Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat.
Adrian McKinty
The Ned Kelly is definitely the coolest of all the crime fiction awards, and if you think about it, it's the only one that's given for an entire continent.
In the crime fiction section, you may just find a novel that talks about the place where you're from and speaks to you about your life - or the life yours could have become if a little misfortune had come your way.
Writing books that people want to read is helpful - my most successful book is my only police procedural, a very popular subgenre of the very popular crime fiction genre.
Allan Guthrie
Anyone who says, 'Books don't change anything,' or - more commonly - that crime fiction is the wrong genre for promoting social change - should take a closer look.
Andrew Vachss
Traditionally in crime fiction, women exist as a bedroom convenience or to screw up in order that the plot may progress. I wanted no part of that.
Ann Maxwell
I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library - I'm a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction - so I'll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I'll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast.
Anthony Geary
Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.
Camilla Lackberg
The pace of Swedish crime fiction is slower - Stieg Larsson's the exception. And I think we use the environment more.
Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.
Charles Frazier
There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there.
Daniel Woodrell
I just really like the verve and muscle of good crime fiction, the narrative punch of it. The underlying principle of good crime fiction is an insistence on a kind of root democracy. I've always responded to that notion.
Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.
Denise Mina
People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.
I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.
I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way.
I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted.
My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.
Diane Setterfield
So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.
Donna Leon
History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.
Edward M. Lerner
I read all the Agatha Christies when I was younger and like Sherlock Holmes. Crime fiction has always fascinated me, but I'll read anything anyone gives me.
My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned me on in a big way to reading and books. I was lucky to have a teacher who changed the course of my life.
If you want to start reading Swedish crime fiction, you have to start with Sjowall and Wahloo.
I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.
The great thing about America is I always come back with more books and more tip-offs of who to read. It's a country in love with crime fiction.
I wrote 'Knots and Crosses,' the first of the Rebus books, not even realising that I was writing crime fiction.
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.
I had done 12 little romance books, and I decided I wanted to move into crime fiction.
I've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.
Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.
With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.
There is a very conservative element of crime writers that don't recognise what I do is crime fiction.
There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It's an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.
I think crime fiction is a great way to talk about social issues, whether 'To Kill A Mockingbird' or 'The Lovely Bones;' violence is a way to open up that information you want to get out to the reader.
Crafting a piece of gripping, narrative true crime that engages the world is not that different from crafting a piece of crime fiction.
Pushing the boundaries of polite society does not just fall under the purview of crime fiction authors.
One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that.
Crime fiction is the new rock n' roll.
For me, crime fiction was an opportunity to sneak up on readers with social issues, something they won't go out of their way to seek.
After I started writing crime fiction, I said to myself, 'I may be limited, but the genre's not. There's no reason to change genres if I'm happy writing what I write.' And I am.
I love crime fiction, and I'm proud to be part of it, but I'm not without criticism for my own genre.
Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best.
When I'm working, I always read stuff that's as far away from what I'm working on as possible, so I'll read American crime fiction at bedtime, or Emily Dickinson.
I'd always wanted to write crime fiction. I loved Nancy Drew.
For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years, I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction.
There are a number of writers who believe it is their duty to throw as many curve balls at the reader as possible. To twist and twist again. These are the Chubby Checkers of crime fiction and, while I admire the craft, I think that it can actually work against genuine suspense.
When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.
Ian Rankin's Rebus is the king of modern British crime fiction. He is dour, determined, and constantly falls foul of his seniors. For all this, we root for him. He is eminently loveable, a quixotic hero moving through the darker half of a Jekyll and Hyde Edinburgh.
Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.
I think there's a concept that crime fiction is or was male-dominated, but it really never has been.
