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| Tybee Island Lightouse in Georgia |
At a recent meeting of the Low Country Sisters in Crime
chapter, of which I am a founding and lifetime member, we discussed the various
subgenres into which mystery/suspense/thrillers are cast. We had reasonable
agreement about the broad requirements for a cozy: Sex and violence is off the
page, utilizes a small town or village setting (or at least a closed setting in
which the characters mostly know each other), usually an amateur sleuth, mostly
female protagonists (a few males, some animals, some ghosts, etc.), often a
romantic element (frequently with a professional lawman), often the protagonist
has a craft or small business that brought her to the area in the first place
(often by way of a dead relative).
We had somewhat less agreement on noir, it being a bit
difficult to distinguish from hardboiled. I thought my definition of “first
you’re screwed and by the end you’re really screwed,” hit the nail, but others
suggested I was affected by my politics. Generally, people agree noir stories
are hard-boiled, the protagonist is not police, he (although there are plenty
of shes these days as well) could be a PI, or victim, or crook, and is usually
self-destructive.
We had no real agreement on mystery vs. suspense vs.
thriller. For me, mystery has been a story about solving the crime. In thrillers,
the protagonist is in jeopardy almost from the start and the stakes are larger
than their small piece of the world. Suspense has the reader worrying about how
the protagonist will fare, but the reader may already know who-done-it.
I have the worst time defining exactly what I write.
Take my Empty Promises.
There are definite mystery elements: the amateur sleuth (Seamus McCree) and the
police want to figure out who was responsible for two murders—one recent, one
old. There are suspense elements: the Happy Reaper is in the area and if Seamus
gets in the way . . . And it contains elements of a domestic thriller (a
psychological thriller that focuses on interpersonal relationships)—but that’s
in a subplot.
Enter my new catchall: “North of Cozy; South of Noir.”
I first used the phrase to help guide the authors writing
novellas for Lowcountry Crime: Four Novellas.
It worked well. Without anything more than each author’s understanding of what
that tag line meant, we ended up with a book that includes four different
stories, all linked by crime in the Lowcountry. None would be called cozy; none
noir.
Oh yes, and one of the stories I edited, Tina Whittle’s
“Like a Freight Train Coming” is a finalist for a prestigious Derringer award
in the novelette category (8,001 – 20,000 words). Keeping my fingers crossed
for her.
* * *
James
M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the
deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find
more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.
