do exactly these sorts of things, but I have never claimed not to be a man of contradictions.