: please explain the difference between "mystery" novels as
opposed to
: "crime fiction" : I am new and I am not a native speaker ,
so I have
: a hard time sometimes to tag along ....
Please don't needlessly quote entire messages in
replies.
Mystery novels, I would say, are novels where there's a crime
(usually
a murder) and then the detective sets out to find the
killer.
Nowadays we see crime novels more often, where the lead
character
doesn't have to be a detective, and while there's a mystery
that has
to be solved - or at least a crime that's been committed or
is being
planned - the reader is put into a seedy underworld full of
shady
characters and stuff just happens. The crime is more
important than
the solution of the mystery. Raymond Chandler did mysteries,
mostly,
but George V. Higgins and Elmore Leonard do crime
novels.
This came off kind of vague, but maybe someone else has the
same idea
and can clarify.
Bill
P.S. "Homicide" and Frank and Joe really aren't germane to
the list.
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task."
-- "Uncle" Oswald Hendryks Cornelius
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