Sunday, December 22, 2019

The Different Types of Mystery Novels

The Different Types of Mystery NovelsThe Different Types of Mystery NovelsMysteries for adult readers nearly all involve a murder - or (in the case of thrillers and suspense) at least the imminent threat of one. However, theres a wide range of sub-genres and other categorizing features in the mystery genre. Do you aspire to be the next Agatha Christie and write a mystery novel? Authors who are pitching literary agents should understand where their manuscripts fit onto the (literary or virtual) mystery bookstore shelves. First, do your research about the mystery genre in general. Then, read on to learn about the of the major types of mystery novels, below.Why? Because then yourewriting a query letterfor a mystery book to an agent, it helps to know where a bookseller will shelve itand to know the titles to compare it to.Withinthe major mystery book sub-genres of Hard-Boiled, Cozy, Procedural and Thriller / Suspense,theres a wide range of organizing features or sub-genres that booksell ers use. And, when youre trying to get books discovered online using SEO, metadata and optimizedkeywords or discovered on bricks and mortar store shelves, these categories and sub-genres are critical to helpingmystery readers find your book. Hard-Boiled and Soft-Boiled Hard-boiled mysteries and crime fiction generally feature a professional detective as the main character, and the gestalters are often struggling with their own, estimable demons which haunt them as they solve the case. Murder and crime happen in gritty platzsettings, and the violence is often graphically described. Hard-boiled detectives harken from the noir days of Dashiell Hammett. Present day protagonists include Michael Connellys Police Detective Harry Bosch, who works the current-day streets of auf gehts Angeles, and James Lee Burkes Dave Robicheaux who plies his investigative trade on the Louisiana bayou. A subset of detective fiction that is lighter in tone or with less explicit violence or sex is sometime s referred to as soft-boiled, though this is less a less common term. An example would be Sara Paretskys series featuring female P.I. V. I. Warshawski or Sue Graftons alphabet series (A Is for Alibi, etc.), featuring Kinsey Millhone. Cozy Mysteries or Cozies Whats cozy about these books is usually the setting. The murder takes place in an intimate environment, such as a small town, a neighborhood, or an all-girls private school. With the exception of the fact that somebody has been bumped off, the cozy tends to be light in tone that is, it is crafted so as not to offend delicate sensibilities. So while the subject matter can include all manner of transgression, the actual doing (such as murder, other violence, kinky sex, etc.) are not described in graphic detail. The sleuth who solves the mystery is often an amateur, like Agatha Christies elderly spinster Miss Marple or Karen MacInerneys stay-at-home mom, Margie Peterson. But not always - Alexander McCall Smiths No. 1 Ladies De tective Agency, protagonist Precious Ramotswe, is a consummate professional. Malice Domestic is an organization dedicated to the cozy genre. Each year, the organization hosts an annual conference, produces an anthology and honors its best practitioners with Agatha, Lifetime Achievement and Poirot Awards. Each year the Mystery Writers of America bestows the Mary Higgins Clark Award to what can generally be deemed a cozy (with a few other criteria). Procedurals A procedural mystery has as its key factor a blow-by-blow, thoroughly researched and specifically described analysis of how the crime is solved, by whatever means is the specialty of the main character. It may be authentically-researched detective legwork (as in a polizze procedural, such as in the novels of Joseph Wambaugh) or a scientific investigation of the evidence (such as in Patricia Cornwells books featuring the medical examiner Kay Scarpetta or Kathy Reichs series with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan). Thrillers/Suspense Thrillers and Suspense have different novelistic conventions than other mystery novels, but most booksellers shelve them in or near the Mystery area. In a mystery novel, the protagonists role is usually to find the killer. While his or her motive to solve the case may involve a personal element, physical threat to the protagonist generally towards the end of the story, as he/she gets close to solving the crime. Thrillers and suspense novels, in contrast, start out with very high stakes for the protagonist. The plot may or may not involve a murder at the outset, but the threat of danger is palpable from the get-go, and the plot builds and twists from there. In Thrillers - whether the stakes are personal (a man spots and pursues his fathers killer years after the murder) patriotic (a bomb has been hidden somewhere in the White House), or international (a deadly virus will be released on a tuch of 200 passengers heading from Hong Kong to Paris), the clock is tick ing and the action and the pace are non-stop. An example is Alan Folsoms The Day After Tomorrow.In Suspense - the protagonist is generally the one being pursued and must discover the whys and wherefores - again, upping the stakes from the beginning. But here the tension builds more subtly, often more psychologically - as in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, or in Gillian Flynns Gone Girl. Types of Mystery Novel Sub-Genres Now that youve learned about the main types learn about the sub-genres used to categorize mystery novels. Capers - Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich are two authors who specialize in these novels that involve humor and/or humorous criminal escapades.Classics - Include writers like Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Daphne du Maurier, Dashiell Hammett, Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Patricia Highsmith.Derivative - Some authors re-imagine historic or fictional characters as sleuths, often to appeal to existing fans of the author or period, as P. D. James did withJane Austens charactersinDeath Comes to Pemberley. Domestic s include Craig Johnsons Longmire series set in Wyoming, Greg Iles often sets his books in his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, Alexander McCall Smiths detective in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and Phoebe Atwood Taylors Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery series. Local interest- Also location-based, hyper-local mysteries are often set in beloved destination locales, doing double-duty as a preview and/or souvenir of a trip or a back home reminder for people whove moved away. For example, Deb Bakers sleuth Gertie Johnson is a Yooper - from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan Ellen Crosby writes wine country mysteries. Booksellers generally support local books.Locked Room - These mysteries involve a crime that seems physically impossible the name comes from a crime where the murder victim is in a room completely locked from the inside with seemingly no point of egress. Many authors (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie) have penned a locked room mystery or two, but writers who specialized in them include John Dickson Carr and Edward D. Hoch. Historic s are Grace Edwards Mali Anderson novels set in Harlem and Tony Hillerman, whose books were involved in Native American lands and issues. Noir - Think dames with gams to kill for, Private Eyes who brood in trench coats, the reflection of neon strip joint signs reflecting in the windows. Gritty, dark, moody, the term fits the classics like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett but also can be applied to modern-day works, like Walter Mosleys Easy Rawlins series.Romantic Suspense - A mash-up of romance and murder, one esteemed practitioner is Nora Roberts, who created the pseudonym J. D. Robb for writing in this sub-genre.Note that theRomance Writers of Americabestow an annualRITA awardin this category. Sherlock Holmes - Some stores, likeMysterious Bookshopin New York City, dedicate a section to Sherlockania - or iginal works, derivatives, scholarly studies, etc.Supernatural / Paranormal / Fantasy - Many of these have mystery elements but, since the conventions of these genres tend to dominate, these books are generally shelved in those respective areas where fans can better find them.True Crime- Before the Investigation ID Channel, we had to read non-fiction accounts of notorious murders. Truman Capote set the literary bar withIn Cold BloodAnn Rule is a long-time master of the genre. Vocational - procedurals and thrillers often have protagonists with a special career or vocational arena, such as legal (by John Grisham and Scott Turow), forensic (Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs), medical (Robin Cook), psychology (Jonathan Kellerman),political (Vince Flynn), military (Tom Clancy), sports (Dick Francis). Note that many (if not most) mystery novels contain elements of more than one sub-genre. For example, the South African Rennie Airths protagonist Inspector John Madden is a World War I vetera n and the mysteries take place in the early part of the 20thcentury. It can be shelved (physically or virtually) in Historical or British Detectives or even International Crime. And book publishing also follows trends and trends change. For example, imported and translatedScandinavianmysteries - around since Peter HoegsSmillas Sense of Snow- became wildly trendy afterThe Girl With the Dragon Tattooby Stieg Larsson became a runaway bestseller. The popularity of any one genre may ebb and flow on the strength of the marketplace.

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