Upon browsing agents’ wish lists the other day, I was puzzled when I saw the request for “literary thrillers”. An interesting term, I thought. Truly contradictory. Right? From everything I know about literary fiction and thrillers, I failed to reconcile this term as a legitimate genre. Is this a new “buzzword”, a peculiar crossing of two opposite literary forms? And if so, how does that work? To see how the two might mix, I examined the elements found in both forms. By definition, a reader expects literary works to intellectually engage the reader on a much higher level of understanding than commercial fiction. It is riddled with thematic ideas and…
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Mystery The essence of a mystery lies in the intellectual exercise of piecing together clues. The genre hinges on the ‘whodunit’ question, engaging the reader in a cerebral pursuit to solve the puzzle before the protagonist does–or at the climactic reveal. Mysteries often begin with a crime that seems initially inexplicable, requiring methodical deduction and savvy intuition to resolve. Historically, the genre has roots in works like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, which is often considered the first true detective story. Over the decades, the genre has diversified into sub-genres like cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, and legal mysteries, each bringing its unique flavor but retaining…
