HAS CRIME FICTION FINALLY achieved the literary respectability that has long been its due? Certainly, crime novels are covered in the books pages of newspapers far more often than they were. But when a famous, prize-winning literary novelist recently turned his hand to crime fiction, he felt obliged to put it out under another name.

Is there still something disreputable about it? I continue to find the crime novel the perfect vehicle for an unflinching discussion of contemporary issues. After all, the detective has an “all-areas pass” to every aspect of the contemporary urban scene, and this is a way for the crime writer to take the reader into forbidden territory; for instance, it was always my mission in the Rebus books to show people an Edinburgh that the tourist doesn’t see. And crime fiction has always been good at articulating the fears that society has harboured at all moments of history – such as the stranger who will casually take your life. Equally, the genre is able to deal with high moral purpose in quite as rigorous a fashion as did Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment and Dickens in Bleak House.

Rule-breakers make us curious: why don’t they want to be like us? Why do they make the choice not to conform? Do they in fact make a choice, or is it made for them (by their genetic coding, their circumstances, and so on)?

The crime novel should tackle the question of violence whether we reach any answers or not, shouldn’t it? People are interested in crime fiction because they are fascinated by the margins of the world, those places where society’s rules break down.

They wonder what they would do in similar situations, how they would cope. They learn how to deal with fear and the unknown. And at the end, they have the sense that a certain justice has been seen to be done.

The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction by Barry Forshaw

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