By Amy Willis
Published: 2:59PM GMT 25 Oct 2009 in The Telegraph UK.

The author claims she is is fed up with increasing levels of "sadistic misogyny" in crime fiction and says authors are simply jumping on the bandwagon to get a bestseller.

"Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit as young women are imprisoned, bound, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or burned alive," she told the Observer.

Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say when they have had enough. So however many more outpourings of sadistic misogyny are crammed on to the bandwagon, no more will be reviewed by me," she added.

And the most disturbing plots are by female authors, she says.

"The trend cannot be attributed to an anti-feminist backlash because the most inventive fiction of this kind is written by women," she claims.

Natasha Cooper, former chair of the Crime Writer' Association, agrees with Ms Mann. She says women do this so they are taken seriously as authors.

"There is a general feeling that women writers are less important than male writers and what can save and propel them on to the bestseller list is if they produce at least one novel with very graphic violence in it to establish their credibility and prove they are not girly," she said.

The British market for crime fiction is worth more than £116m a year, with almost 21 million books sold.

Women account for more than 60 per cent of the readership with females over 55 the most avid readers.

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Oh, come! I understand the Christians vs lions or gladiators vs. bears and other gladiators performances were extremely well attended and received by the Romans.

And so were hangings, guillotinings, and burnings-at-the-stake in the more recent past. I can see accepting this sort of thing as a fact of life, but I wouldn't applaud it.
The obvious difference being that fiction is...fictional. No one really gets thrown to the lions or burned at the stake, unless you're getting really, really bad reviews.
The point is the unfortunate fascination human beings have with the sufferings of others. That holds true for reality and fiction.
But why is it unfortunate? What should we be fascinated by? Isn't "the suffering of others" at the heart of every good story?
Nope.
Oh, come on, IJ. "The suffering of others" is another word for conflict. No suffering, no conflict. No conflict, no story.
I'm with Jon on this one. (And not just because his wisdom and lucidity have been extolled on a concurrent discussion.) Crime fiction (mystery, whatever), by definition exists on the suffering of others, as there is no crime without suffering.
Dana's point comes a tad closer to fact, but that is also not always the case. Or are you reading suffering into the situation when the author happily skips over the issue, scattering bodies hither and yon while following the clever detective about as he collects clues?
Absolutely not. Conflict has nothing to do with suffering. You just dreamed that up. And perfrectly good novels can bewritten without dealing to any noticeable degree with the subject of suffering. Did you mean emotion?
Name one great story in which there's no suffering.
Oh Ha Ha - er, I hope no one noticed those missing reviewers!
Gladiator performances, hangings, guillotinings and burnings fell out of taste, which is why they are (mostly) never seen anymore. The demand changed, so the supply changed.

Sure, the point of demand-meets-supply isn't always pretty. But it adheres to the golden rule of any market: give people what they want.

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