Gray Lady, Lady Gray by J.T. Ellison

Author:J.T. Ellison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Two Tales Press

An Essay by J.T. Ellison

Why Crime Fiction Matters to Me

I know that sounds a bit like “What I Did On My Summer Vacation,” but bear with me.

I have always loved crime stories—real or imagined. I don’t think I’m alone, either. Some of the most successful series on television now are crime oriented. My favorites are the original CSI, Criminal Minds, and the gloriously creepy Dexter. I watch Forensic Files, all the true crime shows, eat up the drama and fear and terrible truths that exist in our world. So what is the fascination? Why am I drawn to murder and mayhem?

In a word: heroes. But let me come back to that.

I’ve tried to pinpoint the reason I decided to write crime fiction, and honestly can’t put my finger on a single impetus. Was it because of my childhood friend, who was being abused and committed suicide when we were in our late teens? Was it the disappearance of a friend from college—Dail Dinwidde—who went missing in 1992, quite literally without a trace? Was it an influence from the books I gobbled up—Patterson, at the beginning, Tami Hoag, Patricia Cornwell?

Or did I always have a mysterious bent? I’ve always been a writer—especially the terrible, should-be-burned pieces I did in college. I went back and looked at some of them, and was surprised to see a note from my thesis advisor. I’d written what I thought was a masterpiece of a story, and her comment was, “Reads too much like B-grade detective fiction.” Hmm. And what, exactly, is wrong with B-grade detective fiction?

But a budding writer who is writing for academia needs to be literary. You must plan your world around where you’ll be getting your MFA, and fifteen years ago, when I graduated, crime fiction was most certainly not on the menu for a writer hoping for a distinguished career in literature.

I’ve always found that amusing, because all of the best literary stories swirl around the commission of a crime. Crimes of the heart, crimes against nature, crimes against a woman or child, a brother or sister, a mother or father, a neighbor. Look at Alice Sebold’s THE LOVELY BONES. It’s a perfect example of a literary novel that centers around a crime.

I think the big difference between literary and crime fiction lies in the treatment. In literary books, you don’t have the pulsing pace, a race against the clock to save humanity, a killer to get off the streets. Lit fic has a more sedate pace. It’s often an examination of how a crime affects the characters rather than how to stop the crime from happening, or happening again. And sometimes, there is no conclusion. And that’s just fine.

But in crime fiction, the battles of good and evil play themselves out on the page, ripe for the

reader’s imagination to overflow. There is an innate understanding that the white hats will stop the black hats. You know what you’re getting—a breathless journey with a cast of characters who would lay down their lives to save the innocent.

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