Mystery vs thriller vs suspense vs...

Sandra Parshall

 Many of us who write about murder and mayhem aren’t eager to put neat little labels on our books, and we use the all-inclusive term “crime fiction” more often than any other.

Labels are important to publishers, though, and to readers who want to know in advance what they’re getting, so the debate about the difference between mysteries and thrillers continues. Last week at the Virginia Literary Festival, I was part of a panel that tossed out some old definitions and debated new ones.

We were a diverse group: Katherine Neville (our panel moderator) and Irene Ziegler write what’s called literary thrillers; Brad Parks writes books that combine comedy and mystery with suspense elements; David Robbins writes novels with lots of action and global stakes; and I write books that have been called mysteries, suspense, and thrillers.

A lot of people cling to the old definitions: a mystery is about discovering who committed the crime; a thriller is about trying to prevent something terrible from happening; a mystery has a limited setting and cast and smaller, personal stakes, while a thriller is set on a broad stage and the stakes are national or global. But those simplistic definitions apply to very few books being published now. Yes, cozies are pure mysteries. Some books, such as David Robbins’s war-and-action novels, are pure thrillers. Most of today’s crime fiction, though, blends elements of several subgenres into a new sort of hybrid.

The term “thriller” is widely misused by the marketing people at publishing houses in the hope that it will increase the sales of any book carrying the label. (Not too long ago“A Novel of Suspense” was the favored label for any book that had a crime in it.) I’ve grown used to reading “thrillers” that turn out to be plodding, decidedly unthrilling courtroom dramas in which the story is told not through action but through endless pages of Q&A between witnesses and lawyers. I don’t think publishers are helping themselves or their authors with this kind of mislabeling. 

Readers of crime fiction are more sophisticated and demanding than ever, and if they’re choosing books from the broad selection that lies between cozies and pure action thrillers, they expect enough suspense to hold their attention, and they want fully developed characters they can love and worry about. “Tension on every page” has become a mantra among crime fiction authors, whether they’re writing about police investigations or a woman trying to escape a stalker. Forget about long passages of witty dialogue or beautiful description. Keep the plot moving or you’ll lose readers who have been trained to be impatient by the brief, punchy scenes on TV shows.

My personal reading preferences don’t run to stories in which the fate of the world is at stake. I’m more readily engaged by a single compelling character whose survival – physical or psychological – is threatened. The most engrossing book I’ve read in recent memory was Before I Go to Sleep, a stunning first novel by S.J. Watson, which is told entirely through the viewpoint of a woman who has lost her memory and gradually comes to suspect that her whole life is a lie. The book is called a thriller. It’s also a mystery. It is “literary” in the sense that’s it’s beautifully written and  insightful. And it’s loaded with almost unbearable suspense. Yet I’m sure readers who prefer a lot of action would find it slow and dull and would feel misled by the thriller label.

The labels won’t go away, because publishers think they need them, but I believe they’ve become useless to many readers. If you’re familiar with an author’s work, you know what to expect and will disregard the label in any case. If the writer is new to you, look at the story summary and read a few pages to get a sense of the book’s tone. Don’t avoid a book because it’s labeled a thriller and you “never read thrillers” – meaning you don’t like books about vast conspiracies or government intrigue. Chances are the jacket copy and a quick read of a few pages will reveal the novel to be a hybrid, a mystery/suspense/thriller story. In other words, crime fiction.

Genre Identity Confusion

Sandra Parshall

You’d think writers, of all people, would be able to define what it is they’re writing. In the crime fiction world, though, we have so many subgenres and offshoots and blendings that even the authors are confused at times.

Is it “traditional” or is it “cozy” – or are the two terms interchangeable? Is it woo woo, with a psychic sleuth? Or chick lit, with a man-crazy heroine? Is it a pet cozy with talking and crime-solving cats and dogs? Is it a culinary mystery, with recipes and entertaining tips thrown in among the bodies? A knitting cozy, a bookseller cozy, a scrapbooking cozy? The variations are endless. The traditional/cozy label usually applies to an amateur sleuth story, but even mysteries featuring police detectives may be called cozies if the tone and content are mild enough. M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series is a good example.

I was surprised when The Heat of the Moon was nominated for an Agatha Award, and even more startled when it won, because I had always thought the book was psychological suspense – and while it has plenty of domestic malice, there’s nothing “cozy” about it. I am told, though, that it meets the criteria for traditional mystery, so I tend to think traditional and cozy are different subgenres.

Procedural mysteries occupy their own category, and these days the label covers not only novels featuring police detectives and FBI agents but also investigative journalists and prosecuting attorneys. I was a little startled the first time I read a review that described a book as a “journalist procedural” but I’ve grown used to it.

The polar opposite of the cozy is noir mystery. As the name suggests, this kind of story is dark in every way and takes a bleak attitude toward humanity and the world. A happy ending should never be expected. But it’s still a mystery: a crime has been committed and a sleuth sets out to solve it.

If it’s not a straight mystery, is it “suspense” or is it a “thriller” – and once you’ve decided that, which sub-subgenre does it fall into? Romantic suspense? Psychological suspense? A psychic, political, international, medical, legal or eco thriller? The ever-popular gory-beyond-belief serial killer thriller? Or perhaps it’s a supernatural thriller, which until recently would have been labeled horror and given no space whatever under the crime fiction umbrella.

I’ve always believed that a mystery was a story driven by the effort to solve a crime, and a thriller was driven by danger and the effort to prevent something awful from happening. But the old definitions don’t hold up anymore. Many authors now borrow elements from two or three subgenres and combine them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in a single book.

Everyone seems to be clambering onto the suspense/thriller bandwagon. Look at the bestseller lists and you’ll see why: thrillers and suspense novels are the top sellers in crime fiction. Books that once would have been labeled police procedural mysteries now appear with “A Novel of Suspense” on the cover below the title – even if the stories are clearly mysteries, with detectives plodding through interviews and gathering clues and eventually catching the killer. That’s just false advertising and it probably irritates a lot of readers. What we see more often these days are traditional mysteries being amped up with additional murders (remember when one murder was enough to drive a whole book?), threats to the protagonists, crude language, and a dash of sex.

What’s happening here? Television and films are, undeniably, influencing the way novels are written. Some readers flee from the violent, fast-paced content of movies and TV shows and seek refuge in super-cozy books with cats that solve crimes and murders that rarely leave a bloodstain, much less a lingering nasty odor. But many more readers seem to want novels to keep up with filmed entertainment. More forensic evidence, please: we see it on CSI, and we’ve begun to believe no crime story is complete without a generous dose of it. More blood and agony: we’ve watched The Sopranos and we know people are seldom murdered gently.

I’m not complaining. I can enjoy a talking, crime-solving cat occasionally – although I am profoundly grateful that my own Emma and Gabriel can’t talk and have no interest in the activities of humans beyond our talent for opening cans -- but on the whole I think the trend toward realism is a good thing. The role of forensics in solving real killings is less important than TV would have us believe, but murder is a brutal, world-altering act and I appreciate writers who acknowledge that. Blood on the page serves as a reality check.

Cozies will probably always have a place on the bookshelf for readers seeking escape and relaxation, but people are so aware of crime these days, they see so much of it on the news and in entertainment, that non-cozy novelists will inevitably be forced to portray it realistically in fiction. At the same time, the fast pace of movies and TV pushes novelists to provide the same quick shocks and thrills to readers.

At some point we may have to drop most of the confusing labels on crime fiction and use only two: cozy mystery and... what? Suspense? Thriller? Some completely new term? What will we call our books when all the barriers between subgenres have come down?

POP QUIZ! Quickly – don’t stop to mull it over – how would you label these books?

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy

City of Bones by Michael Connelly