Why do women read crime fiction?

[wordfactory]

I've been thinking about this a lot.
Women read far more than men full stop. And the two genres that sell the most are romance and crime.
Now romance I kinda get (tho that's a different discussion) but crime?

I'm a crime writer myself and the majority of my readership is female, which always makes me wonder why.

Does anyone have any ideas/theories? Is there any research out there?

Cote - but is that a good thing? In terms of the nomalising of pornography and porn culture, most people around these parts would say no (and I'd agree).

Likewise with the portrayal of violence in both art and the media, it has become more graphic. E.g coverage of murder cases used to be far more circumspect, now we get all the graphic details (particularly when a woman has been murdered) and I would argue that it is not a good thing. Public appetite isn't a good enough reason in of itself IMHO.

IMO, it's definitely NOT a good thing. I would read crime a whole lot more if there weren't so many graphic descriptions of violence. When it comes to sexual violence (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo style) it feels sick, twisted and gratuitous. It reflects reality too much and scares me to be honest.

I would love to know the ratio of female to male victims depicted in crime novels but that would be a humongous data search!

No idea, but I wonder why women watch crime shows... Where women are invariably the victim of a violent/sexually motivated attack. Like CSI, so formulaic.

I was also sickened reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The only crime writing I like is Agatha Christie

I read something about this (though not specifically about women, it was about the appeal of crime fiction in general) and the theory there was that it was about not only order, but also justice prevailing - that there was a strong moral element to it as well because the killer will always be brought to justice. (I think it may have been in a preface to a Dorothy L. Sayers novel).

I do think though that this applies more to old-fashioned murder mysteries, and less to some of the more modern "horror/crime" type (serial killers etc), especially those where the trend is to have some hint at the end that the killer hasn't actually been caught, or there is another one still out there (also, the really gory ones are verging on torture-porn so would lose a lot of the moral element there I reckon!).

I think there's an element of that in it for me, also what some other posters said about interesting background (I learned lots about art and theatre from Ngaio Marsh for example), and of course the page-turner element of wanting to solve the puzzle and find out whodunnit!

But not sure any of these apply to women any more than to men tbh...

Goth - Not sure what you are talking about here. We were talking about violence in crime books, not porn. And this violence in crime books has male victims as well as female victims, so it can't very well be considered "ill treatment of women packaged for mass entertainment" only. There is also ill treatment of men packaged for mass entertainment.

It is not even just crime fiction. You could say books about PTSD or other psychological problems are packaging sufferers' pain for mass entertainment. In fact, would you say any drama (book or film) is packaging some sort of problem or suffering for mass entertainment?

And re "Is it a good thing?"

Imho, yes, it is a good thing that books and films are more realistic in sexual and violent detail than they were a century ago. When Agatha Christie was born, not a single kiss was yet shown on film. That is the conservative environment she grew up in, and it is hardly surprising that her books are also conservative, featuring no sex or violence. In her time, the reader/viewer was mollycoddled, assumed too fragile to handle the gritty details.

That is no longer the case, and I would say that is a good thing. I happen to very much enjoy books & movies with disturbed characters often on the edge of insanity. (I loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Judging by its international popularity, I dare say that I am not alone in preferring gritty realism.) If things were still as in Christie's days, there would be no Crash, Dead Ringers, or Naked Lunch and that would be a shame. We would still be watching Miss Marple for crime series on TV (eeek!) and that is just an awful fate.

Cote - you spoke of how society has changed, the portrayal of sex and violence in the media being those changes. To me, the increase in acceptability of pornography and violent media are two sides of the same coin and neither have been to the great benefit of women.

You cannot compare crime fiction to a medical textbook, which leads me to my next point, such fiction plays very fast and loose with various diagnosis of mental illness. Most violent criminals are not mentally ill and most people with mental illnesses are not violent. Having a mental illness is demonised enough in our society.

As a crime writer and a feminist, I too would say that the increase in realism is a good thing.
Guns going off and the victim falling painlessly and bloodlessly to the floor a la Christie glamourises and sanitises violence far more I feel.

Think of The Handmaids Tale. Very graphic. Very violent. As ever, it depends very much how the writer deals with the subject matter as to whether the piece is exploitative or not.

jkklpu thank you for your words of advice. But as stewie says, I do not claim to be an expert. But I do claim to have an enqiring mind and an opinion.

That's what editorial pieces are based on, you'll find. They are written by writers noit research analysists.

Books and films are more realistic now than they were a century ago, so now we have Criminal Minds rather than Miss Marple. I can't see how you can say that is a bad thing. Yes, that means more violence and sometimes (not always) sex in crime novels and movies. That is simply because violent crime by definition involves violence. Those of a delicate composition who prefer Miss Marple and yearn for the glory days of Agatha Christie can still watch/read films/books from that era. The rest of us have moved on and can't stand the unrealistic smuggery a la Miss Marple.

I truly don't see what "it hasn't been good for women" has to do with this. Male victims are depicted as often as female victims in crime books and movies. Think of the movie "Seven". A woman's decapitated head was found (but not really shown) in the end, but quite a few men were gruesomely murdered throughout the film. Was this "good for women", then?

Going back to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - yes, she is brutally raped but then comes back for revenge, does the same to the rapist, tattoos him so all other women will know what he has done, then goes out and catches a predator of women, saving the life of the lead male character in the process. If this is not a strong feminist female character, and if this book "hasn't been good for women", then I don't know what you mean by "good for women".

Is it good for women to be portrayed as having lovely little gardens in the suburb and solving crime while knitting and chatting with their neighbors?

It depends on where you draw the line between something that purports to be "gritty realism" and when it becomes a gratuitous depiction/description of violence (especially sexual violence) which then becomes a form of titillation.

Clearly, most of the posters on here enjoy Whodunnits because of the puzzle aspect, the satisfaction of seeing a situation resolved and the baddies brought to book and because the strong female characters hold an appeal. Not because we find the violence implied in a murder to be interesting or exciting. Accurate, maybe, but that's not what I'm looking for in a form of escapism, which for me is what most crime fiction represents.

I do not like watching real life violence in any form - be it in news footage or reading it in the newspapers - it sickens me. So why would I enjoy fictional portrayals of violence? Sure, a Whodunnit implies violence and you could argue that that's almost as bad, but I believe greater exposure to graphic depictions of violence tends to inure people to violence and I don't think that's a good thing.

Mind you, the appetite for consuming (representations of) violence is nothing new. Think of the Roman circuses with their gladiatorial combats and torture of prisoners of war/Christians etc. Bull fighting is still pretty popular in Spain, and has been for hundreds of years. A lot of Shakespeare's plays don't shrink from portraying graphic violence, for example.

Cathartic? Maybe. Titillation? Probably.

And incidentally, the above holds true whether or not women or men are the victims of the violence portrayed. But there's no doubt that a lot of writers/TV shows favour female victims. Because then you have the double titillation of sex as well as violence.

Fiction isn't about gritty realism, though, is it? I don't think dwelling on the more stomach-churning details of a violent crime is particularly moral. If you like that kind of thing, fine, but it's a bit off to pretend it's somehow more worthy than an Agatha Christie.

One thing I did like about Christie was her viewpoint that solving the crime was important to the innocent. I think both Poirot and Miss Marple stressed that it was about lifting the burden of suspicion from the innocent as well as stopping the guilty person.

And, come to think of it, Miss Marple subverted expectations of little old unmarried ladies. Pointed out that they could be far cleverer than the men who are treated as important people.

(I mean, even in books/films/theatre that claims gritty realism, it's not actually true - it's all artifice.)

It is artifice of course, and yet there has to be sufficent credibility for the reader to suspend their belief for the duration.

I think pretending that death is not violent, or painful or bloody lacks that credibilty. It almost demeans it.

As a reader and as a writer I want to know that the violence matters. And for that I need a certain amount of detail. How much detail is of course personal.

I don't think there's any need to pretend that a violent death isn't violent, but that doesn't mean someone's demise has to be described in minute detail either.

I understand that you don't want to sanitise a violent death, but neither is it necessary to give every graphic detail. I find that the details of a death in a Whodunnit often come out as the plot unfolds anyway as the investigation is carried out. I don't think even Miss Marple pretended deaths weren't violent or painful.

Inmaculada - exactly. Is there anyone out there who thinks that being strangled/stabbed/bludgeoned is like getting fairy kisses?

With sexual crimes, do we need rape to be graphically depicted to understand the horror of it?

To suggest we do infantilises the reader by suggesting we need everything spelt out to us.

There are many classics within the crime genre (printed and on screen) that managed to be genuinely gripping/frightening without the gore, to just say "oh they were more prudish back then" misses the point.

Also, I think we seem to be having writers trying to outdo each other in terms of gore and nastiness, which is hardly the pinnacle of artistic endeavour.

Did Bridsong have to spell out the sheer horror of World War One? Did The Hnadmaid's Tale have to describe the sex so vividly?

Not at all. But the stories are the stronger for it I think. And millions of readers appear to agree.

Wordfactory - the "but it's popular" argument is a very poor one. By that argument Bridget Jones was a fantastic portrayal of womenhood who we have no reason to criticise. Loads of popular literature is very problematic in terms of how it portrays women.

Also, we were talking about crime fiction, the two books you've mentioned are not from that genre.

Wordfactory - the "but it's popular" argument is a very poor one. By that argument Bridget Jones was a fantastic portrayal of womenhood who we have no reason to criticise. Loads of popular literature is very problematic in terms of how it portrays women.

Also, we were talking about crime fiction, the two books you've mentioned are not from that genre.

Well I assumed since you clearly dodn't like the genre that referencing crime books would be problematic.

No, if you read up thread, I said that I was a big fan of the detective genre, starting from reading Sue Grafton when I was younger.

I love Chandler, Stella Duffy's detective books, The Jackson Brodie mysteries, Number 1 Ladies Detective agency and many more.

Not liking gore by numbers toss does not equate to not liking crime fiction.

No, if you read up thread, I said that I was a big fan of the detective genre, starting from reading Sue Grafton when I was younger.

I love Chandler, Stella Duffy's detective books, The Jackson Brodie mysteries, Number 1 Ladies Detective agency and many more.

Not liking gore by numbers toss does not equate to not liking crime fiction.

I love it - I guess it brings a bit of danger to life (MUCH more exciting than loading the washing machine...), well written, puzzle solving, resolution by the end - pass me another one kwik...