Wednesday, October 24, 2007

All Over the Map

Even as our survey of favorite Elmore Leonard novels begins, the social-networking site Crimespace shuts down its weeklong poll to determine readers’ favorite subgenres of crime and mystery fiction. After a solid 100 votes were cast, site creator Daniel Hatadi announced that “Police procedurals are the clear winner among those Crimespace members that took the time to click twice with their mouse and register a vote. With suspense coming in as a fairly close second, I was surprised to find that no one voted for erotica, seeing as there is so much romantic suspense out there, both in publishing, and in nightclubs and bars.”

Interestingly, cozy and hard-boiled fiction tie for third place, demonstrating the breadth of this genre; and both private-eye novels and historical crime fiction run ahead of serial-killer tales and “criminal novels” (I can only assume that latter means stories in which a malefactor is the protagonist). Medical/forensic works and legal thrillers rank at the bottom of the pile along with erotic mysteries--which can’t be very encouraging to all those over-analytical newbies who thought their key to publishing success was to pen stories in which the star is a nymphomaniac crime-scene investigator turned lawyer.

1 comment:

Graham Powell said...

...seeing as there is so much romantic suspense out there... in nightclubs and bars.

Apparently Daniel is not married.