I have always enjoyed crime novels on holidays for the trashy fun that they should be but over the past fortnight found myself disgusted with the abundance of rape and violence that pepper almost all the mass market novels in the bestseller lists.
Why do Kathy Reichs, James Patterson (and his numerous "co authors"), Karin Slaughter, Patricia Cornwell all assume that the only crime their readers are interested in is the rape, murder and mutilation of young women?
They revel in it. I just finished Swimsuit by James Patterson (or rather written by Maxine Paetro but bares Patterson's name to ensure it shifts millions of copies) and it is by far one of the worst examples of this. Dozens of rapes and murders described in graphic details for no reason. No plotting or tension, just a list of rapes. The ending? The murderer gets murdered in a snuff film. Or he doesn't. We don't know. The book is utterly pointless unless you are aroused by the idea of a woman being raped before being decapitated with her head attached to a ceiling fan so that the head spins around the room. Or how about a women being strangled to death while she is being raped?
I have not made any of this up. These are just two of the many atrocities Patterson / Peatro describe with no skill whatsoever. The entire book is sick, unnecessary, offensive and made me feel rather ill and spoiled my sunbathing.
Which would be my own fault if I had purchased a book packaged like a torture porn film like Hostel or Last House On The Left. But I had not. I had purchased a book by the world's most successful author (he churns out so much of this garbage that he sells more books than Dan Brown, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling put together) from WH Smith sporting one of the covers illustrated above. Does anything about the cover above say to you 'Rapey head chopping'?
The cover of the edition I purchased at Toronto Pearson airport also states that it is his 'most satisfying book since Kiss The Girls'. Satisfying? Interesting choice of word. Not only would Patrick Bateman himself be sickened by this book, it has also alienated Patterson's own fans with 120 Amazon reviews granting it a 1-star review and only 38 a 5-star review. More of his fans hate his lazy output than actually enjoy it.
Surely he and other crime novelists can broaden their horizons a bit? There are other crimes out there. The mob are a pretty exciting bunch, how about featuring them? Or bank robberies. Or diamond smuggling.
Or anything other than sexual assaults and mutilation of young women.
Most disturbingly, the majority of these books are written by women so I am extremely confused as to their motivations. Are they under the misguided view that by graphically describing rapes in pornographic detail they are highlighting the awfulness of sexual assault?
These hack trash pedellers need to check out the work of genuinely thrilling crime novelists such as Simon Kernick and Mark Billingham. These masters of the genre do not need to resort to crude lists of atrocities as they have refined literary chops and the understanding of narrative.
I gave up reading Patterson's book a few years ago when he stopped not only writing his novels but in all liklihood, reading them also. I thought I'd pick this one up because it looked like it might be a bit of pulpy fun.
I will not be making this mistake again.
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