Crime vs Sin

[Cammy May Hunnicutt]

Don't worry, I'm not a christer or preacher.  I just want to examine something a little off the main track for crime writing. Or maybe it's not.

I was impressed recently reading something about this.  It said the difference is that a crime is something you do to other people, a sin is something you do to yourself.

Obviously some behavior fits both categories.   But with sin, it's really all about you, isn't it.  You're the one who committed it, you're the one who will pay for it.    You can go to a priest and fix the ticket without the victim having anything to say in the matter.

A crime might not hurt you at all.  Especially if you get away with it.

Obviously murder is like the worst crime and the worst sin.  That's why they're all murder mysteries instead of having jaywalking mysteries or indecent exposure mysteries.

Stealing from people, hurting people...these are so obviously and instinctively wrong that they fit both categories.  Fucking around makes a lot of sin lists, and few crime lists.  Have the Ten Commandments aren't even crimes.  Coveting?  Our economy is based on it.  Honoring your parents?  Our culture seems to based on breaking that one.

Jaywalking doesn't make a lot of sin lists because it doesn't harm anybody, and certainly not the perp.

Can you cheat on your taxes without feeling guilty?    Well, if you think tax is theft, how can it hurt you to not pay it?

Actually, I don't know quite where I'm going with this.  I'd been thinking of it in terms of crime fiction characters, mainly.   I think the sociopath who does things with no inner reverb at all is too easy.  I think it's more masterful to see the criminal damaging herself and aware of it.  Not as dramatically as "The Telltale Heart", maybe, but something there about the inner and outer ramifications of rotten acts.

I think dragging the church into it also makes it too facile.  If "sin" is a real thing, it shouldn't need any trappings or titles to make it stick.  It will be working its way into the sinner/criminal's being without any help from Father ORiely.

I trust you all to have some directions here, and that will be where it's going.  It's just something that I've been mulling and I wonder what you think.

[Eric Christopherson]

I agree: Cruz Smith is the greatest living! He's like the Willie Mays of suspense fiction, can run, field, throw, hit, and hit for power. Almost no weaknesses to his game. Very rare!

[Eric Christopherson]

Oh and just to add, I have long thought that Havana Bay provides the best setting of any novel I've ever read, suspense or otherwise. Every one of my senses transported to Cuba ...

[Susan]

I agree. Hot and steamy, but Cruz also does a great job of revealing of the way the citizens of Cuba resent the Russians for abandoning them after the Cuban missile crisis, and the resulting shortages of consumer goods.