Well, both those novels I mentioned (which are both brilliant in very different ways, if you haven't read them) are literary fiction, rather than 'crime novels' even though they're about murders.
Literary fiction is difficult to define apart from by saying 'not genre fiction' (though of course there are lots of boundary-blurring novels).
Literary novels are often less plot-driven, less adherent to the usual 'formula' of a detective /mystery/romance/sci-fi novel, more concerned with the prose. The characters may be far more important than the plot. I mean, those are gross generalisations, obviously.
Think of a police procedural like the Inspector Morse series (murder, investigation, detective finally solving the crime -- plot-based, keeping the reader guessing about the murderer's identity, red herrings, hopefully surprising you with the climax).
Then think of a literary novel I've just finished, Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, which I was talking about on another thread. It's experimental in its style (the entire novel is written in one single sentence) and is the stream of consciousness of a dead man sitting at a table thinking about his life. There's no particular plottiness -- he's just thinking about his wife and children and his past. It's beautiful, and won a major award, but his agent won't have sold it on the basis of it being 'high-concept' or 'commercial'! 