Amateur Sleuth - Forsooth!

I've been looking through the entries of the Gather/CourtTV/Borders Crime Fiction Contest. There's some pretty good first chapters, and some mediocre ones, as one would expect. I haven't seen anything that was actually bad, yet, but undoubtedly there are a few of those, too.

What has been instructive, is just how "lame" the amateur sleuth catagory really is. This is a bitch of a realization, because I actually write in that catagory. In case you're a newbie to crime fiction, amateur sleuth is one of the many sub-genres. There's police procedurals, private eye, romantic suspense, true crime, and amateur sleuth, in which the person solving the crime is not a professional crime-fighter. Think Miss Marple. Or Jessica Fletcher in "Murder She Wrote," a series that killed off just about everyone in Cabot Cove, forcing Jessica to travel far an wide solving crimes. Every writer knows what the "Cabot Cove" syndrom is.

Any novel forces a suspension of belief. After all, it is a book, a story, and needs to be larger than life, and certainly with a beginning, middle and end or story arc which life doesn't usually offer. But for a person off the street, so to speak, to be solving murders on her own (amatuer sleuths are usually but not always female), takes a big suspension of belief. And book after book, too, for the knitter, or book store owner or potter or herbalist or (fill in any cutesy occupation) to solve crime after crime requires a mega-suspension of belief.

The other disadvantage is that these stories have to be constructed in a certain way, and it's hard to start off with blood and guts or an explosion or car chase or whatever huge event happens in the small town that stymies the local constabulary but not the amateur, no sireee bob.

Many of these series are dropped by the publisher after half a dozen books, as they fail to build substantial readership. Others remain popular, book after book, but this is the exception.

And the genre gets no respect other than at Malice Domestic and from the women (mostly) who scarft down these books like they're popcorn. Ask Otto Penzler about the genre. He disses it big time. MWA seldom deigns to award the coveted "Edgar" to a woman writing about little villages and cats and nosy neighbors. Doesn't happen.

A sleuth who is a reporter, lawyer, repo man, bounty hunter, or some occupation where one might normally come into contact with bad guys is more realistic.

I have written five of these books, much edgier than the little village with cats, but let's face it, a sleuth solving computer crime isn't really going to come into personal contact with many violent guys. Bad yes, but where are the shoot-outs? The car chases? The explosions, for cryin' out loud? Doesn't one have to have explosions? Serial killers? Torture? Ugggh.

And of the five books, I've only sold one, and that was to an e-publisher who went belly up. First one had stupid plot and I put it on the shelf but it actually generated more interest than the others. Three and four haven't sold. Five I'm still tweaking. It has the best plot, but I don't think the little old ladies in Dubuque are going to go ga-ga over it, nor the guys who want blood and guts and mayhem. Note: I do have one explosion and lots of blood. These aren't cozies but my sleuth is definitely amateur when it comes to solving any crime but computer.

So what happens now? Wish I knew. Back to the Gather contest. The best stuff I've read isn't amateur sleuth and I don't think an A.S. will win. Probably won't win the Amazon contest, either. The prize isn't winning, but getting published, and that's seems to be a hard thing, for anyone without a "name" who isn't writing cozy-cozies or thrillers. Merde.

More sucking it up. Sucking it up really sucks, if you know what I mean.

Grapeshot