Mysteries, Thrillers, etc., etc., etc.

mystery thriller week goodreads
This is Mystery and Thriller Week on Goodreads, so it seemed like a good idea to blog about that. I enjoy both mysteries and thrillers, and started with enthusiasm. Starting with what separates the two seemed reasonable and easy.

 

Mysteries are brain books: Some crime has been committed and the point of the book is to solve the puzzle and determine who done it. Mary Burton is a local example of a typical mystery writer.
Thrillers are action books: Typically fast-paced, with lots of physical threat and daring-do, often the point of the action is to keep something dreadful from happening—i.e., stop the bad guys before they do whatever. Fiona Quinn is a local example of a thrill writer. In fact, she writes a blog called Thrill Writing.

 

wasp fiona quinn
That’s a simplification, of course. But when I started to try to refine it, I became mired in exceptions and subcategories. Police procedurals, for example, could be either a cozy mystery or action packed, depending on how the author presents the basic defining characteristic—i.e., how the police operate, collect, analyze, and collate the evidence.
So then I considered citing best sellers in each category—but whose? Goodreads? Amazon? USA Today? NY Times? To list them all would be pages and pages, with lots of overlap.

 

penguin random house thrillers
Then I considered cutting it another way. I searched online for Richmond, Virginia mysteries and thrillers. What I found was that Richmond authors were camouflaged among broader lists of “books written by authors in, from, or about Virginia.” I decided the culling wasn’t worth it.

 

And so I’ve thrown in the towel. Find your own mysteries and/or thrillers, from whatever sources you rely on, and define those as you will. In such matters, the reader is always right!
reading

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