genre types?

[minervaK]

OK, this is officially beginning to drive me kind of nuts. Are there officially recognized divisions within the mystery genre, and if so, what are they? I've heard of the following:

* Traditional / cozy
* Hardboiled / noir
* Police procedural
* Spy / espionage
* Literary / psychological (do these belong together?)
* Thriller (couldn't some of the other types also be thrillers?)
* Historical
* Comic / caper

Are there others? Are some of these redundant? Who oversees these kinds of things? (<-- attempt at humor)

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[minervaK]

Man, Jon, I wouldn't call your books police procedurals at all -- but, again, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the genre classification system...

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[Dana King]

To Jon Loomis:
I guess because the main character is a cop? I'm with you and see them as dark comedies, but I guess the marketing types as more concerned with getting genres assigned than with the accuracy. "Main character PI = mystery. Main character cop = procedural. Main character civilian, but not amateur detective = thriller."

Seems to me if they're going to earn their living--and affect ours--by assigning genres, the leat they could do is make them tell something about the book.


To John McFetridge:

Perp procedural is cool. I wish I'd thought of it. I think of what you (Elmor Leonard, Declan Burke) write as crime fiction and leave it at that. It tells what the books is like wihtout trying to pigeonhole it too closely.

[D.R. MacMaster]

My dream is to write the first "hardboiled cozy," featuring a little old lady detective, who beats the answers out of suspects and other lowlifes.

[John McFetridge]

My flash fiction for one of Patti Abbott, Gerald So and the Mystery Dawg's challenges:

Cozy Noir.

[I. J. Parker]

Remember ARSENIC AND OLD LACE? Two old ladies are poisoning people.

[Ann Littlewood]

You forgot "zoo-dunnits." Not a big category, technically speaking, but there are at least three in print, including (wait for it!) NIGHT KILL by yours truly.

[minervaK]

Zoo-dunnits? Animal detectives?

[Jon Loomis]

Crimes in zoos? Crimes committed by zebras?

[Angela Zeman]

So far, nobody mentioned romance, which can be hyphenated with most labels.

Historical is not complete enough when used alone to be a sub-genre title. You can have a historical that is nothing to do with mystery at all. And conversely, you can also have a historical cozy, historical thriller... You get the idea. It's a time period in which the story is set, not a self-contained format.

Horror, like romance, also needs to hyphenate with most of the labels mentioned, in my opinion.

I also don't think comic and caper are the same thing. Funny is funny. A caper is a scam or con, which is not necessarily funny.

To me, 'mystery' is the category name from which all the sub-genres spring. That branches out into 'suspense' and 'thriller' and 'puzzle.' Then these branch out again into most of the rest of them. A few are like multiple twigs at this point. Sometime when I don't have a raging headache I'll lay it all out.

Literary, to me, is a style of writing that is not firmly definable and therefore doesn't belong in this list. Most publishers don't think 'genre' writing (using the word as they do) is NOT 'literary' writing, and vice versa. My opinion of this theory is not suitable to post here. When publishers declare something to be a certain 'genre' or whatever, their pov is completely marketing, they don't actually care what anything is.

As for writers--I think from a historical pov, we should at least generally know things like the sub-sub-genres, if only to understand the finer points of our own professions. What are we writing, who wrote it first, how and why did this sub-genre come to be developed? Etc.

Not like I think it's all been 'done,' far from it. New sub-genres await.

[J. E. Seymour]

>Literary, to me, is a style of writing that is not firmly definable and therefore doesn't belong in this list. Most publishers don't think 'genre' writing (using the word as they do) is NOT 'literary' writing, and vice versa. My opinion of this theory is not suitable to post here. When publishers declare something to be a certain 'genre' or whatever, their pov is completely marketing, they don't actually care what anything is.<<br />
From what I've seen, publishers and agents do not think genre writing is the same as literary writing. I heard a very simple definition of literary vs non-literary from an editor of a (literary) journal. Literary is anything that focuses on the "domestic" - the everyday, relationships, family, etc. Genre focuses on plot, what happened vs why. Does that make sense? Literary fiction tends to have less focus on plot, more on character. Genre focuses on the plot, to the point where it has to fit a certain "formula." I'm not sure this is entirely true, I think the line is blurring more and more, especially in crime fiction. However, "Literary" is still a category unto itself. You can have literary crime fiction - see "Billy Bathgate" for an example.

[I. J. Parker]

That sounds like an excellent distinction to me -- along with the fact that lines are blurring. The newer mysteries are more about people than plots. A great improvement to my mind from the mere puzzle-solving of the old mysteries.

And if this is true, then I'm writing literary mysteries -- especially in THE CONVICT'S SWORD. Still one reader on Amazon has already complained that he found the plotting too simple. No red herrings and no twisty surprises at the end. I personally don't care for those.

[Angela Zeman]

Zowie, spotted my double negative in your extremely accurate quote. Sorry about that. Definitely not literary writing.