Do Horror and Crime Go Together?

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From Crime Reads:

Only a couple of decades ago, American crime author Bill Crider, writing in the Mystery Readers’ Journal, described cross-genre writing as “something it’s OK to do in the privacy of your own home, but you wouldn’t want the neighbors to know about it.” He meant it as a joke, acknowledging a prejudice that was already dying, but he was old enough to have lived through an era when straddling genres was a risky strategy—something that made it harder to market a writer’s work, and therefore justified leaving said writer in the desolate limbo of the slush pile.

Today, all genres are promiscuous, and none more so than the mystery thriller. Crider himself wrote a number of mysteries set in the old west, which is how we know he was joking with that comment. Elsewhere, historical mysteries (Roman, medieval, ancient Egyptian, Byzantine, Regency, Victorian et al.) have become an industry in themselves. Mysteries have happily swapped DNA with science fiction, horror, comedy, romance and (of course) literary fiction. And the Harry Potter novels, which rank very high among the bestselling fiction titles of all time, are mystery novels every bit as much as they are fantasies.

But some crossovers are an easier fit than others. There’s a good reason why historical mysteries have been so very successful and so very ubiquitous. The historical setting provides a whole range of real-world events to be used as enthralling backdrop. It allows writers to re-invent the role of detective, giving their protagonists a background in surgery, herbalism, psychology, the priesthood or the civil service that turns out to be unexpectedly useful in solving crimes. And by rolling back technology it makes room for mysteries that would be solved in a second if the detective had access to modern methods. So the historical detective very quickly became a genre staple. William of Baskerville led the charge, in Umberto Eco’s wonderful The Name of the Rose, but he was soon joined by Marcus Didius Falco, Judge Dee, Brother Cadfael and a small army of lesser luminaries.

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And when horror is paired with mystery, it sometimes seems as though the two genre strands are pulling in precisely opposite directions.

For readers of mystery, a large part of the pleasure they derive from a story comes from the moment or moments when the mystery is explained and a solution presents itself. This means there’s an implicit bargain between writer and reader: the reader suspends disbelief and engages with the story, while the writer guarantees that an explanation will eventually be given, using information already made available and staying within the rules that have been established.

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6 thoughts on “Do Horror and Crime Go Together?”

  1. “Do Horror and Crime Go Together?”

    Not always yes, but not always no.

    The monster is acting in their nature and sees no crime in it.

    There’s no horror in a teenager here in the states drinking/smoking though it be a crime.

    • Depends on what they are smoking. That said, my own emotional baggage makes me about as far to the extreme of finding that plausible for horror as can be. I think it depends on execution.

  2. I love the mashups of sci-fi, mystery and horror — with elements of romance. Often the horror/sci-fi part is focused on figuring out if the macabre deaths in the story were caused by a monstrous alien, and then the heroes figure out what it’s up to. Mystery gives way to thriller when the heroes finally understand what they’re up against, then “race against time” to stop the monster-alien.

    I rarely encounter the sci-fi/ horror/mystery/romance mashup, though. If any of you are into that kind, Pournelle and Niven’s the “Legacy of Heorot,” Peter Hamilton’s “Great North Road,” and the out of print “The Eyes of Light and Darkness” are the ones I enjoyed.

    • Yay, it came out coherent! My desktop motherboard is bricked, and my laptop has gone from mostly dead to coffin-ready. My Kindle Fire makes weird auto corrects. And I have a cold. C’est la vie!

  3. Dorothy L. Sayers put out some classic anthologies of mystery and horror, showing their common roots in Gothic aesthetics of the sublime and terrible.

    And a lot of modern readers complain about how she is getting peanut butter in their chocolate. But I think that is fading among younger readers.

    • Thanks for the tip about Sayers. I’ll look for those anthologies. I can’t relate to those modern readers; I hate putting unnecessary fetters on the imagination.

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