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

[Lisa Fernow]

From my research, it seems like there are many competiting definitions, and I've even seen a book described two different ways in the same publisher's blurb ... let us know what you find out!

[Ken McConnell]

How about Tech-Mystery? That's how I describe Null_Pointer, my novel about a programmer who investigates the death of a coworker only to find out that the man was killed through his computer. Death by code. It's a blend of programming and sleuthing that I have not seen before.

[Angela Zeman]

You all probably think I'm a pita on this, but seriously, I'm pretty sure GENRE is the overall name of a large division or group of sub-genres, ie 'mystery'--'crime fiction' works equally well. 'Romance' is also a genre. 'Sci-fi' also. What we're discussing here are 'sub-genres,' for instance suspense or cozy. These labels give readers basic guidelines to help them find books on the bookshop shelf. Which is the reason only publishers really worry over what these things are called. Fitting our work to the right agent or publisher is the only aspect of a genre or sub-genre label for us to take seriously. It's just a selling tool.

Funny thing, though, while we discuss or create new sub-genres, having a laugh, sometimes downright fascinating insights happen. I can't wait to find out what a tango mystery is! And maybe an editor somewhere will repeat that label at work and the next thing we know, tango mysteries are in hot demand.

[Ciscley]

Yes. Sub-genre labelling is Very useful for finding a book I'll have a higher probability of enjoying. Otherwise I'm stuck just browsing titles and covers in the bookstore. (Which I do enjoy, but only when I don't know what I want to read. When I actually want to read a SPECIFIC thing, it's annoying as hell.)

And it's particularly useful when I'm at the library. Especially now that the employees at my local ones are rarely book geeks themselves. I remember being a kid and going up to the librarian and saying, "I want a book like..." and them just finding one for me. I thought they were geniuses, but really they just understood book categories and how to use the card catalog.

[Jody]

Officially recognized by...? :)
I think as readers/writers/humans(!) we feel that we need some kinds of labels, but I think it's important that we don't hold onto them in any rigid sense. That said, if one -does- go into a genre/sub-genre with certain expectations, it's always fun to disrupt and decentre the expected structure thereof and make the reader think about their own complicity with the text. Personally, I prefer to keep everything under the umbrella of 'crime fiction', moving the focus from transgressor to transgression.
Maybe I should go back to my first point: "Officially recognized by...?" ;)
Cheers,
Jody.

[JackBludis]

All of your listed genres have subsets, often hyphenated, or "extra" hyphenated, and all can be hyphenated with "historical," except historical, of course. Hard boiled-historical, historical-noir (I happen to believe that noir and hardboiled are generally different, although sometimes a story or book can be both.