--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Zeltserman"
<dz@...> wrote:
>
> The fact that this author could've come up with such
an inventive and
> clever idea for a lawsuit should've invalidated the
premise of her
> suit!
>
> In a way she's right--genre novels are exactly
that--they're
> formulaic and follow accepted conventions. But not
all crime novels
> are genre novels--quite a few actually break out of
the mold-
The idea that there is a "formula" for crime fiction comes
from a false identification of crime fiction with classic PI
fiction. The bottle in the drawer, the shabby office, the
outsider who wants to find the truth no matter what, etc. But
if you look at crime fiction, it can encompass practically
any situation, any environment (rural, city, the mythological
West, any country, any point of view, as wide a range of
characters as any other type of fiction).
If you make a list of a dozen of the greatest crime novels
and try to find a common formula, you won't find it. What
does Red Harvest have to do with The Day of the Locust,
formulawise? Nothing. What does Leonard's Freaky Deaky have
to do with a Parker novel by Richard Stark or with a Jim
Sallis novel? Nothing.
I regard this distinction between genre fiction and literary
fiction as 99% bullshit, no, 100% bullshit.
Best,
mrt
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