Mystery Subgenres
Amateur Sleuth -- The character in a mystery (usually the protagonist) who does the detection but who is not a professional private investigator or police detective. The amateur sleuth has another career or is independently wealthy and becomes involved in the murder by circumstance, chance or interest.
Bickering Team or Cohort Mystery -- Usually a mystery series in which there are two detectives working together. This may be a married couple or friends, or the two may start out with nothing in common. Although the detection of the crime is still the primary focus, the relationship between the pair is developed throughout the series.
Caper -- A crime story, usually told from the viewpoint of the perpetrator. The tone is often lighthearted or even comical, and the crime is a theft rather than a murder. Favorite caper targets: art or jewelry.
Courtroom/Trial -- A mystery in which the focal point is the courtroom itself. Relies heavily on verbal rhetoric and persuasive legal arguments from both the prosecution and the defense.
Cozy -- A murder mystery set in a small English or New England town and featuring an amateur sleuth who is often a genteel old lady or gentleman. The setting is refined and the violence subdued.
Crime -- A story which details the account of how a crime was committed, including information from police detectives, autopsy findings, coroner's inquest reports, and newspaper clippings. All this helps author and reader find out what happened. such a story usually has much action, emotion and suspense.
Dark Mystery -- Similar to noir, with hard-boiled detectives and bleak settings, but also with mild horror elements mixed in.
Espionage -- Involves spying to gather information about the plans and activities of a foreign government or a competing company.
Gothic Mystery -- A mystery with a decidedly dark, brooding tone, often set at an old estate. A gothic contains elements of romantic suspense and sometimes even supernatural overtones.
Hard-Boiled Detective -- A detective character type popularized in the 1940s and 1950s, now a mainstay in mystery fiction. The hard-boiled detective is usually male, streetwise and hardened by life.
Heist -- A mystery involving a theft, which is more serious than the caper. The focus is on solving the crime, but emphasis is placed on the planning and execution of the theft as well.
Historical -- A story rooted in some past historical setting, as in a mystery involving the death of Queen Elizabeth's butler.
Humorous Mystery (not defined)
Juvenile -- A mystery novel geared toward children ages 9-12. Often the protagonist and/or narrator manifests characteristics (jealousy of a sibling, parental resentment, etc.) with which kids in this age group can identify.
Light Horror -- A story involving horror elements, but with less intensity and gore than traditional horror.
Locked Room -- A classic mystery format in which a murder takes place within a room locked from the inside, with no visible way the murderer could have entered or exited.
Malice Domestic -- A mystery featuring a murder among family members, such as the murder or a spouse or parent.
Noir -- A style of mystery involving hard-boiled detectives and bleak settings.
Police Procedural -- A mystery featuring a police detective or officer who uses standard professional police practices to solve the crime.
Private Eye -- A professional independent investigator. Many mystery series feature private eyes.
Psychological Suspense -- A story which focuses not so much on physical action but on the workings of the mind, usually told from the perpetrator's perspective.
Romantic Suspense -- A mystery or suspense story with strong elements of romance, usually between the detective and the victim or the detective and the suspect.
Surrealistic Mystery -- A novel with a strange, dreamlike atmosphere, often involving unnatural juxtapositions of time and place with no clear-cut plot.
Suspense -- Although in recent years mystery and suspense have been used interchangeably, a suspense story is one in which the main action (crime or murder) has not yet taken place and the culprit may be known or at least suspected. The emphasis is on the tension built by the anticipation of the outcome, such as stopping a murderer from striking again. A mystery, on the other hand, starts with a murder and emphasizes the solving of the crime.
Thriller -- Story intended to arouse feelings of excitement and suspense, typically centers around illegal activities, espionage, sex and violence. usually a detective story in which the forces of good are pitted against the forces of evil in a kill-or-be-killed situation.
True Crime -- Nonfiction about actual murders and serial killings, often told with "new journalism" fiction techniques made famous by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
Urban Horror -- A horror story set in a city or modern suburb, usually involving a crime or murder committed by a supernatural being or element.
Young Adult -- The general classification of books written for readers age 12 to 18.
Definitions from the glossary of the Mystery Writer's Sourcebook, published by Writer's Digest Books.
What is noir? (5 of 18), Read 93 times
Conf: Chat
From: Jim Doherty xxxxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:10 AM
Janet,
Re your question below:
>Can anyone give me a
>definition of 'noir,'
>specifically as it applies to
>mysteries? I *think* I know,
>but I'm really not sure.
a) The definition. Others may disagree with this (but they'll be wrong), but really all "noir" means is a dark and sinister atmosphere.
b) How it's used. Publishers tend to use "noir," when they mean "hard-boiled," on the theory that "hard-boiled" doesn't sell but "noir," being a foreign word, sounds intellectual and does.
This isn't really correct. "Hard-boiled" means, essentially, "tough and colloquial." Not the same as "dark and sinister," but not mutually exclusive either. And, over the years, there's been a lot of interface between "noir" and "hard-boiled," so the two have often been used (incorrectly) interchangeably.
c) The history. In the early to mid-40s, a French company began publishing French editions of tough mysteries under the imprint "Serie Noir." A lot of these books were American "hard-boiled" mysteries in the Hammett/Chandler/Cain vein. At the same time, American studios were making tough, dark, gritty crime movies, often based on the same books that had been published in France under the "Serie Noir" imprint. When those films were released in France, French film critics coined the phrase "film noir" to describe them.
"Film noirs" may be generally defined as an American crime movie, made roughly between 1940 and 1963, invariably in black and white, which uses particular visual stylistics of highlighted lights and darkened shadowy images to denote a dark and sinister atmosphere. They run the gamut from private eye (MURDER, MY SWEET), to police procedural (HE WALKED BY NIGHT), to romantic suspense (LAURA), to femjep (THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE), to urban gangster drama (THE ASPHALT JUNGLE), to Cain-style domestic murder dramas (DOUBLE IMDEMNITY). Some people insist that there are specific "noir themes," but I strongly disagree. The plot specifics run too broadly to describe a particular theme as inherently noir. It's the theme plus the "expressionistic" visual stylistics that define film noir.
d.) Conclusion. In prose fiction, "noir" may be defined (though, I admit, defined only with irritating vagueness) as putting across a dark and sinister atmosphere using words in the same manner that a film noir puts across a dark and sinister atmosphere using images.
Cornell Woolrich (aka "William Irish" and "George Hopley") is generally regarded as the quintessential "noir" writer, so you might get a better handle on what constitutes noir in prose by reading him.
JIM DOHERTY
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