Murder As Art

The Guardian posted a blog regarding mystery novels, titled Why does crime still have such unpardonably low literary status? This post talked about how many book critics do not give the authors of crime books their due credit for their writing. The fans of the these books love to read them, but the authors are critiqued for their book not being legitimate and good writing. In the article, the narrator writes, “Yes, much crime writing is formulaic, simply written and full of cheap thrills”, stating one of the reasons that crime writing is criticized. In my book, The Rivalry, by John Feinstein, this same criticism could be applied, because it is very simply written and had many cheap thrills. An example of this is early in the book, when Secret Service Agent Dowling says to Stevie, the main character, “We have to deliver a gun” (pg. 8). Agent Dowling gave no context to Stevie or the readers, and it created some suspense and curiosity for the readers as to why they had to deliver a gun. A couple of pages later, it is revealed that the gun they had to deliver was a gun to signal the beginning of each quarter, not an actual gun. That is an example of a cheap thrill because it created some suspense but was really no big deal. My mystery book is an example of why crime books are sometimes criticized, because it is not very well written and is so similar what a typical crime book is as it seems to follow a script of how those books are supposed to be written. Not all crime books are like this though, as many are very well written, but don’t receive the respect that they deserve because of all of the typical crime books that are formulaic and all structured the same.