A couple of weeks ago I went to the BAD, first crime writing festival here in Sydney and sat in on an entertaining session with Catherine Overington and Megan Goldin. Both are former journalists, now turned crime writers. I’ve been mulling over something Catherine said especially in light of finishing Did You See Melody? about technology and crime.
She said technology makes it harder to write mysteries and crime now because basically there should be cameras about and people have cameras and video cameras in their hands every day – and she’s right.
Did You See Melody? is an example of this, I think – the first half is pretty entertaining and the author uses Youtube to get readers and the “main” character up to speed on the Melody Chapa case there. The author uses the Youtube vidoes quite well I thought, and Cara as the main character was entertaining enough for me to stick with the book and get through Part 1 — which is in essence a massive (and entertaining) info dump about the case driving this book. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Things got unstuck for several reasons in part 2 for me, some detailed in my review. But most of all was Cara’s use of technology — especially at a tense moment when she should actually have been focused on getting mobile instead of getting a message out to her family through Instagram, which as she successfully does get mobile and does return to the spa where all this is going down anyway, why did she stop to write a message to her daughter? Surely there could have been easier ways to get her family into the book.
The situation was awkward and it didn’t make sense because Cara escaped anyway, so the consequences of the message could have been gotten in an entirely different way, than having her stop her escape to send a message via Instagram. Instagram. It wasn’t even a message, it was a post on one of her kid’s pictures… and it befuddled me, and it befuddles me still. I wondered if in the rush to use technology, the author found herself in the most awkward of situations.
The other thing I wondered was, where were the cameras in the spa?? Why didn’t anyone want to check them out to find other characters? Shouldn’t a spa have cameras?
But then I got to wondering — is it me? Am I too conditioned to think of technology like that that these situations seem strange? Has tech changed who I am as a reader?
What experience have you had with technology in the books you read?
What a fun event to go too – and interesting topic. I haven’t really thought about it much, but I suppose you’re right. Technology has definitely changed a lot about how crime goes down. It seems like there are cameras everywhere – and if they aren’t in a book, it should probably be mentioned.
I like it when books include technology, yet not to the point where it’s just to include it. The world is as the world is and although some people dislike seeing current tech (like Instagram, Fb etc) included in books I really think it SHOULD be … Tech is so relevant!
I think current technology should make writing crime even MORE interesting! But yes, harder on authors.
I would imagine with technology being so much a part of our lives these days, writing would harder. Especially crime novels. I haven’t really come across anything that stood to me and bother me so far.
I avoid books that overdose on technology that I don’t use as that kind of thing bores me! If the MCs are constantly on social media and using gadgets all the time I just tune out! I guess I don’t usually read the genres that are more likely to have this stuff in it. When I read I want to get away from the real life over dependance on tech and so on to enjoy new adventures based on plot and good characters. Maybe that’s why I love books where tech is broken and gone in an apocalypse!
What an interesting topic! It must be kind of hard to incorporate all these technological advances, because they seem to rely a lot on visuals, so it may be difficult to get that across to the reader. A lot of books now incorporate text messages or emails, which I don’t mind much.
I would imagine it must be getting harder to write crime novels since I imagine it’s harder to pull of crimes in real life, what with all the technology. That insta thing does sound weird though :-/