Part of me thinks conventions in genres have a place — even the cop who is routinely drunk — when they’re done well and create complicated storylines. I find a certain comfort in those conventions (especially when the rest of the book is freaking me out).
But, they are conventions and they are stereotypes and I think that comfort is laziness. It’s not challenging me as a reader. Stereotypes and conventions like Malla Nunn brings up here are meant to be busted wide open.
Crime is a genre that never ceases to amaze with the diversity of it — I mean cozy mysteries. Or baking mysteries? Who would have thought that would happen? It’s when writers and readers get comfortable and stop demanding further diversity in fiction that problems arise.
What do you think? What conventions would you like to see the last of in crime? The drunk cop perhaps?
