In my last post I asked…
Why do so many of us seem to love books that feature crime? You might want to check it out here, before heading into this one. But in any case, as promised, I want to talk about why crimes usually happen in my own novels. (Check out The Obsession, and The Disappearance.)
Certainly I hope they’ll add a measure of suspense, mystery and narrative drive, but that’s not necessarily why you’ll find them there. Crimes also happen in my novels because I want to deal with life and death issues, because I’m interested in exploring ethical values in real world situations, questions of right and wrong and how we frame them, avoid them, or ultimately answer them, how we deal with a moral dilemma or a conflict of values. Obviously crime provides ready access to all these important themes.
And then there’s the fact that a crime will often offer a quick way to cut to the quick, an effective way to expose our hidden dreams and nightmares, those fears, desires and needs that feed our most powerful emotions.
Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham wrote with great insight about violence. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from him:
In a human being’s life, murder is one of the most crucial, experiment like events that can possibly take place. It reveals the innermost springs of the individual’s life and is a profound self-revelation of character. Far more than any other act, it requires an enormously strong impulse, an overcoming of resistances, a conquering of inhibitions, and a building up of rationalizations. It is invaluable, therefore, for understanding the true texture of human personality and of mental mechanisms in general. It might be truly said: Tell me what kind of murder you could or would commit, and I’ll tell you what kind of a man you are.
Crime often moves characters to extremes…
And it is in that realm that men and women can sometimes reveal their most naked selves. So, yes, crime happens in my novels, and yes, I’m pleased when I feel their occurrence helps me grab and hold the reader. But not, I should add, at the expense of credibility, depth of character and literary value.
I do have a thing about credibility, even as I admit that it can be a tricky concept, heavily influenced by things like the reader’s acuity of perception and breadth of experience. One person’s credible is another’s absurd.
My own feeling is…
Writing thrillers today has become a dicey proposition. The wild popularity of the genre is undeniable, and naturally where popular leads, authors follow. In addition, pushed by the multiplying distractions and shrinking attention spans of our busy society, a writer may feel an ever-increasing need to grab the reader’s interest as quickly as possible and to hold on to it desperately in a world that seems cleverly designed to pry us away from anything and everything. These realities may well lure a thriller writer into story telling that loses any genuine touch with reality, and embraces comic-book extravagance in character, plot and pace.
Of course, I want my books to absorb, entertain and please in some significant way, and I do my best to make that happen, but ultimately whether it does or not will depend on the reader. If what she’s looking for is a wild ride, or he doesn’t really care whether the writer cheats, manipulates and stretches that vital suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, then she/he is probably better off looking elsewhere.
Now if I were still writing True Crime…
Though that’s not what it was called back then, True Crime was where I started, more than 40 years ago now, with the publication of Murder in the Synagogue, my non-fiction account of the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler. As I outline elsewhere on this site, I followed that book with a memoir that was also True Crime, recounting my unusual experience with Murder. When that one found no publisher, and when a top literary agent finally failed to sell the next crime story I had lined up and researched for several months, I stopped writing True Crime.
Lately, though, here in metro Detroit, reports on a number of strange and compelling crimes have caused me to think, “If I were still writing True Crime, that’s one I’d consider.” So occasionally on this Blog, I’ll tell a crime story that has caught my eye. Since most of these tales are still unfolding, they’ll probably come in installments. As always, I’ll look forward to your response.
