Crime and Punishment

No, let's not examine that daunting heap of pages by Dostoyevsky. Instead, how about I chat about crime and mystery fiction? Those two genres, or sub-genres, depending on how you look at it, are often use interchangeably. But I see them as different (things): the first suggests that crime is involved, but there needn't be a mystery for a crime story to exist; the second intimates that there is indeed a mystery, but there need not necessarily be a crime where there is a mystery. Maybe the salt shaker is missing. The dog knocked it, and it rolled so far underneath the table that nobody noticed it. No crime, but there is a bit of a mystery, right? Bad dog!

As a kid, I gravitated to stories of detection: Freddy the Pig (he was a P.I. in one story), then Encyclopedia Brown, Hardy Boys... and naturally ended up collecting and devouring the Sherlock Holmes series. The youth-oriented stuff was lightweight but the perfect set-up for the greatest sleuth in literature. 

A couple of decades later, a new friend who was practically an expert in crime fiction got me reading Block, Westlake, and Parker, just to name a few authors. I loved seeing things from the criminal perspective, like Bernie Rhodenbarr in Block's burglar stories, and Keller in his Hit Man novels. Troubled good guy Jesse Stone was Parker's best-loved character, coming back and again in a successful series, both in books and TV films.

Then my mother, also always an avid reader, mentioned to me that she had been enjoying a bunch of mystery authors, and she recommended some novels by Grafton, Evanovich, Engel, Francis, and Gorman. I chugged through a bunch of those writers' offerings, then moved on. It was easy to see a predictable formula in so many of those stories,and I found that too many of the characters really grated on my nerves after a while. 

It was imperative that I at least try out some old-school stuff like Chandler (who I loved, especially The Big Sleep) and Hammett (who I did not). Their hard-boiled detectives of the pulp world inspired the crime and noir films of the 40's, 50's and 60's. I must confess I've seen more of those film adaptations than read the original stories.

A bit later, in the mid-to-late 2000's, I discovered Patricia Cornwell (medical crime thrillers), who I still really like. The past few years, I've been reading Michael Connelly... I've read nearly every Detective Bosch novel. And I've dabbled in the works of Robert Harris, Graham Greene, and a bit of Le Carre (his non-spy fiction).

Very recently, I tried some Jo Nesbo, who weaves unusual and fun tales featuring his protagonist Harry Hole (pronounced Holy). Another highly likable brilliant cop with a troubled past. 

Fervent crime and mystery fiction fans devour novels of the genre at a rapid rate. I, on the other hand, steer out of the genre now and then. I like to read non-fiction, like a good bio or autobio, something fascinating in sociology occasionally, humour, a little horror, SF and fantasy, straight-up fiction, even "literature" (Atwood, Homer, and so on). I seem to need the variety. But then I'll steer back to my comfort food - crime.