By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer on Aug 25, 2013, at 2:29 AM Updated on 8/25/13 at 3:24 AM
Crime fiction tends to be divided into two categories - "hard-boiled" and "cozy."
The hard-boiled category covers everything from the pioneering private eye stories of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, to modern-day writers such as Michael Connelly and Lee Child.
On the other hand, "cozy" has come to include everything from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to contemporary tales of knitters and caterers and similar folk engaging in some light-hearted sleuthing when their crafty or culinary pursuits meet with murder.
But starting in the 1940s, another strand of crime fiction arose - novels and stories about characters as real as one's neighbors, caught up in situations that evolve from the mundane to the menacing.
It's a genre that Sarah Weinman describes as "domestic suspense." And she showcases 14 of its best practitioners in the book "Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives."
The anthology features stories by well-known writers, such as Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson, Dorothy B. Hughes and Charlotte Armstrong, as well as lesser-known, yet no less accomplished, authors, including Nedra Tyre and Joyce Harrington.
"There is this whole generation of women writers who wrote critically acclaimed books that sold well, that were published in hardcover when so many of their male counterparts were being published only in paperback," Weinman said. "But around the 1970s, they all more or less fell off the cultural map.
"That's one of the reason for doing this anthology - to try to redress the balance of suspense fiction to put these writers and their work in the greater context of American crime fiction."
Crime pays
Weinman, the news editor for Publishers Marketplace, is a noted authority on crime and detective fiction. Her blog, "Confessions of an Idiosyncractic Mind," which she shuttered in 2011, was a clearinghouse of information and commentary on the genre.
She's also published crime short stories in anthologies such as "Baltimore Noir" as well as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
For Weinman, it was reading Mary Higgins Clark's 1975 debut novel, "Where Are the Children?" that really launched her interest in domestic suspense.
"For one thing, it flat-out scared me," Weinman said. "And I recall being absolutely shocked by the ending, but at the same time admiring how well this ending had been set up.
"And that's something of a hallmark of the best of these writers. Many of them write with a real elegance and economy, yet they also understand how to structure a story for maximum impact."
These stories supply all the things fans of crime fiction expect, but they also deal with real-life issues in a straightforward, often unsentimental way.
"I think that might be one reason why these writers ended up being marginalized, because they wrote about home and marriage and relationships," Weinman said. "And their principal characters were women - wives, spinsters, the elderly. Yet the stories they tell are a real reflection of what was going on in the country at that time."
Weinman points to the work of Dorothy B. Hughes, whose novels include "In a Lonely Place," "Ride the Pink Horse" and "The Expendable Man." Hughes is represented in "Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives" by the story "Everyone Needs a Mink."
"I would say she's my favorite crime writer, and 'In a Lonely Place' is my favorite crime novel, because she's able to address the whole idea of men returning from war and the difficulties of their fitting into society, in the course of this very suspenseful story," Weinman said.
"And her last novel, 'The Expendable Man,' deals with race and civil rights in much the same way," she said.
Old and new
Creating the anthology also helped Weinman discover writers new to her, as well, such as Harrington and Margaret Callahan.
And then there are writers who for a variety reasons Weinman wasn't able to include.
"I would have loved to have included a Ruth Rendell story but couldn't find one that really fit the context," she said. "And then, after the book was at the publisher, I came across the work of Mildred B. Davis, whose first novel won the Edgar Award in 1948."
Although the stories in "Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives" were written from the 1940s through the 1970s, Weinman said the domestic suspense genre is starting to see something of a resurgence.
"There are a number of writers today whose work would fit the category," she said. "Maybe the best known is Gillian Flynn's 'Gone Girl,' which has been a best-seller. And there's A.S.A. Harrison's 'The Silent Wife,' which is about the breakdown in a long-term relationship between a man and a woman.
"Hallie Ephron's latest book is very much in the domestic suspense domain, and there's a new novel called 'Reconstructing Amelia' (Kimberly McCreight) that's really great."
Nor is the field entirely limited to women, Weinman said.
"Writers like Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay," she said, "they really get what can happen within families, and the terrors that can exist in the suburbs."
"The thing about the domestic suspense genre is that it allows writers to really get at contemporary society," she said. "They can address all the anxieties that pop up in modern life, that maybe don't fit within traditional crime fiction."
James D. Watts Jr. 918-581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Stories offer crime amid domesticity
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