Eureka! The Answer - "Why Do We Love Amateur Sleuths?"

For a while, "hobby"-based mysteries were all the rage (and still are, in some quarters); "profession"-based mysteries are also quite popular; the quirkier the hobby and/or profession, the better, of course. As an industry I think we've gone away from these emphases in terms of acquisitions strategy, but we still do get plenty of queries of this type.

I hadn't been able to put my finger on why these types of books became popular so suddenly - and then yesterday it hit me.

Think about the heroes of yesteryear - the lawyers who wrote our wills; the police who protected us; the doctors who took care of us; the bankers who protected our money, or loaned it to us when we wanted to buy our first houses.

Now think about these professions today.  Lawyers are universally reviled; the average person sees the average lawyer as a money-hungry, unethical bottom-feeder. Doctors, once the most respected profession, have come under fire for being callous, uncaring, greedy, money-hungry, arrogant.  The tales of police corruption are rampant and everywhere (I am always amazed listening to my friends, relatives, and neighbors talk about how much they loathe the police in the area I live).  As for bankers--well, we know whom to thank for the economic issues of the last several years, don't we?

Don't shoot the messenger, please.  Of course there are many individuals practicing these professions who are ethical and fabulous individuals.  But editors have to pick up on what's on the wind at the moment, and this particular editor isn't thinking that a lot of readers want a doctor, lawyer, banker hero/protagonist.  Rather, these are the bad guys (and if you work in the pharmaceutical industry, you might as well wear a button that says "Proud Worshipper of Satan"). The good news is, we can still have journalists as hero(ine)s, as long as their job lasts, but these would have to be small-town reporters who don't get caught up in the extremely divisive politics of the largest news organizations.

The hobby/profession-based mysteries take us away from these professions and people whom we as a society no longer like or respect.  They move us from macro to micro - from the world of the powerful (against whom we have little or no defense) and into the world of the individual, where (say) one herbalist, one florist, or one medieval history scholar can help fight for truth and justice. Our amateur sleuths aren't in anyone's pocket - they're investigating because they want to, perhaps for a personal reason, and we know they aren't corrupt, on the take, or power-hungry/arrogant. Maybe, just maybe, that appeals to readers who feel that every day is a battle against "the system." The amateur is often David taking on Goliath, and we love watching Goliath go down.

Now, I know that we do have some very successful practitioners out there with lawyers-as-heroes: Michael Connolly, David Rosenfelt, John Grisham...  Their attorneys succeed, I would argue, because they buck the system and try to be more "human" than the typical attorney is perceived to be.  Also, these gents have been writing a long time and have had time to build up a following.  But are any of us acquiring new attorney or doctor mysteries?  Not that I know of....

 

Comments

[Jersey Jack]

You must be one of the editors who told my agent, "No stockbrokers!"

[Lori]

people like to read about creepy things: zombies, werewolves, vampires.

it only makes sense that they would want to read about people who knit their own underwear solving crimes.

[Lexi Revellian]

I like this post for obvious reasons. My amateur sleuth heroine restores rocking horses for a living (many reviewers say they loved this aspect of the book) and one of the baddies is a lawyer.

She also scores high on integrity; she's a seriously inept liar.

[hearts]

the "proud worshiper of satan" part made me laugh out loud!