ABSTRACT
The variety and essence of crime fiction Crime fiction (adult fiction especially) is an extremely popular genre and, like Horror,
has many faces. There is the bleak and brutal criminal underworld kind of story
(perhaps not suitable for preteen consumption!) and at the other end of the
spectrum the elegant, gently mannered and intricately plotted ‘whodunit’. In the
same way that some pupils gravitate towards the violent gory end of Horror, so
might some young writers think – wrongly – that crime fiction is all about gangsters
with machine guns, drugs, bank heists and gung-ho cops who can be as vicious as
the bad guys. I think an important part of helping pupils to make decisions about
this genre and others is to show them something of its variety and its essence.
