On the back of the pending Brit Noir, I spoke to the Bookseller about UK crime: In my days as a bookshop manager – before I earned my crust as a journalist and writer – I was well aware that there was one cherished job in the trade: that of crime fiction buyer. And with that job goes an almost forensic knowledge of the crime genre and its shifting trends. When did domestic noir become the flavour of the month? Ask a crime fiction buyer. Which is why, in trying to keep my credentials as a crime expert burnished, I make sure I stay in touch not just with editors, publishers and authors but with the buyers. The range of contemporary-set crime fiction in the UK is surprisingly broad, given that the geographical parameters of the British Isles and its Celtic neighbours are proscribed compared with the massive canvas of the United States. And the parochial nature of much British crime fiction is precisely what imbues it with its customary sharpness – when murderous secrets confined in British suburban spaces are set free, the result is explosive. Most of the slew of coppers who populate the genre are middle or lower-middle class but sport a bolshiness that suggests working class resentment e.g. Ian Rankin’s Rebus, Mark Billingham’s Thorne, Val McDermid’s profiler Tony Jordan et al. The disdain of the male policeman, however, is generally reserved for his superiors (who are constantly attempting to take him off sensitive cases) or the intransigence of the system he is obliged to deal with. The female equivalent of this archetype is the woman who has achieved a position of authority but who is constantly obliged to prove her worth. Not necessarily in terms of tackling male sexism, although that syndrome persists as a useful shorthand. Lynda La Plante’s Jane Tennison is paramount here. But the state of crime publishing in Britain cannot be regarded in isolation from the phenomenal popularity of the genre on television – very often adaptations from literary sources: Ann Cleeves has two concurrent series running based on her work, “Shetland” and “Vera”. TV versions of the work of the still-popular Agatha Christie are customarily played slightly tongue-in-cheek, though a recent TV adaption of “And Then There Were None” bravely kept the bleak conclusion of the novel. As for Sherlock Holmes on television, the Great Detective’s first name was all that was used in 2011/12 for perhaps the most radical reimagining of Conan Doyle’s master ratiocinator in the BBC TV series, “Sherlock”. Ask any crime buyer in the book trade, and they’ll confirm that the genre is showing absolutely no signs of losing its pole position in the immediate future – unlike the faltering celebrity memoir. And fantasy? A blip. Crime pays – and will continue to do so.
Barry Forshaw’s Brit Noir is published by Oldcastle.
