Why Don’t They Take Crime Literature Seriously?

Literary Service of Iran Book News Agency (IBNA) – Mehrdad Morad: Crime literature has always stood on the sidelines; neither entirely outside the realm of ‘official literature’ nor having a place at its heart. It’s as if crime, even when put on paper, still smells of the streets; a smell that the aristocratic halls of literary criticism cannot tolerate. This uneasy relationship between crime and literature is a wound that has remained open for over a century; a wound that each generation merely reshapes but never heals.

Perhaps no sign is more indicative than the fact that many great writers around the world have hidden their names when entering the realm of crime literature.

Nicholas Blake is C. Day Lewis the poet. Dan Kavanagh is Julian Barnes, the distinguished novelist. And Benjamin Black is John Banville, the author of profound philosophical novels.

This change of name is not just a simple identity game; it’s a sign of fear. Fear that the ‘stain of crime’ will tarnish literary credibility. It’s as if the author wants to write in the dark but be judged in the light.

Although universities have officially recognized popular literature, especially the crime genre, in the last two or three decades, the gap still persists. In many circles, a crime novel is still considered ‘entertainment,’ not ‘art.’

It’s as if pleasure is in conflict with artistic value. It’s as if a best-selling book is inherently suspicious. This contradiction becomes more evident when we look at the history of literature:

Dostoevsky, with ‘Crime and Punishment,’ laid the foundations of modern literature. Shakespeare based his greatest tragedies on murder. Edgar Allan Poe created a new world with detectives and corpses.

But when these same themes appear in the form of contemporary crime genre, they suddenly become ‘undervalued.’ It’s as if crime is only ‘respectable’ when it wears classical attire.

Clive James, the keen critic of the crime genre, summarizes this gap in two interpretations: the thrill of the chase and the pleasure of prose.

The problem is that these two pleasures have often been considered enemies. Genre fans fear that literature will kill the pace. Fans of serious literature fear that excitement will sacrifice depth. And it is precisely at this boundary that crime literature becomes a battlefield; a place where the reader must choose: either read to discover the killer, or read to discover humanity.

Raymond Chandler was perhaps the only one who, with full awareness, decided to tear down this wall. He wanted the crime novel to be both streetwise and poetic. Both fast-paced and profound. His famous quote is still alive:

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.”

This sentence is not just a description of a detective; it is a statement of a worldview. Chandler wanted to use crime as an excuse to display morality, fall, loneliness, honor, and the hidden wounds of humanity. He was perhaps the closest author to Clive James’s dream: the simultaneous combination of the thrill of the chase and the pleasure of prose.

But this balance was too fragile to last. After Chandler, the crime genre split into two opposing branches:

The violent popular branch: with Mickey Spillane and a world full of overt violence, women, blood, and revenge.

The more literary and contemplative branch: with Ross Macdonald and an attempt to restore psychological complexity to the crime novel.

This divide is what Lee Horsley refers to as the ‘instability of the balance between literary and popular.’ It’s as if the genre, each time it approaches literature, loses some of its audience; and each time it approaches the popular, its artistic status diminishes.

The symbol of this crisis is perhaps John Banville, better than anyone; an author who writes crime novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.

Clive James makes a bitter remark about the novel ‘Christine Falls’:

“This novel forces one to ask: do you even want a crime writer to have this much literary talent?”

The question is astonishing yet realistic. It’s as if writing too well in the crime genre is considered a mistake itself. It’s as if crime should ‘write just enough’ to remain acceptable!

Meanwhile, the reader is trapped; a reader who wants both to be thrilled and to think. Both to pursue the killer and to delve into the human psyche. But the publishing market usually forces them to choose:

Either a book that keeps you awake until midnight but leaves nothing in your soul. Or a book whose every line you admire, but you abandon before reaching the third chapter.

Combining these two is not everyone’s job. And perhaps that’s why successful examples of such a combination are rare.

The truth, however, is something else. The crime genre is, by its very nature, literary. Why? Because crime happens precisely where: love fails, greed awakens, fear reigns, and humanity confronts its darkest self. Crime is the story of choice. And choice is the core of every great drama.

But serious literature has tried for years to ignore this reality. It’s as if it wanted to cleanse literature of streets, blood, screams, corruption, and shadows; without knowing it was removing a part of human truth from the text. However, in the midst of this, the efforts of authors like James Sallis with the character Lou Griffin revived hope: a novel that is both profound and suspenseful; both poetic and violent; both philosophical and criminal.

James Sallis; An author who turned crime into philosophy

James Sallis is one of the most distinctive and unique figures in contemporary American crime literature; an author who fits neither solely into the ‘popular’ camp nor entirely into the realm of ‘elitist literature.’ He stands right on the border between these two; the very border that Raymond Chandler dreamed of, and few have truly managed to inhabit. Before being known as a novelist, he was for years a poet, literary critic, musician, and university professor. This multifaceted background ensured that his view of crime was never simple, linear, or merely incident-driven. For Sallis, crime is a pretext, not a goal. Unlike authors who build the core of their novel around ‘who is the killer?’, Sallis mostly asks:

Why is this person still alive? How have they endured so many failures? What has the past done to them?

In his world, crime is not an external event; it is the natural extension of internal human failures. Murder in Sallis’s works is not an explosion but a gradual leakage of sorrow, helplessness, and spiritual exhaustion. History shows that this balance has always been fragile.

But perhaps a new generation of writers can once again do what Chandler dreamed of: reconciling beauty and horror.

Crime literature is not just the story of the killer and the victim. It is the story of a society that doesn’t want to see its true face. Perhaps that is why it is marginalized. Because crime is a merciless mirror, and not everyone dares to look into it.

But one thing is certain: as long as humanity exists, as long as greed, fear, love, betrayal, and violence exist, crime literature will live on; whether they call it ‘literature’ or not.