The crime fiction genre encompasses a handful of sub-genres: whodunnits, noir, legal, historical, cozy, police procedural, amateur sleuth. We all know what these are. But what is a genre? You can read easy answers on the web, but theorists still don’t agree. Is it a set of rules for writers? Is it a game, like tennis, leaving each author to be a player who tries to follow the rules, sometimes fails, sometimes cheats? Or should we conceptualize it as a living entity, with species like chivalric romance or epic poetry that went extinct, while other species like science fiction and westerns interbreed to produce a successful hybrid offspring called
Are Crime Fiction Genres Going Hybrid?
Are Crime Fiction Genres Going Hybrid?
Are Crime Fiction Genres Going Hybrid?
The crime fiction genre encompasses a handful of sub-genres: whodunnits, noir, legal, historical, cozy, police procedural, amateur sleuth. We all know what these are. But what is a genre? You can read easy answers on the web, but theorists still don’t agree. Is it a set of rules for writers? Is it a game, like tennis, leaving each author to be a player who tries to follow the rules, sometimes fails, sometimes cheats? Or should we conceptualize it as a living entity, with species like chivalric romance or epic poetry that went extinct, while other species like science fiction and westerns interbreed to produce a successful hybrid offspring called