Benjamin Stevenson on the “Gamification” of Crime Fiction

The crime genre is often rebranded with new names. The popularity of “Nordic Noir” followed the success of The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo. Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train led to the “Unreliable Narrator” genre, which then led back to “Fair Play” mysteries. There are also genres inside genres, such as “Locked Room” and “Closed Circle.” The author is currently writing in the “fair-play” mystery genre, where all clues are visible to the reader, allowing them to solve the crime. Agatha Christie is a well-known example of a fair-play mystery writer. The key difference in a fair-play mystery is whether the author is fooling the reader or the characters.

• The crime genre gets a rebrand, a makeover and a fancy new nametag to go with it.
• Nowadays, labelling a book in a bookstore is like building a Tinder profile and listing all your features: “6ft open-door vampire romance seeks blue-eyed no-gore psych-thriller.”
• Right now, I’m writing in what is called “fair-play” mysteries. That is, a murder mystery where all of the clues are laid out fairly and in plain sight for the reader.

Source: Crime Reads  | 
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