Crime Beat: Why do we read crime fiction?
I have a dark habit. It’s something which people are often surprised to learn about me. They thought I was such an innocent, bright and shiny young thing. It’s my private pleasure but sometimes I also choose to flaunt it with others, like you, who share a passion for the violence, the bloodshed, the betrayal and the chase. I don’t know why I do it and I can’t stop. Crime fiction. Why are we hooked?
I find the fact that we South Africans are drawn to read and write crime fiction bewildering. We are a nation already saturated with crime in reality: our country has some of the highest murder, rape and robbery statistics in the world and yet choose to read about these subjects in our spare time! Most Sunday mornings, I can only handle the entertainment section of the newspaper because the front page stories are so violent, so unthinkably cruel or so blood-boilingly frustrating and tragic, yet on a Sunday afternoon I love to snuggle up on the couch by the fire read about murder, robbery and betrayal.
If the genre merely reflected the crime around us like the media attempts to do, we would surely not be drawn to read it because we live in a culture that is already filled with fear and has become somewhat desensitized to the crime around it in an attempt to cope. What is the genre giving us that keeps us coming back for more? Is it indulgence? Does it capture something about our society that other genres can’t? Why do we find it so satisfying?
One of my favourite quotes about the genre comes from the formidable tartan noir writer, Ian Rankin. In an article entitled “Why Crime Fiction is Good for You”, Rankin suggests that, for many people, the draw of crime fiction is its capacity to explore; its ability to allow the reader to conduct their own investigations into themselves. He says: “What interests me is the soul of the crime novel – what it tells us about humanity, what it is capable of discussing. [...] We are all inquisitive and curious animals – crime fiction touches this deep need to both ask questions to get answers”.
This deep human need to question; to investigate our histories, our lives and our societies is reflected in the structure of the crime novel. The crime critic, Dennis Porter, suggests that crime fiction “is a genre committed to an act of recovery, moving forward to move back”. For example, let’s take Roger Smith’s thriller, Mixed Blood. In terms of Porter’s suggestion, the novel is urged forward by Jack Burns’ desire to restore his stable family unit in safely retrieve his kidnapped son as well as, in the backstory, Burns brings his family to Cape Town in an attempt to preserve it through fleeing the United States and his and his wife’s certain imprisonment. For another example, let’s take Margie Orford’s Like Clockwork, where the novel is driven by the search for a kidnapped young girl before she becomes the victim of a serial killer’s murderous work. This drive is coupled with the search for the identity of this serial killer before he stikes again. In investigative crime fiction like this, it’s through the oscillation of the plot from the present investigation to the crime of the past and the world it disrupted and back again that we not only join the characters but conduct our own investigations into who we are and the society we live in.
Let’s get some local opinion on why we read crime fiction. Jassy Mackenzie, believes the Apartheid regime to be a major influence on contemporary South African fiction. In an edition of the South African literary journal, Wordsetc, dedicated entirely to crime fiction, she suggests that “[t]he influence of apartheid on South African writing can be compared to the influence that Hitler and the Nazi regime had on Germany. This had the same lasting repercussions on the culture and society it affected, and the way that everybody involved ended up perceiving themselves. The same thing is happening here in South Africa. Some crime fiction villains have their roots buried in the rotting carcass of apartheid, and some of today’s books are still set in that era”.
I see international and local crime fiction intersecting in the same way that Rankin’s comment concerning the draw of crime fiction as “our need to question and get answers” intersects with Mackenzie’s view that South Africans have been profoundly affected by the Apartheid regime and that this specific historical context has affected how we see ourselves. In this intersection universal human desires have been brought into the very complex space of contemporary South Africa. As human beings, we understand ourselves through our stories as individuals and as a nation. In this way, internationally and locally, writers and readers; characters in the novels as well as myself commenting on the novels all share a common practice of investigating the past to understand the present.
Crime fiction is one way in which South Africans are trying to understand their collective past to shed light on the present. What makes this profound investigation particularly interesting is that it occurs in popular fiction which is easily accessible and which is often regarded as ‘superficial literature’ whose purpose is to merely entertain. Sam Beckbessinger, intervieiwing Margie Orford reckons, “[s]o many literatis believe that a plot-driven book must be an inferior book. But, as an increasing number of readers can attest, the snobs are missing out”.
We’ll crawl further down this rabbit hole next time but into a totally different warren. Next week, I’m going to be returning to foundational South African crime fiction written in the thick of Apartheid. To understand where we are, we must understand where we came from.
My column this week starts to explore the conundrum of crime fiction in this country and offers a few people’s points of view but your input would be valuable. Why not leave a comment below and join the discussion with fellow krimiheads?
