What's my subgenre?

Sandra Parshall

I’ve heard that some editors no longer want to label a certain type of mystery as a “cozy” because they think it’s limiting.

Publishing is a label-loving business, though – everything must be categorized for marketing purposes – so if “cozy” goes, something must take its place. “Traditional mystery” seems to be the preferred substitute. It’s a broad term that covers everything from talking animal puzzles to Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache tales.

At first I thought it was okay to apply the traditional mystery label so freely, but I’ve changed my mind. The trouble with lumping diverse books together is that readers won’t know what to expect. A true cozy is a far cry from the darker traditional mysteries I write. I wouldn’t want a dedicated cozy reader to pick up my books expecting to find recipes or knitting patterns in the back. I don’t want readers who enjoy darker mysteries to avoid my books because of the “traditional” label.

Maybe we need more categories, not fewer. Cozy is a time-honored label and shouldn’t be abandoned, and readers are directed toward their favorite type of cozy with the kind of taglines Berkley uses: a coffee shop mystery, a cheese shop mystery, etc. Sensitive readers won’t get any unpleasant surprises when they sit down with one of these books. It’s trickier to label the darker mysteries, the stories with an edge that lean toward suspense but don’t have the degree of violence and gore found in thrillers. I place my second and third books in that category.

I still consider my first published novel, The Heat of the Moon, psychological suspense. I was surprised when it was nominated for an Agatha Award, and shocked when it won, but I wasn’t about to refuse the honor on the grounds that my book wasn’t a traditional mystery. For that matter, it isn’t a murder mystery either, but Rachel, my protagonist, does solve a mystery, so I don’t feel guilty about that teapot sitting on a nearby shelf as I write this.

When my second book, Disturbing the Dead, came out, some reviewers called it suspense, others called it a thriller. I was interviewed about it by the International Thriller Writers newsletter (fantastic free publicity for which I am grateful). But I thought of DTD, and still do, as a traditional mystery.

MY third book, Broken Places, out next month, is also a traditional mystery. But like DTD, it has little in common with cozies. The small community where my characters live may be in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, but it’s not the quaint, picture-postcard setting found in so many cozies. My fictional county has its wealthy citizens and its middle-class, but it also has poverty, ignorance, meth addicts, and racism. Everybody knows everybody else, but that familiarity is as likely to breed hostility as goodwill. Relationships are complex, with more hidden threads than you’re likely to find in cozies.

If editors are claiming the term “traditional mystery” for books-formerly-known-as-cozies, how do I label my novels to set them apart?

After my editor read the manuscript of Disturbing the Dead, she called it a gothic. That startled me at the time. However, when a Publishers Weekly reviewer described it as “a lethal gothic drama” I began to see that the label fit. Now, with Broken Places, I’m comfortable with the idea that I write gothic mysteries.

And what elements distinguish a gothic mystery? This type of book has often been set in the past, with a female protagonist who is in danger, but in its modern form neither element is required. John Hart and Thomas H. Cook write gothic mysteries, set in the present or near past and featuring male lead characters. What’s always required is a sense of dread and growing menace. In this respect, The Heat of the Moon could be labeled gothic too — it has a lot in common with Du Maurier’s Rebecca, a classic gothic (yes, I thought of Mrs. Danvers when I created Rachel’s mother) that is labeled these days as romantic suspense.

Tangled relationships and dysfunctional families, long-buried secrets, lots of twists and surprises — you’ll find all of these in gothic mysteries. That’s the kind of book I enjoy reading and the kind I enjoy writing. It may well be the only kind I’m capable of writing. I suspect that if I set out to create a light, humorous mystery, it would go dark on me by page 10 despite my best efforts. I can’t help it. Broken Places includes a scene with Rachel and a goat that would be hilarious if Donna Andrews had written it, and I intended it to be comic relief, but I think it feels more threatening than anything else.

So: I am an author of modern gothic mysteries. I can live with that label.

Genre Identity Confusion

Sandra Parshall

You’d think writers, of all people, would be able to define what it is they’re writing. In the crime fiction world, though, we have so many subgenres and offshoots and blendings that even the authors are confused at times.

Is it “traditional” or is it “cozy” – or are the two terms interchangeable? Is it woo woo, with a psychic sleuth? Or chick lit, with a man-crazy heroine? Is it a pet cozy with talking and crime-solving cats and dogs? Is it a culinary mystery, with recipes and entertaining tips thrown in among the bodies? A knitting cozy, a bookseller cozy, a scrapbooking cozy? The variations are endless. The traditional/cozy label usually applies to an amateur sleuth story, but even mysteries featuring police detectives may be called cozies if the tone and content are mild enough. M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series is a good example.

I was surprised when The Heat of the Moon was nominated for an Agatha Award, and even more startled when it won, because I had always thought the book was psychological suspense – and while it has plenty of domestic malice, there’s nothing “cozy” about it. I am told, though, that it meets the criteria for traditional mystery, so I tend to think traditional and cozy are different subgenres.

Procedural mysteries occupy their own category, and these days the label covers not only novels featuring police detectives and FBI agents but also investigative journalists and prosecuting attorneys. I was a little startled the first time I read a review that described a book as a “journalist procedural” but I’ve grown used to it.

The polar opposite of the cozy is noir mystery. As the name suggests, this kind of story is dark in every way and takes a bleak attitude toward humanity and the world. A happy ending should never be expected. But it’s still a mystery: a crime has been committed and a sleuth sets out to solve it.

If it’s not a straight mystery, is it “suspense” or is it a “thriller” – and once you’ve decided that, which sub-subgenre does it fall into? Romantic suspense? Psychological suspense? A psychic, political, international, medical, legal or eco thriller? The ever-popular gory-beyond-belief serial killer thriller? Or perhaps it’s a supernatural thriller, which until recently would have been labeled horror and given no space whatever under the crime fiction umbrella.

I’ve always believed that a mystery was a story driven by the effort to solve a crime, and a thriller was driven by danger and the effort to prevent something awful from happening. But the old definitions don’t hold up anymore. Many authors now borrow elements from two or three subgenres and combine them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in a single book.

Everyone seems to be clambering onto the suspense/thriller bandwagon. Look at the bestseller lists and you’ll see why: thrillers and suspense novels are the top sellers in crime fiction. Books that once would have been labeled police procedural mysteries now appear with “A Novel of Suspense” on the cover below the title – even if the stories are clearly mysteries, with detectives plodding through interviews and gathering clues and eventually catching the killer. That’s just false advertising and it probably irritates a lot of readers. What we see more often these days are traditional mysteries being amped up with additional murders (remember when one murder was enough to drive a whole book?), threats to the protagonists, crude language, and a dash of sex.

What’s happening here? Television and films are, undeniably, influencing the way novels are written. Some readers flee from the violent, fast-paced content of movies and TV shows and seek refuge in super-cozy books with cats that solve crimes and murders that rarely leave a bloodstain, much less a lingering nasty odor. But many more readers seem to want novels to keep up with filmed entertainment. More forensic evidence, please: we see it on CSI, and we’ve begun to believe no crime story is complete without a generous dose of it. More blood and agony: we’ve watched The Sopranos and we know people are seldom murdered gently.

I’m not complaining. I can enjoy a talking, crime-solving cat occasionally – although I am profoundly grateful that my own Emma and Gabriel can’t talk and have no interest in the activities of humans beyond our talent for opening cans -- but on the whole I think the trend toward realism is a good thing. The role of forensics in solving real killings is less important than TV would have us believe, but murder is a brutal, world-altering act and I appreciate writers who acknowledge that. Blood on the page serves as a reality check.

Cozies will probably always have a place on the bookshelf for readers seeking escape and relaxation, but people are so aware of crime these days, they see so much of it on the news and in entertainment, that non-cozy novelists will inevitably be forced to portray it realistically in fiction. At the same time, the fast pace of movies and TV pushes novelists to provide the same quick shocks and thrills to readers.

At some point we may have to drop most of the confusing labels on crime fiction and use only two: cozy mystery and... what? Suspense? Thriller? Some completely new term? What will we call our books when all the barriers between subgenres have come down?

POP QUIZ! Quickly – don’t stop to mull it over – how would you label these books?

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy

City of Bones by Michael Connelly