My new mystery, Below the Fold, talks about the media’s obsession with covering murder cases filled with lots of sex – like Jodi Arias, Amanda Knox, Scott Peterson, Pamela Smart and right back to O.J. and Nicole.
The book is set in a TV newsroom, and I spent many years as a journalist working in newspaper and television newsrooms. So obviously this is based in part on my own experiences. Sex sells in the media, no question about it.
But what about sex in mystery novels?
Well, yes, there is sex in the mystery world, too – but it has changed a whole lot from what it used to be. Sure, some old fashioned hard-boiled detectives in mystery novels still get involved with beautiful blonde dames who show up in their office as sexy clients with long legs and short skirts – just like it used to be for Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade.
But there’s a whole different kind of sex – much of it more interesting – going on these days in mystery fiction.
I recently read a new mystery novel with a protagonist who also happened to be gay. I was impressed by how easily the sexual encounters between him and the man he was going to marry fit into the story. The same thing happened in another mystery I came across involving a female PI and her woman love interest.
Another big change from the old days has been the emergence of so many female detectives and PIs and other leading characters in mystery fiction. It’s easy to forget now that until the 1980s the vast majority of mystery novels featured male protagonists. But then Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum changed all that. My current series character is a woman too – TV newswoman Clare Carlson – so that certainly changes the way an author writes about sex in his or her books.
Of course, many mystery authors – and I’m one of them – don’t write detailed sex scenes in their books. I do write about sex, but usually after its already happened. I don’t particularly want to read about X-rated sex in other people’s books, and I don’t think readers want it from me either.
Which might seem strange to some since my stories are filled with plenty of murders and dead bodies and bloody violence.
But I’m not the only mystery author who feels that way. Best-selling thriller author Steven James, for example, is well-known for avoiding both profanity and sex in his books. James talked about this topic in a recent interview I did with him, saying: “Over the years, I’ve found that readers prefer stories that don’t have graphic sex and aren’t laced with profanity. As an author, my goal is to give readers what they want or something better. I’ve never had anyone complain to complain to me, asking for more…. So, for me, this choice is a way of respecting my readers.”
The bottom line here is I believe you’ll find sex is being treated quite a bit differently in mystery fiction now than it was in the Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade days. Maybe the most memorable sex moment I remember from back then was in The Big Sleep (the movie actually, not the Chandler novel) when Marlowe seduces that woman working in a bookstore to pass the time while he’s on a stakeout. It sure seemed pretty cool at the time. But now that kind of casual sex comes across as sexist, inappropriate and – to paraphrase a line from Chandler himself – “as out of place as a tarantula on a slice of angel cake.”
Sara Paretsky has said that women in the old days of mystery fiction seemed to have only three possible roles in a book – “virgin, vamp or victim.”
There are a lot more possibilities now.
R.G. Belsky is a longtime journalist and a crime fiction author in New York City. Belsky has worked as a top editor at the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. He has also published 12 mystery novels, including his current Clare Carlson series about a TV journalist. His newest book, Below the Fold, was published on May 7.