Carnival of the Criminal Minds, No. the Last

This is the 32nd Carnival – a traveling celebration of crime fiction blogging that has been going on since the fall of 2007. They say all good things must come to an end. (I don’t know why – dark chocolate should never come to an end.) But it seems time to strike the big top, break down the roller coaster, and shut off the lights. It’s getting harder to find new hosts, I hate to keep imposing on the same contributors, and a truly wonderful substitute has come along that . . . well, I’ll tell you about that later.(This is how crafty writers build suspense.)

After its launch at Karen Chisholm’s blog, part of the wondrous AustCrimeFiction site  in 2007, it has made its way around the world a couple of times. As you can see from the map, we’ve been all over. And that was largely my goal – to discover interesting bloggers who could introduce us to even more bloggers who could expand our mysterious universe.

Okay, we didn’t really travel to Mongolia, but Michael Walters did show us around remotest Manchester. And I don’t really live in Scandinavia, though we do eat lutefisk in Minnesota. Does that count?

Every carnival has been different. Some have focused on film or on dead guys, others on specific settings such as the Australian Outback, or on cataloging various holidays. They’ve ranged from the deeply strange, to a veritable freak show. What would we have done without Mekon who has a brain the size of a (very green) planet or without Tillie of Palace Amusements?

I’ll always treasure the classic posts that Bernd preserved in his museum, and the rousing call to arms (or keyboards, anyway) when Declan Burke pondered the purpose of blogging and the role that thoughful commentary can play in demanding the best from a genre that gets short shrift from the mainstream press.I can’t resist quoting him at length because, well, it may be all fun and games, but really – isn’t this what we’re all striving for?

I am not saying that crime / mystery fiction should strive to be taken seriously by the literary establishment. They do what they do, and good luck to them; my personal reading habits involve quite a lot of what would be considered literary fiction, and I have no beef with what they do or how they do it. By the same token, and speaking only for myself, the last thing I need or want is a pat on the head from the literary establishment. What I AM saying is that the critical work on crime fiction needs to develop of and through its own metier, that the Johnsons of the crime / mystery community require their Boswells, and that I believe heart and soul that crime / mystery fiction needs and deserves the kind of widespread, top-to-bottom critical work that would in turn inspire the writers to strive towards ever-higher standards of work. . . . here’s the thing – crime / mystery fiction is the most popular genre on the planet, it is inarguably the most relevant and important fiction out there, and that’s why I believe it deserves more. It deserves more from me, certainly, than reviews that run along the lines of, “This is a great book because I liked it and I liked it because it’s a great book.” It deserves the kind of dynamic, rigorous, extensive and constantly evolving critical work that the interweb is perfectly placed to provide, and it deserves to be critiqued, justified and praised not by the kind of commentator who will suggest that a particular novel has (koff) ‘transcended the genre’, but by those who understand that good crime / mystery fiction is simultaneously scourge and balm, panacea and drug, a fiction for the world we live in that is also its truth.

It’s not that there isn’t plenty to talk about. Blogs are full of interviews and book reviews and facinating challenges and interesting cover art. And if blogs aren’t enough for you, Mack offers a tour of the crime scene in Second Life. There’s no shortage of material. But here’s the thing – a 24/7 carnival has set up shop, a veritable Coney Island of the Criminal Minds. Just toddle over to FriendFeed and join the Crime and Mystery Fiction room. There you’ll find a constant stream of links, with chances to be part of an ongoing conversation with crime fiction critics and fans from all over. And it seems much more spontaneous and less of an imposition than the Carnival. I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s had its day.

Meanwhile, thanks to all the contributors who have hosted the carnival, many of you more than once.You get to go home with all the stuffed animals and more cotton candy than you can eat.

• Karen Chisholm of AustCrime
• J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet
• Julia Buckley of Mysterious Musings
• Mary Saums of Femmes Fatales
• Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays
• The Material Witness
• The BookBitch
• Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders
• Crimespot
• B.V. Lawson of In Reference to Murder
• The Jungle Red Writers
• Sharon Wheeler of Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room
• Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine
• Bernd Kochanowski at Internationale Krimis
• Sandra Ruttan of On Life and Other Inconveniences
• Martin Edwards of at Do You Write Under Your Own Name?
• Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise
• Damien at Crime Down Under
• Anthony Neil Smith at Crimedog One’s Virtual Dive Bar
• Brian Lindenmuth at Observations from the Balcony
• Michael Walters’ Shadow Walker Blog
• Gerard Brennan at Crime Scene NI
• Helen at It’s Criminal
• And special thanks to New Zealand author Vanda Symon who offered to host the carnival at her blog, Overkill, just as I was dismantling the roller coaster.

See you all around the Interwebs. And maybe we’ll bump into each other at FriendFeed.

photo courtesy of j.reed

being genre-ous

Declan Burke, whose latest book The Big O is being released right about now in the US (we’re so often the last kids on the block to read the best things coming out of Europe, though at least this time the US publisher didn’t decide to change the title) recently hosted the Carnival of the Criminal Minds at his blog, Crime Always Pays. Rather than provide the usual feast of links – something that’s hard to top after Brian Lindenmuth hosted the Carnival – he raised a serious question.

Do blogs have a particular role to play in fostering thoughtful critical discussion of a genre that has been typically neglected by mainstream media? Can we do better than the handful of short plot recaps that stand for book reviews in a book review market that is contracting daily? Can bloggers bring out the best in the genre? He thinks we can.

I believe heart and soul that crime / mystery fiction needs and deserves the kind of widespread, top-to-bottom critical work that would in turn inspire the writers to strive towards ever-higher standards of work.

The genre has not only been neglected by traditional channels, it’s often reviewed by people who are ignorant of the genre, who are shocked, shocked to find good writing. You know this is the case when a reviewer is gobsmacked by a book that “transcends the genre” because it’s well-constructed, has fully-developed characters, and is well-written – in other words, it’s a good work of crime fiction, like a great many books published in this genre. It’s only if you’re assuming James Patterson represents the genre that it’s being transcended. Dec goes on to say -

here’s the thing – crime / mystery fiction is the most popular genre on the planet, it is inarguably the most relevant and important fiction out there, and that’s why I believe it deserves more . . . It deserves the kind of dynamic, rigorous, extensive and constantly evolving critical work that the interweb is perfectly placed to provide, and it deserves to be critiqued, justified and praised not by the kind of commentator who will suggest that a particular novel has (koff) ‘transcended the genre’, but by those who understand that good crime / mystery fiction is simultaneously scourge and balm, panacea and drug, a fiction for the world we live in that is also its truth.

Wow.

It’s interesting that a number of traditional venues for book criticism are cutting their coverage and trying to make up for it by taking to the web. I’m not sure what that means, other than that they think they can save money on both newsprint and staff. The Monreal Gazette is the latest to shrink their coverage and call it an improvement.

It’s also interesting how defensive people get when a mainstream critic says a book is more than a mystery. Yes, it’s tiresome to hear people who haven’t read much in the genre say something has transcended it – how would you know if you haven’t read much of it? – but Janet Maslin saying Dennis Lehane’s newest book is a big step beyond his crime fiction is not to say his other books are dreck that only idiots would read. She seemed to me to be saying his 700-page epic is ambitious in ways his other books were not. Quite often any perceived critique of the genre is met by bristling anger and assertions that literary fiction is navel-gazing plotless crap that nobody wants to read, anyway. And that’s just as silly as declaring all genre fiction mediocre.

We have the means to celebrate the best in a genre, and we certainly have the motive, as Dec stated it above – it matters to us. Those of us who know the genre best need to give it our best critical shot. I’d say that the critical lens that Dec has turned on Irish crime fiction in his blog posts at The Rap Sheet this week are a fine example.

Or take a look at Material Witness. It’s one of several blogs that, when it comes to traditional book reviewing, easily . . . er, dare I say it? . . . transcend the genre.

linkout

Catching up on a few links . . .

Marshal Zeringue, the genius behind the wonderful Campaign for the American Reader, invited me to take the 99 Page Test. It turns out that Ford Maddox Ford was right.

January Magazine (more required reading for the bookaholic) published a snapshot of me.

Sandra Ruttan has just hosted the Carnival of the Criminal Minds.

And I have a new post up on Free Exchange on Campus about challenges, censorship, and libraries.

this lovely web courtesy of karpati

carnival launch!

The Carnival has begun. Karen, who documents crime fiction in Australia and New Zealand, is hosting Carnival of the Criminal Minds No. 1 at her blog telling us what’s up down under. I’m pleased that US publishers are finally realizing we’re interested in other parts of the world here and are finally publishing the likes of Peter Temple and Garry Disher. I’m really looking forward to Adrian Hyland’s Diamond Dove (though I gather for the US edition it’s getting a name change and features a cover with a bird that looks not at all like a diamond dove but more like that ugly bird over the door of the US embassy in London, which suggests we’re still being protected from the scary news that the entire world is not Just Like Us).

Next up – The Rap Sheet will host the carnival round about October 15th, to be followed by others.

This just in – nice post about the carnival over at The Rap Sheet!