Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "open-book"

When I worked as a journalist at a major US magazine, it was clear that readers didn’t respond to hard news. They wanted features. Not fluffy features. Serious features. But they'd had enough of news stories about what happened that week.

What did the editors do? They ordered correspondents to write hard news. Because they didn’t care what readers wanted. They wished to appear as serious journalists before their peers, and serious journalists write tough hard news stories. Even if no one wants to read them.

I was put in mind of this as I listened to a BBC Open Book podcast about whether crime fiction has become too gory. Specifically whether descriptions of violence – and the torture of women in particular – have gone too far. I interpret that to mean: whether the violence is indulged for its own sake, rather than for the sake of plot or character development.

After listening to the show I felt as though I had been tuned in to a discussion by European liberals about multiculturalism – or some other subject on which all “decent” types agree and then simply talk about the nuances of their shared position, rather than ever saying “hey, there’s a case to answer here.”

I’ve seen a great deal of violence in my life. I’ve been a foreign correspondent in the Middle East for 15 years. I’ve seen people shot, blown up, burned to death, horribly maimed, and I’ve been threatened myself. I take no pleasure in that and I have no sympathy for those who would treat others’ suffering as entertainment. Perhaps that’s why I believe there is very much a case for crime fiction to answer: too many writers and presumably readers appear to be indulging in psychotically prurient interest.

That isn’t to say there’s no violence in my novels. But I’m very careful about its purpose, and I don’t require it to take place in front of the reader’s eyes, as it were. I try to think about Chandler’s great dictum on Hammett – that he put murder back in the hands of those who actually commit it in real life. No doubt some of those people are sadists, but most are criminals and most murders are committed with dispatch. That’s how I like it to be done in my books: by a criminal, not a psycho, and quickly, as a piece of business.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.