Crime Writing—Why?

 

Why crime? Of all the fiction genres, (most are WAY more popular and lucrative) why do so many writers choose crime fiction?

What is crime

Crime is a catch-all expression. Hardboiled PIs, police procedurals, serial-killer thrillers, juvenile-delinquent sleuths, are all grouped under the heading of crime. So, as the reader might suspect, the answers will vary as wildly as the subject matter.

“Most newspaper reporting is some kind of crime story,” -Carl Hiassen

Carl Hiassen was a newspaper man at the dawn of the cocaine-80s in Florida. To say he saw some things would be an understatement. His first crime novels, (written with William Montelbano) were high-stakes thrillers playing out against the rising drug culture in 1970s Florida.

But Hiassen wanted to write a different kind of story with honesty only possible through humor. He saw the inanity in cocaine cowboys and the ridiculous propaganda from the politicians as well as the shrug-and-wink response from the cops.

The absurdity in Hiassen’s crime is the same absurdity at the root of the country.

The Jamestown settlers, the New Netherland Dutch traders, and William Penn’s Religious Society of Friends all snatched land and brutalized the indigenous people. In his excellent history, Meeting House and Counting House, Frederick B. Tolles cites a 17th century diary entry recounting the hanging of a Scots immigrant by those peaceful and pacifist descendants of the Mayflower Quakers. The Scot's crime? Drunkened-disorderly conduct.

“Necessity is just a mother” -conversation overheard on a bus.

When flight-attendant Jackie Burke was busted smuggling drugs for her airline-pilot husband, he dumped her. Unable to get a job with the big airlines and unable to live on the wages from the discount carrier that does employ her, Jackie begins smuggling cash for gun runner, Ordell Robbie. But when the police sweep her up, Jackie knows she is truly screwed, especially after she learns that the same police allowed another one of Ordell’s flunkies to get “got.” With the only options being prison or death and no one to trust, Jackie decides to rely on herself and comes up with her own plan. 

“What interested me was the border states. I wanted to write about Apaches and Mexicans.” -Elmore Leonard

An ad-man by training, Leonard had a strong command of telling a story in condensed circumstances. But he yearned to explore injustice and culture clashes. His early efforts were in fact westerns. But his horse-operas were different. He did write about Apaches and Mexicans as well as Civil War veterans and European immigrants who could not/would not conform to social norms all thrown together in border towns awash in culture clashes and injustice. His Hombre is as much an indictment of Joseph McCarthy’s HUAC as High Noon has been lauded for. But Leonard gets to the bigotry at the heart of McCarthy and Cohn’s tactics.

So, again, why crime?

By the 1960s westerns had become passé for a lot of reasons. Mostly, readers were looking for different stories. Western book sales cratered. 

Meanwhile, authors broke new ground in science fiction and fantasy, horror and literature. But while those are all rich genres, that's not where Leonard found the drama. It was the stories of (sketchy) cops and (charming ) robbers that Leonard found the magic and music of humanity in a churn of unjust situations with cultural complexity. 

The deadbeat who Chili Palmer is chasing doesn’t owe money to Chili. Still, Chili has to collect the cash or face the consequences. In light of those very real, very likely circumstances, Hollywood looks like an elementary-school drama: silly.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens’s intelligence and drive springboarded him out of backwater Kentucky poverty. Then a comedy of errors result in his reassignment to the same backwater. After years of complex assignments and honing his skills as a lawman, Harlan County looks like a middle-school musical, just with guns and meth instead of bubblegum and songs.

Some stories simply can’t be told in the Young Adult section

In light of our reality: the absurdity of our divisions, the deadly hilarity of our political system, atrocity spun as international conflict, and corporate theft that we all pay for is the exasperation that the crime writer feels in our bones. Yet in writing our stories, our thieves and killers, our hustlers and misanthropes we process the injustice in the world. We process the cruelty and explore the roots and failed attempts to address injustice. But best of all, we have a sense of control over our mayhem and our madness. Mostly, we get to write some justice into what is, and thereby create some of what should be.

The author owns none of the photos above. They are used here for instructional/educational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.