Something different?

This is part of a message that I sent to my store's email list this morning. To sign up for Mystery Company updates, visit the store website at www.themysterycompany.com

I'm just back from New York, where I spent two days meeting with publishers and other book industry folks as part of a Sisters in Crime delegation. We had a lot of good conversations and I expect that a lot of interesting new ideas and initiatives will come out of this trip.

But there was one disturbing comment that gives me pause. Referring to categories within a large store, and the way mysteries are now sometimes called thrillers and sometimes shelved in the fiction section, a marketing person at a major publisher talked about how mysteries were out of fashion and said "you don't think you'll find something different in the mystery section."

I was astonished by this comment, which is diametrically opposed to what I believe about this genre.  Unfortunately, she was not the only one to express the feeling that "mysteries" are musty or moribund or even dead.

Part of what's going on is the difficulty of classification -- what is a mystery anyway? -- and what I think is the somewhat futile but vocal effort to divide thrillers from mysteries -- aren't most of the best thrillers mysteries too?  Yes, there are some differences between "mysteries" and "thrillers" but the lines are often so blurry as to be meaningless. The real point is that for many decades, thrillers co-existed quite happily with mysteries under the broader banner of "Mystery." What's going on here is relatively new.

There's nothing wrong with saying that thrillers are "hot" -- something that everyone appears to agree on. But doing so at the expense of the larger, deeper and richer mystery label isn't right. The perception that "mystery is dead" has clearly taken root at highest levels at some pillars of the New York contingent of the publishing business. I think they couldn't be more wrong.

If you're reading this newsletter, I can't image that you share the feeling that the genre is dead.  The vitality of our new releases table is astonishing -- new entries in treasured series (we have signed copies of the new Elizabeth George, for example), cool new writers like Richard Thompson and Tom Schreck, etc.  You know that we offer "something different" every day; you may even have heard me say something I say often: you can read ten mysteries in a row and read ten entirely different books.

Don't believe me? Try Alexander McCall Smith's The Miracle at Speedy Motors, Dan Fesperman's The Amateur Spy, Donna Leon's The Girl of His Dreams, Jane Langton's The Transcendental Murder (new edition of a 1964 classic), Charlaine Harris' From Dead to Worse, Karin Fossum's Black Seconds, Michael Allen Dymmoch's M.I.A., Katherine Hall Page's The Body in the Gallery, Jo Dereske's Index To Murder, Thomas H. Cook's Master of the Delta -- to cite 10 books on the new releases table right now -- and tell me that you're not reading 10 fresh, intriguing, engaging and different books.

We call this store The Mystery Company.  It's a badge we wear proudly.

Comments

[Roxane]

The difference between "thrillers" and "mysteries" does seem a bit specious, and I really can't fathom why the former is considered more "mainstream." I put it down to snobbery. From a marketing standpoint, it seems to be more respectable to be considered a "mainstream" writer than a "genre" writer, and a lot of writers (and their agents) seem keen to escape the "genre" label. And with the big chains, sometimes placement is a matter for negotiation.

Still, I'll take the deft characterizations and often-superior writing of the traditional mystery over the easy sensationalism of the thriller any day of the week. I think that mysteries retain the best elements of the classic novel--a balance of plot, character, setting, mood, and language. For this reason, I find mysteries more memorable than a lot of mainstream fiction--and I do re-read the best ones, even though I know "whodunnit." If your novel is purely character-driven, and your character is just an average Joe, your book will probably be eminently forgettable--and in that sense, many mainstream novels are "all alike." Many of those novels read as though the authors had all attended the same MFA program.

So, publishers can't tell the difference between Lord Peter Wimsey, Sanjo Ichiro, Matthew Shardlake, Gordianus the Finder, Stephanie Plum, and Sherlock Holmes? You wonder how they got into the book business.

[JonJordan]

Do these people look at best seller lists?
9 of the top 16 are by mystery writers.

[neil nyren]

Not all of us, Jim! Some pillars wear the badge proudly, too!

[Debi Watson]

Jim, IMHO this is just a marketing ploy or phase. Like 'new' and 'improved'. Shiny new repackaging but the same stories inside. Remember all the talk about Chick Lit and reshelving? Now a few years later, it's all being shelved in romance again. Unfortunate for the reader we'll spend more time searching for the books, but this too shall pass. Lucky for those of us who have a mystery bookstore to browse and the shelving is alphabetical.

[Dina]

As a marketing professional, this makes me cringe. As an avid book buyer and reader, it makes me want to scream.

The idea that labeling something as genre fiction (particularly mystery) will doom sales is very troubling to me. What really strikes me is that this is entirely contrary to the way that I (and many others) shop for books.

Take for example a typical fiction book. No particular classification, it's just sitting there somewhere in the Fiction section of the bookstore, along with Hemmingway and a ton of other great writers past and present. The chances that I will find this particular book are very slim, even if it meets my criteria as to the type of book that I would enjoy reading. There are simply too many titles with wildly differing styles and plotlines to weed through.

If, on the other hand, I'm browsing through the Mystery section (or even better, The Mystery Company) for books of the style I enjoy, the chances that I will find a particular book are greatly enhanced. If I know I enjoy mysteries, particularly mysteries of a specific time period or style, then I'm much more inclined to browse through a genre section in search of it, simply because my chances of finding what I like are increased.

In my experience, eliminating genres and subgenres has the effect of diminishing browsing. If I'm in the mood for a mystery, or horror, or supernatural romance, etc., I don't want to be looking for hours through a section that I know has at most 1% of the type of book I'm looking for. Eliminating the genre shelving makes readers have to research before they walk in the door, know exactly what book or author they are searching for, and go directly to that area in the fiction section, then leave. If people are like me, they do their research online, and the chances that they will *ever* walk in the door of a bookstore are diminished, when they can just click and buy right online. This is NOT the way to encourage people to shop at brick-and-mortar establishments.

If, on the other hand, a store has properly categorized their selection, I'm more likely to take a chance on other authors or series that I wouldn't otherwise have found. By grouping them together, they become easy to find and thus my chance of buying them increases.

Compounding this problem are the larger bookstore chains (and even used chains) that are eliminating their subgenre categories. Frankly, if I want to read Stephen King or Dean Koontz or Lindsey Davis I don't want to sort through the massive shelves of fiction to find them.

I've stopped shopping at those stores precisely because they are eliminating the ease of browsing within genres. Places like The Mystery Company are a joy to go into because I know I can find what I'm looking for.

And here's an interesting point for those publishers and marketers: Readers of genre fiction are much more likely to get hooked on an author, or series, or subgenre. In fact, genre fiction more than any other type of fiction breeds series that people CAN get hooked on.

Those people buy a book in the series, then another, then another, then branch out to discover similar series and authors in a particlar subgenre (like medieval mystery or paranormal thriller). You simply don't get that kind of dedication in general fiction.

Why in the world would you make it more difficult for genre addicts to find their fix? Why not make it easier for compulsive bookbuyers like me to find authors, both well-known and lesser known?

Marketing to the masses just won't work anymore. Booksellers need to make it easier for people to get hooked on a certain type of book, to cultivate their desire for more of the same. "Fiction" is just too broad of a category to effectively do this.

I'd love to see Jim write an article on this...

[John McFetridge]

To answer the person's question, yes actually, I do expect to find something different in the mystery section. And I do, all the time. Sometimes by different it can simply be a new interpretation on something. Louise Penny springs to mind.

But also there's a whole slew of new writers who end up in mystery (fine by me) even though they don't write series in the strictest sense - though they may have repeating characters, and even though there are no clues or 'mysteries' to follow but also aren't really thrillers. People like Al Guthrie, Victor Gischler and Duane Swierczynski and I guess the father of them all, Elmore Leonard.

I understand editors are always looking for the next big thing - it's kind of their job description - but sometimes the next big thing is just good, solid writing no matter how it's catalogued.

[Kitty Smock]

Gory thrillers, not mysteries, are getting old. There are too many TV shows depicting detailed police autopsies by dysfunctional characters. This has become tedious and carries over into print.

I long for a good brain puzzle that follows interesting and varied people I'd like spending time with.

Well conceived mysteries are timeless, whether they are suspense or not.

[Miriam Guidero]

I am a librarian, and I am seeing more and more of what I would term "mysteries" being catalogued as "fiction." (We have both categories in our library.) I'm not sure what this has to do with book-selling, but there does seem to be a parallel trend. If a book has the word "thriller" on the cover, it will, more often than not, go into "fiction" rather than "mystery." This drives our patrons crazy, because they are looking for mysteries, whether they bleed over into the thriller area or are very traditional in the line of Agatha Christie. This also means that we have books by the same author in both areas. I had one patron yesterday who was so frustrated, walking between the mystery and fiction shelves, that she told me she wished they were all shelved as plain fiction, which would work only if one were looking for a specific writer. Browsers, and I, would have a very hard time with this. I don't have a solution to any of this, but I can tell you that according to our library patrons, the mystery genre is very much alive and well, and they want more.

[Jim Huang]

I appreciate all the comments (here and offlist) that I've received.

I should add something important: while the anti-genre sentiment that I described was common in New York, it was not universal. We did hear from a few folk who believe in and support the mystery genre, such as Neil, and the mystery buyer at Barnes & Noble declared without hesitation that the genre is healthy. (The latter voice was especially reassuring.)

Ultimately, John is right that it's good, solid writing that matters. But categorization is important. As Dina writes, the categories help readers find books they're looking for. Confidence in the integrity of the category allows readers to take chances.