Essential Hardboiled Reading for Cozy Mystery Authors (And Readers) - CrimeSpace2024-03-28T21:31:26Zhttp://crimespace.ning.com/forum/topics/essential-hardboiled-reading?feed=yes&xn_auth=noStephen King's horror fiction…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-26:537324:Comment:2591882010-12-26T15:32:15.687ZJackBludishttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JackBludis
<p>Stephen King's horror fiction is often non-supernatural or lightly so. His horror is often about real-life relationships and situations. Love them or hate them, his characters in those works are real. Some of his short-stories are "slice of life." He explores the human condition in the USA as accurately as any writer alive. His problem with being identified as "great," by many, has to do with his output. There is a lot of it, and too much of a good thing can obscure the fact that it is…</p>
<p>Stephen King's horror fiction is often non-supernatural or lightly so. His horror is often about real-life relationships and situations. Love them or hate them, his characters in those works are real. Some of his short-stories are "slice of life." He explores the human condition in the USA as accurately as any writer alive. His problem with being identified as "great," by many, has to do with his output. There is a lot of it, and too much of a good thing can obscure the fact that it is usually very good.</p>
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<p>It's my opinion that he and Nora Roberts, whose work I don't read much, will be the two writers who most survive the next few generations and for many of the same reasons. I think they may be the Dickenses of our time.</p>
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<p>The reason I don't read more of his work, is that the writes more than I can possibly read. It would leave me no time to read other authors and perhaps not even enough time to read the news--and damn sure little or no time to write.</p>
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<p>It is not that he is a natural. It is that he is persistent, reads a lot, writes a lot, and if I understand correctly, spends a lot of time out of the house with average, below average, and above average people.</p>
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<p>Absolute "ripper of a yarn" is not a term I would use. For me, his characters carry the story.</p>
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<p>In "Under the Dome," he takes one far-fetched situation--a small town suddenly cut off from the outside world--and makes it into a microcosim of American life and character.</p> Not so much to revel, perhaps…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-24:537324:Comment:2590442010-12-24T00:16:18.393ZSusanhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Susan
<p>Not so much to revel, perhaps, as to reassure themselves. The story is a story, not real life.</p>
<p>I don't read much "horror" fiction, but I do write (and often read) gritty suspense/thriller fiction in which very bad things happen to people. Enormous numbers of people, many of them women, read this type of fiction. I suggest (I'm not the first to do so) that one of the reasons they read it is because in most of these novels, the killer (male or female) gets punished in the end. In real…</p>
<p>Not so much to revel, perhaps, as to reassure themselves. The story is a story, not real life.</p>
<p>I don't read much "horror" fiction, but I do write (and often read) gritty suspense/thriller fiction in which very bad things happen to people. Enormous numbers of people, many of them women, read this type of fiction. I suggest (I'm not the first to do so) that one of the reasons they read it is because in most of these novels, the killer (male or female) gets punished in the end. In real life, murders often escape and run free for years. Examples abound with the serial killers who've murdered dozens of people without being caught.</p>
<p>I also believe that readers of romance fiction (mostly women) adore the genre because they experience very little romance in their lives. Ditto with romantic movies. I know a woman who saw Pretty Woman five times. Five times!! Some may disagree, but I think a fantasized image of a prostitute wooing and winning an obstreperous rich guy (who all along had a heart of gold but couldn't show it) is just as bad as a movie that depicts violence in a realistic way.</p>
<p>Do I ever have to turn away when I see violence on the screen? Yes, the cut off the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. Couldn't handle that one. But the movie itself was utterly fascinating, a crime as told and seen through the viewpoints of the several criminals.</p>
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<p> </p> Also STAND BY ME, adapted fro…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-23:537324:Comment:2590152010-12-23T20:37:48.856ZDennis Leppanenhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/TheWarbler
Also STAND BY ME, adapted from a King novella, THE BODY.
Also STAND BY ME, adapted from a King novella, THE BODY. Surely that may be due to the…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-23:537324:Comment:2590042010-12-23T19:10:11.873ZI. J. Parkerhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Ingpark
<p>Surely that may be due to the translator? I'm assuming that you read other books in French. Kudos!</p>
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<p>Grafton and others, who started many years ago to take the private eye novel away from hardboiled male detectives, aren't quite cozy, though they do write for women and tend to be less hardboiled. That could bring me to a whole new subgenre: PIs for women. Part of women's liberation. Anything youi can do, we can do better. Because there are more women authors and more women…</p>
<p>Surely that may be due to the translator? I'm assuming that you read other books in French. Kudos!</p>
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<p>Grafton and others, who started many years ago to take the private eye novel away from hardboiled male detectives, aren't quite cozy, though they do write for women and tend to be less hardboiled. That could bring me to a whole new subgenre: PIs for women. Part of women's liberation. Anything youi can do, we can do better. Because there are more women authors and more women buying books, there tend to be an awful lot of these, but Grafton sort set the tone.</p> I.J., great description of co…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-23:537324:Comment:2589902010-12-23T15:54:44.160ZBarbara C. Johnsonhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BarbaraCJohnson
<p>I.J., great description of cozies. So even Sue Grafton's alphabet series falls into this category.</p>
<p>An afterthought: Once upon a time, I tried to read an Agatha Christie novel in French. I couldn't. The vocabulary in English, enjoyable and provocative, but in French, it was far too extensive for my ken. </p>
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<p>I.J., great description of cozies. So even Sue Grafton's alphabet series falls into this category.</p>
<p>An afterthought: Once upon a time, I tried to read an Agatha Christie novel in French. I couldn't. The vocabulary in English, enjoyable and provocative, but in French, it was far too extensive for my ken. </p>
<p> </p> Right. :) Or excessive viol…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-23:537324:Comment:2589892010-12-23T15:35:13.855ZI. J. Parkerhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Ingpark
Right. :) Or excessive violence. Bodies are found after the fact, and the crime tends to be fairly clean, i.e. by blunt instrument, gunshot, or poison. No rapes, mutilations, and dismemberments. And no dead cats. The last is very important.
Right. :) Or excessive violence. Bodies are found after the fact, and the crime tends to be fairly clean, i.e. by blunt instrument, gunshot, or poison. No rapes, mutilations, and dismemberments. And no dead cats. The last is very important. Thanks, I.J.tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-23:537324:Comment:2589872010-12-23T15:26:56.323ZBarbara C. Johnsonhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BarbaraCJohnson
Thanks, I.J.
Thanks, I.J. Descendants of the Agatha Chr…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-23:537324:Comment:2589752010-12-23T15:08:05.779ZI. J. Parkerhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Ingpark
Descendants of the Agatha Christie mysteries with tea-drinking, knitting old ladies solving murders committed in pleasant, small towns or villages. Also cat mysteries and anything that involves a special profession usually associated with women: i.e. catering, hairdressing, antiquing, crafts, gardening, etc. The devil's advocate suggests instead a hooker as a detective.
Descendants of the Agatha Christie mysteries with tea-drinking, knitting old ladies solving murders committed in pleasant, small towns or villages. Also cat mysteries and anything that involves a special profession usually associated with women: i.e. catering, hairdressing, antiquing, crafts, gardening, etc. The devil's advocate suggests instead a hooker as a detective. What are "cozies"?tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-22:537324:Comment:2589602010-12-22T23:12:26.797ZBarbara C. Johnsonhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BarbaraCJohnson
What are "cozies"?
What are "cozies"? If you think Stephen King is…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-12-22:537324:Comment:2589352010-12-22T14:43:13.493ZCaroline Trippehttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/CarolineTrippe
<p>If you think Stephen King is horrific, and you are disturbed by reading about bodies being sawed apart---remember that FACT trumps fiction every time. There are plenty of times when I have shared your feelings about a particular writer or novel. I just don't want to go there. I have put down more than one of King's novels for that reason---though I still think he's a brilliant writer, and a great storyteller. I can't bear even the fictional torture of animals, even though I know that it…</p>
<p>If you think Stephen King is horrific, and you are disturbed by reading about bodies being sawed apart---remember that FACT trumps fiction every time. There are plenty of times when I have shared your feelings about a particular writer or novel. I just don't want to go there. I have put down more than one of King's novels for that reason---though I still think he's a brilliant writer, and a great storyteller. I can't bear even the fictional torture of animals, even though I know that it happens in the real world all the time.</p>
<p>So, I am sure you are not denying that horrible things have been done by human beings to other humans beings, and you simply choose not to dwell on these grislier details of man's inhumanity to man....but sometimes we have to face the facts. We get pounded by all sorts of things we'd rather ignore, and some of us just get weary of it. You can choose what you wish to read, and if decapitation and the like disturbs you, then you are better off with fiction that avoids that kind of metaphor.</p>
<p>Real history, however, makes Stephen King's worst horrors seem...well....almost tame....and then again, eerily real. I've lately been immersed in Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror," a history of the 14th century in Europe. The title is the clue: our own time mirrors that dreadful era. But if such deeds as were perpetrated then, to the point where they became part of the fabric of daily existence for some, become a part of our collective psyche, then Stephen King (and others who explore the territory of "horror" via the Supernatural) are not too far off the mark.</p>
<p>I have at times been repelled by some of the violence in SOME of his novels, but somehow, reading books like "A Distant Mirror" gives me a different perspective. No, I don't necessarily seek it out, and it may not send me runnng back to the Stephen King shelf, but I don't want to turn a blind eye, either. Life is not all sweetness and light, even in fiction. If we are to protect ourselves from horror, we have to acknowledge that it exists.</p>
<p>The better writers (of horror) try to put horror --whether sensational or private---in some perspective, tell us why it has come to pass, or how we can come to terms with it or with the part of it than hunkers down inside us all.</p>