Marilyn Stasio Reminds US There’s No Crying in Crime Fiction
It began with a memory. A word of advice from an unidentified editor. “Retool your novel into a mystery…that will resolve your plot problems.” Marilyn Stasio was in the audience wondering to herself where such advice might lead. The answer? ‘Babe books.’ According to Stasio’s article ‘A Girl’s Guide to KIlling’ a new subgenre of mystery chick lit is loosed upon the land.
Slim stories. Joke titles. Juicy cover art. A vast merger has occurred at the junction of romance and mystery, cute, fun, sexy, now. There’s no dating in crime fiction, no shopping bags unless carrying the severed head of a philandering heel or nosey neighbor, or studio chief caught in flagrante. Stasio offers as evidence not one, but fourteen examples of the genre’s output. Fourteen.
“Even if you ignore the basically deplorable level of writing…these novels scrupulously follow the basic chick-lit conventions.” Stasio doesn’t exactly grab us by the ears nor does she do the authors in the group much of a favor by leading with Janet Evanovich whose work is decaying faster than rumors of a Republican sex scandal. Still, a two pager in the Sunday Times to unveil any writer’s collective or individual efforts might have been devoted to writing that Stasio admired rather than detested.