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IELTS Sample Essay: Popularity of Crime Novels and TV Dramas

In this post, I’m going to write an IELTS sample essay in response to a task published in Cambridge IELTS 15 General Training . It’s a question about the popularity of crime novels and crime dramas on TV .

As with my other IELTS sample essays , I’m going to use my 5 Step Approach for planning and writing an IELTS Writing Task 2 essay.

Step 1: Understand Task

Step 2: decide position, step 3: plan, step 4: write, step 5: check.

Here is the task:

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular?

What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

First I need to make sure I understand the task fully.

So my task is to discuss why crime novels and TV crime dramas are popular , and what my opinion is of them . It’s NOT asking me to discuss documentaries about crime, or news stories about crime. Only novels and TV dramas. So I think this perhaps means not movies.

Discuss : novels, TV dramas about crime Don’t discuss : news stories, documentaries (movies about crime?)

There is a slightly confusing thing in the task:

The topic statement says: “ becoming more and more popular ”
The question says “ are popular ”

So am I being asked to discuss why they are becoming more popular (i.e. a trend over time) or why they are popular (i.e. a situation today)? I think it’s better to go with the question: “why…are [they] popular”.

Re-worded Task

So a re-worded task might be this:

Why are crime novels and TV crime dramas popular?
What do I think of them?

This helps me to understand the task more clearly (assuming my re-wording is accurate!)

Ok, so I understand my task. Next… what’s my position on this topic? What’s my answer to this question? What do I think?

I don’t like this task at all! I rarely watch crime shows on TV and I almost never read crime fiction. I have little interest in them, and so I’m not sure why other people read and watch them. I had to really think hard to come up with some reasons why.

I eventually thought of 2 reasons:

People love stories where good people overcome bad people, and crime stories fit into this kind of story well: the good detective overcoming the evil criminal
People are fascinated by the lives of criminals, because criminals often have extreme lifestyles: violent, wealthy, etc.

I thought of a 3rd reason, but discarded this: crime stories are gripping. That’s a bit harder to explain, so I went with the fascination with the lives of criminals.

However, I must be careful with my 2nd reason – my task is to discuss TV crime drama (as well as novels), not documentaries or movies, so I would have to make sure I discussed TV drama that’s based on real life stories. As you will see from the essay, I mentioned a movie (Legend) as an example of crime drama – strictly speaking, it’s not TV crime drama, so it’s risky. However, I worded this carefully, mentioning that I watched it on TV, and I called it a dramatisation, so I think an IELTS examiner would see it as relevant to the task. (It’s a little risky, but I think it’s the only crime drama I’ve watched in 10 years!)

Then I have to answer the question: “What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?” What do I think of them?

Not much, to be honest! I don’t really watch them. But this is a perfectly fine opinion to present. I do, however, like watching crime dramas that are about real life stories.

Ok, so that’s my position, and it’s helped me to generate my main ideas. Next I need to plan out my ideas. This will help me do 2 more things: (1) develop these ideas (i.e. extend and support them), and (2) organise my ideas.

Here’s a photo of my essay plan. (I hope you can read my handwriting!) I’ve also annotated the plan with BP1, BP2 and BP3 to indicate which body paragraphs to write each idea in.

(By the way, I kept changing my example of the good detective – in my plan I crossed out Hercule Poirot and changes it to Sherlock Holmes. While writing, I realised Miss Marple was a better example!)

So I’ve got a clear plan – I’ve got a map of my essay. My next step is to turn this plan into an essay. Here is my essay for this question:

Stories about criminal activity, both fictional and real-life, have become increasingly popular over the last few decades. There are many possible reasons for this, but the two primary ones that I can think of are the underlying desire of people to see good overcome evil, and a fascination with criminal lifestyles.

Almost all stories about crime, whether in print or on TV, are about good people, such as detectives and law-abiding civilians, triumphing over bad people, namely criminals. We often see this in fictional detective stories, where an otherwise ordinary person uses their intellect and skill to identify evil criminal masterminds. A good example of this is Miss Marple, an elderly woman who always manages to track down and apprehend evil criminals.

A second reason is that people have a fascination with the lives of criminals. Perhaps this is to do with people’s need for escapism. One of the most popular crime dramas in the UK of the last 20 years was ‘Legend’, a dramatisation of the lives of the Kray Twins, two violent London gang leaders of the 1960s. The film, which I watched on TV, portrayed their violent behaviour, along with their opulent and chaotic lifestyles, and I do feel that people find this compelling viewing, despite how it shows evil people succeeding.

Personally, unless it is related to real-life stories, I have little interest in either crime fiction or crime drama. I find their plots too repetitive. With true crime stories, however, I can learn something about social history and psychology. Why, for example, do people turn to lives of crime? Is it simply for money, or are they motivated by power as well? And what causes people to join gangs and follow people like the Krays? These are all interesting questions.

In summary, a desire to see good triumph over evil, along with a fascination with evil, are two reasons I think underlie the popularity of crime stories, but my interest in them is mainly limited to dramatisations of real lives.

(335 words)

Step 5 would be to check your essay. Because I’m writing a blog post, I checked and edited my essay before publishing!

Comments on Vocabulary

I’ve used a wide range of phrases which have a clear, precise meaning, for example:

criminal activity
a fascination with criminal lifestyles
law-abiding civilians
an otherwise ordinary person
evil criminal masterminds
manages to track down and apprehend
people’s need for escapism
their opulent and chaotic lifestyles
compelling viewing

“crime” and “criminal”

I used the word “crime” 7 times and “criminal” 6 times. It’s almost impossible to avoid repeating these words as they have no exact synonyms.

Some IELTS test takers might change “crime” to “offence”, e.g. they would change:

“Almost all stories about crime ” to
“Almost all stories about offences ”

But “offences” has a more general meaning than “crime”, so it makes the writing less precise. It also makes the writing less natural

Or test takers might change:

“Stories about criminal activity, both fictional and real-life” , to
“Stories about illegal activity, both fictional and real-life”

But “illegal” has a more general, less clear meaning than “criminal”.

So you often have to repeat words which have a precise meaning. The alternative is to use imprecise, unnatural vocabulary, which will limit your band score for lexical resource.

I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions or thoughts about my essay, please add them in the comments below. Thanks for reading! And don’t forget to read my other IELTS sample essays .

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Band 6+: In many countries today, crime novels and TV dramas are becoming more and more popular? Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular? What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

Indeed, the popularity of crime TV shows and movies has gradually increased among viewers. This can be explained according to its attraction and reality relation. This kind of entertainment greatly impacts educating people about safety and drawing more attention to the field of crime.

There are several reasons why crime entertainment is becoming more favored nowadays, the most notable of which are attracting mysteries and the real existence of cases. As far as the first idea is concerned, most people are drawn to the thrill of details combined with fascinating storytelling. In particular, mysterious and unsolved cases can easily catch the watcher’s attention. Additionally, TV shows and movies about crime unfold a full investigation in front of the viewers which realize the situation and provide realistic experience. Therefore, people will get a better understanding of what is happening.

Crime-related entertainment mainly results in safety education and the moderate popularity of crime occupation. About the former, this kind of entertainment raises our awareness and knowledge of personal safety through the level of seriousness in each episode. Moreover, by witnessing criminal cases, people become more concerned about this field, which has previously experienced low consideration. Consequently, crime-related majors are having their position in job forethought in the future.

In conclusion, the growth of crime TV shows and movies can be put into explanation of attractive storytelling and realistic investigation. This kind of entertainment raises awareness about self-safety and allows crime-related majors to gain more attention.

Check Your Own Essay On This Topic?

Generate a band-9 sample with your idea, overall band score, task response, coherence & cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range & accuracy, essays on the same topic:, in many countries today, crime novels and tv dramas are becoming more and more popular why do you think these books and tv shows are popular what is your opinion of crime fiction and tv crime dramas.

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Ielts essay # 1247 - crime novels and tv crime dramas are becoming more popular, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, in many countries today, crime novels and tv crime dramas are becoming more and more popular., why do you think these books and tv shows are popular what is your opinion of crime fiction and tv crime dramas.

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Essay 224 – Crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming popular

Gt writing task 2 / essay sample # 224.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular? What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Model Answer 1:

Nowadays, in many parts of the world, crime fiction and TV crime shows have grown increasingly popular. This essay will discuss the logical reason for this trend before venturing into any opinion.

The reason behind this growing popularity of crime fiction and TV shows is that people have an inherent aspiration for justice. We also have a continuing need for resolution and our psyche desires that good wins against evil, yet the world we live in cannot match our expectation for justice. While browsing online news sources or the daily newspapers, we are bombarded with negative news insisting that incidents are beyond our control. In this grim reality, escaping from reality and immersing in crime-related shows or novels very often offer us the resolution we may otherwise lack.

Moreover, it is a genre where good mostly wins and evil is punished ultimately. Thus, the compelling reason for the popularity of crime-related fiction and TV series is that this genre brings criminals to justice. Finally, these stories and shows are fast-paced and come with suspensions and thrills which excite us as readers and viewers. So, with the availability of the internet, and streaming services, such programmes are becoming popular faster than ever.

For me, however, crime thrillers or dramas offer an ideal combination of horror and safe. To illustrate, when a viewer starts a crime show, there is one thing they can be fairly sure that the protagonist will vanquish the antagonist, save the child, catch the terrorist, or prevent the globe from being devastated, in most cases. For me, as a viewer, the triumphant smile of the hero is quite important; because it reminds me that there is hope and that there is someone out there, no matter how ordinary, who will take a stand.

To conclude, viewers and readers are interested in crime-based TV series or novels these days, more than in the past, due to their intrinsic need for justice, but my interest in this genre is limited to the significance of the victory of the good over the bad.

Model Answer 2:

The popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas has grown significantly in many countries around the world. This essay will explore the reasons behind their popularity and present my opinion on crime fiction and TV crime dramas.

One reason for the popularity of crime-based fiction and TV dramas is the human fascination with crime and the desire to solve mysteries. These stories offer a glimpse into the dark side of human nature, providing a sense of thrill and excitement for the audience. The intricate plots and puzzles that need to be solved create an immersive experience that engages the audience and encourages them to participate in the story.

Another reason for their popularity is their ability to address social issues and provide commentary on contemporary society. Many crime novels and TV crime dramas tackle topics such as corruption, inequality, and justice, making them a powerful tool for social commentary and critique. They can also serve as a means of educating the public about the inner workings of law enforcement and the justice system.

In my opinion, crime fiction and TV crime dramas can be both entertaining and educational. As an avid reader and viewer of crime stories, I appreciate their ability to engage my mind and provide a means of escape from the real world. However, I also recognize their potential to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and misinformation about crime and the criminal justice system. It is important to approach these stories with a critical eye and recognize that they are works of fiction that do not necessarily reflect reality.

In conclusion, the popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas can be attributed to their ability to captivate and engage the audience, as well as their potential to address social issues and provide commentary on contemporary society. While they can be both entertaining and educational, it is important to approach them with a critical eye and realise their limitations as works of fiction.

One Comment to “Essay 224 – Crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming popular”

Nowadays, crime novels and crime serials are becoming more and more popular as they combine the sense of thrill and curiosity irrespective of the age and gender of the audience. However in my opinion the popularity of these crime novels and dramas creates negative impacts not only on the youths but also on society as a whole.

Humans are always enthusiastic about the unknown, and curious about uncertainty and thrilling events. And these series and stories offer those ingredients pretty perfectly. This is why they are so popular. With the widespread availability of TV, the internet and smartphones, those thrilling stories and novels and ubiquitous. With the fast-paced and busy life, people want something thrilling to enjoy and make the best of the time they spend reading or watching those stories. This is another reason for the popularity of such crime novels and dramas.

These shows and crime stories provide ideas and notions of how others perform robbery or street crimes. For instance, they create the whole story before murder or rape; give all the possible clues and options. Secondly, in many such shows or novels, the robber, criminal or the thief is the hero of the story, so it excruciatingly fascinates most teenagers. It harms society as a whole. Instead of focusing on the crime subject, the writer may consider promoting human values and beliefs, ensuring practicality by the means of various activity-based shows and stories.

In conclusion, in my perception, these shows and stories may inspire youth to take a criminal as a hero, and commit crimes that are unacceptable to society. It would be far better to present stories to youths that crimes of any sort are heinous and they should be given the message that crimes have to pay very badly.

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Born a Crime

Table of contents.

Essay 1: “Trevor Noah’s book is as much a tragedy as it is a comedy.” To want extent do you agree

Essay 2: “She never let me see us as victims. We were victims, me and my mom, Andrew and Isaac. Victims of apartheid. Victims of abuse. But I was never allowed to think that way, and I didn’t see her life that way.” To what extent were Trevor Noah and his family victims?

Essay 3: “I never felt poor because our lives were so rich with experiences.” Did Trevor Noah suffer because of the poverty of his youth?
Essay 4: How does Trevor Noah explore the challenges of growing up coloured in post-apartheid South Africa
Essay 5: How does Trevor Noah explore the challenges of growing up coloured in post-apartheid South Africa.
Essay 6: The text explores the complexities of relationship between men and women. Discuss

Trevor Noah’s memoir, “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood,” is a compelling narrative that masterfully intertwines tragedy and comedy, while simultaneously highlighting the profound influence of women. Through a series of vignettes that paint a vivid picture of his tumultuous upbringing during apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, Noah navigates the complexities of race, identity, and socio-economic struggles. His unique comedic lens offers a refreshing yet poignant perspective on these weighty topics, demonstrating that humour can coexist with, and even accentuate, the tragic elements of life. This duality not only enriches the memoir but also underscores the resilience and strength of women who played a pivotal role in Trevor’s life.

Throughout the author’s childhood memories, the pervasive violence and systemic injustice are vividly depicted. Noah’s memoir does not shy away from the stark realities of his upbringing. After her mum was married with his stepfather, Noah recounts a particularly harrowing experience involving Abel’s abuse of “throwing [Trevor’s] mom down a flight of stairs”. This starkly illustrates the tragic aspects of Noah’s life, painting a vivid picture of the domestic violence and instability he endured. Furthermore, Noah also delves into the broader societal violence that defined South African life during and after apartheid. He describes incidents of police brutality and the constant oppression against the minorities in a society, providing a sobering backdrop to his personal stories. In South Africa, the police were the army. “They were not there to protect us; they were there to oppress us”, the institutionalised oppression that was an inescapable part of daily life for many South Africans. Furthermore, the harsh reality of systemic injustice faced by the vulnerable is vividly depicted in Noah’s recounting of being arrested and fearing for his life in jail, as he bluntly narrates that ‘if [individuals] are poor’ and ‘don’t know how the [legal] system works’, they can end up being ‘locked up’ even without conviction. Despite the severity of the circumstances, Noah’s humorous depictions of his surreal feelings of the prison experiences and his eventual realisation that ‘oh, shit, this is real’ lighten the mood of the narration. By interspersing these tragic realities with moments of humor, Noah creates a more profound impact, forcing readers to confront the harsh truths while also allowing them to see the resilience and adaptability of those who lived through such times.

The author’s use of humor as a coping mechanism is a testament to the power of comedy in navigating and surviving tragedy. Noah’s ability to juxtapose humor with hardship is a defining feature of his memoir. One poignant example is his description of apartheid applications in South Africa where ‘Japanese people were labeled as white’ whilst Chinese were considered as black. His amusing imagination of the incapability of ‘South African policeman’ to distinguish between a Chinese and a Japanese is indeed humorous and satirical. Thus, Noah’s comedic lens does not diminish the severity of his experiences but rather provides a coping mechanism and a means to convey the ludicrousness of the societal norms he lived under. His humor serves as a bridge, making the tragic elements more accessible and poignant for the reader. Furthermore, at the commence of the memoir, he recounts the experience of being thrown out of a moving minibus by his mother to escape a dangerous situation. While the event itself is terrifying, Noah narrates it with a comedic twist, condemning the unreal of “Hollywood movies”, that “people will actually get hurt” when they are threw or jump out of window. This ability to find humor in dire circumstances speaks to Noah’s resilience and the resilience of those around him. It also underscores the absurdity of living under constant threat, where even the most extreme measures become fodder for comedy. Through this blend of humor and tragedy, Noah effectively conveys the surreal and often ludicrous nature of the dangers he faced growing up. Thus, this comedic lens does not diminish the gravity of the situations he describes but rather enhances the reader’s understanding of their complexity. Through humor, Noah is able to critique the absurdity of apartheid, challenge societal norms, and celebrate the resilience of those who, like him, navigated life’s injustices with grace and wit.

However, depicting the present of humor and tragedy, the memoir also highlights the powerful influence of his mother on his way to mature, characterising it as being a bildungsroman/coming of age text. Patricia Noah, whose resilience and defiance against patriarchal and apartheid constraints are a constant source of strength for Noah. She placed immense value on ‘learning’ and made considerable sacrifices to ensure Trevor received a good education. Patricia believed that education was the key to breaking the cycle of poverty and oppression, and she went to great lengths to provide opportunities for her son. She passed the language down to Noah, teaching him English as his first language and also languages from different tribes, allowing him to have the freedom of choice. Noah states in his memoir “My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to think”, this highlights Patricia’s role in shaping Noah’s cognitive and linguistic abilities, equipping him with the tools to navigate a complex society. Patricia’s efforts extended beyond academics. She exposed Noah to ‘fancy white neighborhoods’ to show him a world beyond the limitations of his upbringing. More importantly for Noah were the lessons his mother taught him, namely that ‘the ghetto is not the world.’ She instilled in him the belief that he could aspire to a bigger and brighter future. This reflects Patricia’s determination to inspire and empower her son, ensuring that he understood his potential despite their circumstances. Thus, her actions and resilience not only shaped Noah’s life and helped him overcome difficulties but also serve as an inspiration to readers, highlighting the transformative power of women in overcoming adversity.

In “Born a Crime,” Trevor Noah masterfully blends tragedy and comedy to offer a multifaceted narrative of his childhood in South Africa. The comedic elements provide relief and a unique perspective on the absurdities of apartheid, while the tragic aspects ground the memoir in the harsh realities of systemic racism and violence. Central to Noah’s story is the enduring strength of women, particularly his mother, whose resilience and determination profoundly shaped his life. Through humor and tragedy, Noah not only recounts his personal experiences but also celebrates the transformative power of women, making “Born a Crime” a powerful and inspiring memoir. The memoir stands as a testament to the human spirit’s resilience, the importance of humor in facing life’s challenges, and the pivotal role of women in shaping and nurturing that spirit.

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IELTS Essay Topic: In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

Updated on
Jun 30, 2023

Q- In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular. Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular? What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

Ans- In recent years, crime novels and TV crime dramas have gained immense popularity in many countries. This essay aims to delve into the reasons behind the increasing popularity of these books and shows. Additionally, it will provide a personal opinion that crime fiction and TV crime dramas can be captivating and enjoyable forms of entertainment.

One reason for the popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas is the inherent human fascination with the darker side of life. Crime stories offer a thrilling escape from everyday monotony, providing an adrenaline rush as readers or viewers navigate the twists and turns of complex mysteries. The suspense and unpredictability of these narratives can be highly engaging, keeping audiences hooked and craving for more. Furthermore, crime novels and TV crime dramas often explore the intricacies of the human psyche and delve into the motives behind criminal behavior. They offer insights into the minds of both perpetrators and investigators, allowing audiences to analyze and understand the complexities of criminal psychology. This psychological element adds an intellectual appeal to the genre, appealing to those interested in human behaviour and the intricate workings of the criminal justice system.

From a personal perspective, crime fiction and TV crime dramas can be captivating and enjoyable form of entertainment. The intricate plots, well-developed characters, and suspenseful storytelling often make for compelling narratives. They provide an opportunity to engage in critical thinking, piecing together clues and attempting to solve the mysteries alongside the protagonists. However, it is important to maintain a balance and not become desensitized to the portrayal of violence and criminal activities. It is crucial to remember that these narratives are fictional and should not be confused with reality.

The growing popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas can be attributed to their ability to captivate audiences through thrilling narratives, psychological depth, and the promise of justice. Personally, I find them to be an engaging form of entertainment that offers both escapism and an opportunity for intellectual stimulation. However, it is essential to consume such content responsibly and maintain an awareness of the line between fiction and reality.

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Crime in Literature

Crime has been a popular topic of literature for centuries, inspiring countless authors to explore the psychological and moral complexities of criminal behavior. From classic novels such as Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) to modern works like Don Winslow's The Cartel (2015), crime fiction offers readers an opportunity to engage with stories that are both thrilling and thought-provoking. By delving into the motivations behind crimes—from desperation or greed to revenge or justice—literature can provide valuable insights into how society responds to lawlessness.

At its core, crime fiction is about people: their relationships with each other, their feelings of guilt and remorse, and their struggle between morality and self-interest. In many cases, these characters are driven by inner demons they must confront in order to achieve redemption or absolution. One example is found in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Atticus Finch stands up against racism despite knowing it will bring him criticism from his neighbors because he believes "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." Similarly, Sherlock Holmes uses deductive reasoning not only to solve mysteries but also to find justice for those wronged by criminals, even if it means putting himself at risk along the way.

The choice between good and evil plays out differently depending on the context within different genres of crime fiction, too. Hardboiled detective stories often feature protagonists who take matters into their own hands when authorities fail them, while true crime narratives focus more on unraveling facts than exploring ethical dilemmas associated with breaking laws. Meanwhile, historical settings give authors an opportunity to explore social issues like poverty that may have contributed to criminality during certain periods of time—something we see explored through Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (1862). On another note, psychological thrillers use suspenseful plotlines filled with twists and turns, as well as unreliable narrators who leave readers questioning what truly happened until the very end.

At times, these themes make us uncomfortable but ultimately offer us powerful lessons about human nature that still remain relevant today, regardless of whether you read Agatha Christie or Elmore Leonard, two master writers who differ significantly in style yet share common threads when it comes to examining why people break laws despite understanding the consequences that come along with doing so. It could be argued then that there is no single answer since every case varies depending on individual circumstances; however, one thing remains clear: reading great pieces of literary work surrounding topics related directly and indirectly allows us to gain a better perspective on how our society views the legal system today, which makes this genre evergreen among all types of book lovers alike.

The Godfather is an iconic novel written by Mario Puzo in 1969. It tells the story of a powerful Italian-American mafia family, focusing on its patriarch, Vito Corleone, and his youngest son, Michael. This epic crime saga has become one of the most renowned works of literature in modern times.

The Godfather

A thought of a crime is not a crime within the context of law; however, it is a sin; a way of hell, indeed. A thought of a crime is not a crime within the context of law; however, it is a sin; a way of hell, indeed. A thought of a crime is not a crime within the context of law; however, it is a sin; a way of hell, indeed. A thought of a crime is not a crime within the context of law; however, it is a sin; a way of hell, indeed. A thought of a crime is not a crime within the context of law; however

said to sad that crime is a big part of society .There are numerous of reason why a person commit a crime, here a couple of them it could be the person lifestyle , how they was raise, another reason crime is committed because the person could be envy and jealous of a person so they result in crime and also people commit crime because they are pure evil and have no morals and do not care about right and wrong. The four crimes I am going to introduce and speak about is four major crime that take place

Public order crimes are acts considered illegal because they do not conform to society’s general ideas of normal social behavior and moral values (Siegel, 2000). Public order crimes are viewed as harmful to the public good or harmful and disruptive to a community’s daily life (Siegel, 2000). Some public order crimes are considered very serious, others are legal in some places and at sometimes and others are illegal at other times and in other places (Sage, n.d., p. 218). It is thought that allowing

spoken is Spanish and Nawat. The population is over 6 million people. Crime in El Salvador is a big issue. They are a growing player in the drug trafficking business, serving as a recipient and storage point along the Pacific Coast. Majority of the country’s problem is from street gangs known as “maras”, which help make El Salvador one of the most dangerous places in the world. According to the United Nations on Drugs and Crime, in 2011 the homicide rate was 69.2 per 100,000. There is no secret

Defining the meaning of corporate crime and describing its features will allow for a comparison with conventional crime. This will require a detailed description of conventional crimes and examples which will enable me to demonstrate how corporate crime differs from conventional crime and how corporate crime challenges the conventional definitions of crime. Corporate Crime The key to understanding a corporate crime is having a description which is ‘illegal acts or omissions, punishable by the state

Many people don’t recognize white collar crime as a crime. For some reason, they do not think white Collar crime as illegal. As it is a non-violent crime and have no direct damage to people. Even if white collar crime is non-violent crime, it affects a lot to consumers, corporate, and economy. Nevertheless, unlike its recognition white collar crime deals with the money, white collar crime affect a lot to society. White collar crime are criminal acts that are enacted by people during the course of

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What Makes Great Detective Fiction, According to T. S. Eliot

Well before detective stories came into literary vogue T. S. Eliot had become one of the genres most passionate and...

In 1944 the literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote an exasperated essay in the pages of The New Yorker titled “ Why Do People Read Detective Stories? ” Wilson, who at the time was about to go abroad to cover the Allied bombing campaign on Germany, felt that he’d outgrown the detective genre by the age of twelve, by which time he’d read through the stories of the early masters, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Yet everyone he knew seemed to be addicted. His wife at the time, Mary McCarthy, was in the habit of recommending her favorite detective novels to their émigré pal Vladimir Nabokov; she lent him H. F. Heard’s beekeeper whodunit “A Taste for Honey,” which the Russian author enjoyed while recovering from dental surgery. (After reading Wilson’s essay, Nabokov advised his friend not to dismiss the genre tout court until he’d tried some Dorothy L. Sayers.) Surrounded on all sides by detection connoisseurs, Wilson sounded genuinely perplexed when he wondered, “What, then, is the spell of the detective story that has been felt by T. S. Eliot and Paul Elmer More but which I seem to be unable to feel?”

That T. S. Eliot , of all people, was a devoted fan of the genre must have rankled Wilson in particular. Eliot, the author of famously difficult and formidably learned poems, whose every critical pronouncement was seized upon by dons and converted into doctrine, was an unimpeachable authority in matters of literary judgment. Wilson, indeed, had played a part in establishing Eliot’s reputation as such, having gushed, in his era-defining study “Axel’s Castle” (1931), that the poet-critic had an “infinitely sensitive apparatus for aesthetic appreciation”—a sensitivity presumably not worth squandering on something as puerile and formulaic as mysteries.

But, as scholars like David Chinitz have pointed out, Eliot’s attitude toward popular art forms was more capacious and ambivalent than he’s often given credit for. His most formally ambitious poetry retained something of the jumpy syncopations of the ragtime he’d heard growing up in St. Louis; in his later years he wanted nothing more than to have a hit on Broadway. And it so happens that, well before detective stories came into vogue among Wilson’s cohort, Eliot had become one of the genre’s most passionate and discerning readers. Among the many treasures to be found in the third volume of “The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot,” which is now out from Johns Hopkins University Press, are a number of reviews of detective novels which Eliot published, with no byline, in his literary journal The Criterion , in 1927. In them, we see not only Eliot’s passion for detective fiction but his attempts to codify the genre in the midst of some of its most momentous evolutions.

Eliot was composing his reviews in the early years of detective fiction’s Golden Age, when authors like Sayers, Agatha Christie, and John Dickson Carr were churning out genteel whodunits featuring motley arrays of suspects and outlandish murder methods. More even than the stories of Poe or Doyle, the early work that to Eliot served as a model for the genre was “The Moonstone,” by Wilkie Collins, a sprawling melodrama about the theft and recovery of an Indian diamond, which appeared in serial installments in Charles Dickens’s All the Year Round magazine in 1868. In his introduction to the 1928 Oxford World Classics edition of the novel, Eliot called it “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.” (This blurb still adorns Oxford paperback editions.) The story is full of protracted plot twists and portentous cliffhangers, many of them not of particular relevance to the mystery at hand; we are told as much about the reading habits of the house-steward, a fan of “Robinson Crusoe,” and the fraught romance between the handsome Franklin Blake and the impetuous Rachel Verinder, as we are about the circumstances surrounding the heist. For Eliot, such digressions helped lend the mystery an “intangible human element.” In a review written in the January, 1927, issue of The Criterion , he claimed that all good detective fiction “tends to return and approximate to the practice of Wilkie Collins.”

A key tenet of Golden Age detection was “fair play”—the idea that an attentive reader must in theory have as good a shot at solving the mystery as the story’s detective. To establish parameters of fairness, Eliot suggests that “the character and motives of the criminal should be normal” and that “elaborate and incredible disguises” should be banned; he writes that a good detective story must not “rely either upon occult phenomena or … discoveries made by lonely scientists,” and that “elaborate and bizarre machinery is an irrelevance.” The latter rule would seem to exclude masterpieces like Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” which involves a murder carried out by a snake trained to shimmy through a heating duct, then down a bell rope whose tassel extends to the victim’s pillow. But Eliot admitted that most great works broke at least one of his rules. He in fact adored Arthur Conan Doyle, and was given to quoting long passages from the Holmes tales verbatim at parties, and to borrowing bits and ideas for his poems. (He confessed in a letter to John Hayward that the line “On the edge of a grimpen,” from “Four Quartets,” alludes to the desolate Grimpen Mire in “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”)

In the June, 1927, issue of The Criterion , Eliot continued to articulate his standards, reviewing another sixteen novels and drawing fine distinctions between mysteries, chronicles of true crimes, and detective stories proper. His favorite of the bunch was “The Benson Murder Case,” by S. S. Van Dine. One of the few American writers to factor into Eliot’s analyses of detective fiction, Van Dine was the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright, an art critic, freelance journalist, and sometime editor of The Smart Set , who, after suffering a nervous breakdown, spent two years in bed reading more than two thousand detective stories, during which time he methodically distilled the genre’s formulas and began writing novels. His detective, Philo Vance, was a leisurely aesthete prone to mini-lectures on Tanagra figurines, who approached detective work, as Eliot put it admiringly, “using methods similar to those which Mr. Bernard Berenson applies to paintings.”

In 1928, Van Dine would publish his own “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” in The American Magazine ; that same year, Ronald A. Knox—a Catholic priest and member of the mystery-writer’s group London Detection Club, along with Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and G. K. Chesterton—would put forth his Ten Commandments of detective fiction. It is hard to know if these authors would have been aware of Eliot’s own rules, published the year before, but many of their principles echo Eliot’s parameters of fair play: Van Dine wrote that “no willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader”; the Detection Club’s Oath, which was based on Knox’s commandments, required its members to promise that their stories would avoid making use of “Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or the Act of God.” (Christie had tested the limits of fairness with the twist-ending of her 1926 novel “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” causing a stir among devotees of the genre; in 1945 Edmund Wilson, having been deluged with angry mail after his first piece was published, wrote a follow-up titled “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?,” in which he deemed his experience reading a second batch of mystery novels “even more disillusioning than my experience with the first.”)

But in comparing Eliot’s reviews with the rules of these detective-fiction insiders, we can see just how idiosyncratic Eliot’s judgments could be. Where Van Dine specifies that “a detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked out character analyses”—exactly the qualities Eliot so admired in “The Moonstone”—Eliot, ever the literary historian, saw the genre as stemming from a deeper tradition of melodrama, which for him included everything from Jacobean revenge tragedies to “Bleak House.” “Those who have lived before such terms as ‘high-brow fiction,’ ‘thrillers’ and ‘detective fiction’ were invented,” Eliot wrote in an essay on Wilkie Collins and Dickens, “realize that melodrama is perennial and that the craving for it is perennial.” Good detective fiction tempered the passion and pursuit of melodrama with the “beauty of a mathematical problem”; an unsuccessful story, Eliot wrote, was one that “fails between two possible tasks … the pure intellectual pleasure of Poe and the fullness and abundance of life of Collins.” What he appreciated, in other words, was the genre’s capacity for conveying intensity of sentiment and human experience within taut formal designs—a quality that might just as soon apply to literary fiction or poetry.

It is disappointing, then, that Eliot’s reviews included no opinions on the new kind of literary detective novel that was taking shape across the ocean. At precisely the moment when Eliot was laying down his rules in The Criterion , Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective and an enthusiastic reader of “The Waste Land,” was in the process of serializing his tale of a jewel-encrusted statuette in the pages of Black Mask. Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” marked a shift in detective fiction, away from decorous country-house puzzles into a meaner, starker, bleaker kind of urban crime thriller, in which the mechanics of the crime were often less essential than the atmosphere through which the characters moved. With the advent of this “hardboiled” style, the British murder mysteries began to seem quaint and artificial. (In his 1950 essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler would deem Van Dine’s Philo Vance “probably the most asinine character in detective fiction.”) One wonders what Eliot, who built his great poem around the Grail legend, would have made of “The Maltese Falcon,” with its cosmopolite eccentrics chasing after a shadowy MacGuffin with a history going back to the Knights Templar. And one wonders what, with his more-British-than-the-British expat sensibilities, he would have made of this bold new American literature.

It’s possible, though, that Eliot’s affinity for Golden Age detective stories had only partially to do with the genre’s literary merits. During the year he wrote his mystery reviews, Eliot was undergoing a sharp turn to the right politically, and was steeped in dense works of theology in preparation for his baptism into the Anglo-Catholic church. (In a June, 1927, letter to his friend Virginia Woolf he described himself, only half-jokingly, as a “person who specializes in detective stories and ecclesiastical history.”) His conversion to a man of royalist proclivities and religious faith, after which he attended Mass every morning before heading off to work in Russell Square, was at least in part a matter of giving order to a world he saw as intolerably messy. At the end of his 1944 essay, Edmund Wilson suggested that it was no accident that the Golden Age of detection coincided with the period between the two World Wars: in a shattered civilization, there was something reassuring about the detective’s ability to link up all the broken fragments and “know just where to fix the guilt.” Such tidy solutions were to Wilson the mark of glib and simplistic genre fiction. But to Eliot, who in “The Waste Land” wrote of the fractured modern world as a “heap of broken images,” it seems possible that Golden Age detective stories offered above all a pleasing orderliness—a way of seeing ghastly disruptions restored to equilibrium with the soothing predictability of ritual.

The Fraught Friendship of T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx

How crime fiction went global, embracing themes from decolonisation to climate change

Senior Lecturer, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University

Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Newcastle, Australia, University of Newcastle

Associate Professor, University of Newcastle

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

University of Newcastle provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Once seen as the purview of British and American writers, crime fiction is very much a global phenomenon. Fictional investigators such as Lisbeth Salander, Kurt Wallander and Jules Maigret are now perhaps as well known as Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.

Crime fiction today is written, published, sold and read on all continents. In many countries, it ranks among the most popular forms of literature. It might not be an exaggeration to claim that crime fiction is the most global of literary genres.

For English-language readers, however, the world of crime fiction was, until recently, limited to a few authors writing in other languages, like Franco-Belgian Georges Simenon and Swedish partners in crime Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö . Other writers were of course translated, but they found it hard to enter a marketplace already crowded with British and American crime fiction.

When readers of English wanted to go beyond Paris and Stockholm, British and American writers themselves filled in the gaps. They did this either by sending their detectives on investigations abroad (one model is Poirot’s excursions in France and the Middle East), or by writing “foreign” crime novels – like Alexander McCall Smith’s bestselling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

That English-speaking readers had little access to the world’s crime fiction did not, of course, mean that it didn’t exist. It just wasn’t available in translation. This has changed over the last 20 years as a result of a boom in crime fiction translations. In particular, translations of “Nordic Noir” have exposed English-language readers to the diversity of the world’s crime fiction.

Read more: My favourite detective: Jules Maigret, the Paris detective with a pipe but no pretence

A long history of innovation

The publication in English of crime fiction from around the world has surprised many, challenging some firmly held views about the genre.

Consider the common idea that Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre in 1841 when he published The Murders in the Rue Morgue . Poe’s story itself is more modest and mentions Eugène François Vidocq , the real-life criminal cum chief of the Parisian police, whose fictionalised memoirs predate Poe’s story.

Poe was also influenced by E.T.A Hoffmann, whose 1814 novella Mademoiselle de Scuderi contains an amateur detective of sorts. Poe may also have found inspiration in stories of crime and investigation in classic literature. In Arabian Nights, for example, Scheherazade tells the story of a murder investigation to stave off her own murder.

Looking further east, a popular and dynamic form of crime writing known as gong’an , or court-case fiction, had already emerged in China in the 10th century. These court-case stories were exported to Korea and Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries, where local writers adapted the Chinese originals to Korean and Japanese settings.

Chinese court-case fictions made their way to the West in 1949 through Robert Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and sinologist. Van Gulik translated into English an 18th-century novel featuring Judge Dee before launching a long series of his own featuring this Chinese magistrate.

Despite this more complex, transnational account of the genre’s worldwide development, there is a persistent belief that crime fiction from around the world is merely imitative of British and American models. This belief is a consequence of the widespread adoption of the western conventions of crime writing, sometimes displacing, but not erasing local traditions, like the gong’an .

In China in 1914, for example, Cheng Xiaoqing, a translator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, began a series of popular short stories featuring amateur detective Huo Sang. Similarly, in Japan, Seishi Yokomizo played with the locked-room mystery format in The Honjin Murders (1948). This novel launched a series of 77 titles that eventually sold over 55 million copies. It has only recently become available in English translation.

The adaptation of British and American models has tended to reinforce the view that, as mere imitation, the fundamental interest of world crime fiction lies in its depiction of place. This assumption is only reinforced by critics who seek to account for the growing popularity of world crime fiction.

The Independent’s Jonathan Gibbs focuses on place by taking readers Around the World in 80 Sleuths . In the essay Death Takes a Holiday , Marilyn Stasio recommends a crime fictional tour for her New York Review of Books’ readership that begins in Cuba and ends up in Botswana, stopping on the way in places such as Melbourne, Shanghai, Sicily, Japan, Spain and Egypt.

Gibbs and Stasio share a belief, summed up by Clive James in his New Yorker essay Blood on the Borders , that international crime novels “essentially […] are guidebooks”. Having “run through all its possible variations of plot and character”, the crime novel, James asserts, is not a matter “of what happens but of where”.

This is a compelling idea, one that is often repeated by critics and scholars. But James is wrong. Editing The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction (2022) has taught us that world crime fiction is nothing of the kind. For writers like Ukrainian Andrey Kurkov , Argentine Claudia Piñeiro , and Israeli Dror Mishani , both crimes and where they happen are important.

These writers don’t produce edgy guidebooks for foreigners. They use the international forms and tropes as a means of critically examining the political, socio-economic and historical issues of the local setting for local readers. For James and others, these crime scenes may be foreign, but they are not foreign for the citizen-readers of the places the novels are set.

The crime novel, moreover, is far from having exhausted its ability to innovate, as James suggests. Our research into world crime fiction has thrown up some fascinating examples of the ways in which writers from around the world, including here in Australia, have blended international and local literary conventions and expanded the genre’s possibilities.

This blending of different literary traditions sometimes happens in a smooth and almost seamless way. Indonesian Eka Kurniawan is a good example. When growing up in a Javanese village, Kurniawan was exposed both to local legends and Western popular fiction. At university, he was equally interested in postcolonial Indonesian writers and the classics of Western modernism. As a result, his crime novel Man Tiger (2004) mixes local and Western influences.

The novel tells the story of a good-natured young man, Margio, who one day brutally murders a wealthy villager. In telling this story, Kurniawan sends a nod to another classic of world crime fiction, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981). Like Márquez’s novella, Man Tiger turns the crime novel upside down by revealing the identity of the murderer on the first page. The rest of the book is dedicated to explaining this seemingly unmotivated murder. As readers learn early in the novel, Margio harbours within him a ferocious white tiger. An unexpected supernatural element in a crime story, this spirit being is a striking symbol of rage and the desire for justice and revenge. When Margio is pushed beyond his breaking point, the tiger erupts with uncontrollable violence.

Interestingly, Kurniawan combines various literary styles and influences. The frequent shifts between different narrators and points in time can be seen as a device inherited from oral storytelling. Yet a see-sawing narrative of this kind is also a hallmark of Western modernism. In the same way, the spirit tiger is based on a local Indonesian legend, but it also has links to the Western literary motif of the “animal within”, as depicted most famously in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Although Kurniawan draws on Western crime-fiction conventions, he always blends them with Indonesian forms and themes.

Reflecting Indonesia’s historical status as a place where East meets West, Man Tiger is a hotchpotch of influences. The combination is both productive and innovative. It enables Kurniawan to tell a poignant story about injustice and lack of opportunities for young people in rural Indonesia. Man Tiger is both highly localised and highly globalised; it creates a literary form that is hybrid rather than simply the product of a single national tradition.

Read more: My favourite detective: Kurt Wallander — too grumpy to like, relatable enough to get under your skin

First Nations’ crime fiction

The melding of traditions can sometimes undo rather than integrate Western crime fiction conventions. First Nations’ crime fiction from the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries is a particularly good example of the push for genre reinvention.

For Indigenous authors, simply taking over Western crime fiction tropes is not an appealing option. These forms are often tainted by links to colonial and racist ideologies. Think, for example, of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, such as The Sign of Four or the short-story The Speckled Band , which are rife with racist and imperialist ideologies.

Moreover, canonical crime fiction is mostly based on Western forms of knowledge and does not reflect the Indigenous experience of policing and justice. Indigenous authors are therefore faced with the task of “decolonising” crime fiction – that is, reinventing the genre in ways that break with the colonial heritage and open up the form to Indigenous perspectives and knowledges.

Murri author Nicole Watson’s The Boundary (2011), for example, is a novel that draws on the standard elements of crime fiction, while at the same time trying to radically transform them. The story plays out against the background of colonial dispossession and its legacies in contemporary Australia.

Led by the Aboriginal lawyer Miranda Eversely, the fictional Corrowa people have filed a case with the Native Land Tribunal to reclaim part of their ancestral lands in central Brisbane. The claim is rejected, reflecting current Australian law. To gain Native Title, Aboriginal communities have to show a continuous connection to the land. This is something that Aboriginal communities cannot always do in a legally acceptable way, as colonisation often resulted in the severing of those connections.

The following morning, the judge in the case is found murdered. Shortly afterwards, two lawyers on the opposing side are also killed. Seeing the murders as acts of revenge, the police immediately cast their suspicion on the Corrowa People.

This all sounds like the blueprint for a standard police procedural, only with Aboriginal themes. The Boundary, however, is nothing of the sort. The novel is mainly interested in the police as a means of drawing attention to the organisation’s systemic racism. It describes how the two lead officers respond to the investigation in different ways. One of them, Jason Matthews, embarks on a process of reconnecting with his Aboriginal roots. The other, Andrew Higgins, goes on a rampage and beats an Indigenous man to death – a reflection of the ongoing tragedy of Aboriginal deaths in custody.

The Boundary pointedly undermines the notion that the ending of a crime novel is a moment of truth and healing. The solution offered by the police is shown to be either wrong or incomplete. Instead, the novel offers other possible solutions, one of which involves Red Feathers, an Aboriginal “cleverman”, who has returned to avenge the injustices done to the Corrowa. In another break with conventional Western crime fiction, this spiritual being is accepted as part of the novel’s broad Indigenous concept of reality.

The novel’s reluctance to answer the question of “whodunit” is important. It suggests that, from an Aboriginal perspective, true closure is difficult to achieve. Even if the murders could be pinned on a single person, the fundamental crimes of colonisation and dispossession would not be resolved. The Corrowa remain cut off from their traditional lands.

What Man Tiger and The Boundary have in common is the attempt to bend and mould the conventions of crime fiction to suit a new, non-Western setting. In doing so, they repeatedly violate the “rules” of the genre. Kurniawan’s early revelation of the killer and Watson’s unwillingness to offer a definitive solution are two examples of a much broader tendency. These are not simply responding to Western conventions. They also create new, locally sourced ways of telling a crime story - notably by introducing supernatural elements that traditionally have no place in traditional Western crime fiction.

Read more: Friday essay: scary tales for scary times

Contemporary issues

Authors from around the world also use the genre to debate issues that traditionally had little role to play in crime fiction. Often these debates revolve around crimes that transcend the nation and are of concern to both local and global readers.

Crimes against the environment have become an important topic in world crime fiction. In Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (2009), Polish Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk uses a crime narrative to call attention to animal rights. Provocatively, her protagonist equates the killing of animals with the murder of people. Chilean author Roberto Ampuero ’s El alemán de Atacama (1996) – “The German from Atacama” (the novel is yet to be translated into English) – focuses on multinational mining corporations that use Third World countries as a dumping ground for toxic waste. Authors such as Jordi de Manuel (Spain/Catalonia) and Antti Tuomainen (Finland) have written crime fiction with climate change as the central theme.

However, the range of world crime fiction is much wider and also involves other transnational themes such as global capitalism, drugs trafficking and migration.

Gender roles and gender inequalities are also examples of classic themes of Western crime fiction that are now being addressed in new ways by non-Western authors. Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018) offers a darkly humorous take on gender expectations and social media in Nigeria. Kishwar Desai has published three confronting novels about gender-based violence in India. And in Japan, Kirino Natsuo explores the impact of exploitative neoliberal practices on working-class women in Out (1997).

Some critics have argued that crime fiction is condemned forever to repeat the classic plot structures. But global crime fiction, far from being touristic or second-rate or formulaic, is a laboratory of innovation. It is constantly rewriting the genre’s rulebook and expanding its thematic repertoire. It has created new pathways for the genre by mixing international and local forms.

The next time you pick up a foreign crime novel you might find something that goes far beyond a gritty form of literary tourism. On the contrary, the harrowing acts of violence committed in world crime fiction provide insights into issues that affect us all.

Crime fiction
Literature in translation

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Crime Fiction: A Very Short Introduction

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Crime Fiction: A Very Short Introduction explores the history of ‘crime fiction’ and the various definitions of the genre and considers how it has developed over time. Discussing the popularity of crime fiction worldwide and its various styles; the role that gender plays within the genre; spy fiction, legal dramas, and thrillers; it explores how the crime novel was shaped by the work of British and American authors in the 18th and 19th centuries. Highlighting the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Chandler, the role of the crime novel in modern popular culture is considered and it asks whether crime fiction can be considered serious ‘literature’.

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'Cosy crime' novels: Are they brilliant entertainment or 'twee and insipid'?

Recently, authors like Richard Osman have become bestsellers with very comforting mystery novels, often involving amateur sleuths in rural locations. David Barnett reflects on the phenomenon.

A century ago, in 1923, crime fiction was truly flourishing. Agatha Christie's second novel featuring her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Murder on the Links, was published. Dorothy L Sayers burst on to the scene with her debut novel Whose Body?, and introduced the world to Lord Peter Wimsey. Meanwhile Dublin-born detective author Freeman Wills Croft published The Groote Park Murder, his fourth novel, and went on to write 30 more.

Women Are Writing the Best Crime Novels

They don’t seem to believe in heroes as much as their male counterparts, which in some ways makes their storytelling a better fit for the times.

Once upon a time , in the smoky, violent neverland of crime fiction, there were seductive creatures we called femmes fatales, hard women who lured sad men to their doom. Now there are girls. It started, of course, with Gillian Flynn, whose 2012 suburban thriller, Gone Girl , told a cruel tale of marriage and murder and sold a zillion copies. The most striking thing about Flynn’s cool, clever mystery is the childishness of its main characters, Nick and Amy Dunne, the sheer pettiness of the deadly games they play with each other. And the prize for winning is something like a gold star from the teacher: Gone Girl takes place in a world in which grown-up girls—and boys—will kill for no better reason than self-validation. This is not a world Raymond Chandler would have recognized. On the streets his people walked, motives were more basic—money, sex—and means were more direct. “When in doubt,” he once told his genre brethren, “have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” When today’s crime writers are in doubt, they have a woman come through the door with a passive-aggressive zinger on her lips.

For those of us who choose to entertain ourselves, from time to time, with made-up stories of murder, mayhem, and deceit, this is actually a welcome development, because the men with guns don’t do their job nearly as well as they used to. They’re old, they’re getting tired of walking through those doors, and the heroes they used to threaten—lone-wolf private eyes like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe—have practically disappeared from the genre. Like the cowboy, the private eye once embodied male fantasies of rugged individualism. As individualism itself became a less sustainable concept, the popular imagination began to relocate its mythic figures to places farther and farther away from the real-world settings of the old West and the modern city (to, say, the Marvel universe).

I miss those tough guys, with their cigarettes and their hats, but I’ve learned to do without them. I’ve read crime fiction all my life, and like most mystery lovers, I don’t really have a type. As a young reader, I favored Sherlock Holmes stories and intricate puzzles of the Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr sort, then moved on to the grittier, bloodier private-eye stuff of Dashiell Hammett and Chandler and Ross Macdonald. In my baffled adulthood, I have found myself drawn, more and more, to the kind of dark, fatalistic psychological thriller that noir writers such as Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, and especially Patricia Highsmith brought into the world in the 1940s and ’50s—tales of people in impossible situations making catastrophically poor choices.

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I do still go back every now and then to the eccentric sleuths inspecting corpses in locked rooms, or to the hard-boiled dicks walking down their mean streets, but only as an exercise in nostalgia. These days, just about all the exciting work in the murder-for-entertainment business descends not from Arthur Conan Doyle or Hammett but from Highsmith, who has had many more daughters than sons. A number of years ago—well before Gone Girl —I realized that most of the new crime fiction I was enjoying had been written by women. The guys had been all but run off the field by a bunch of very crafty girls, coming at them from everywhere: America (Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman), England (Alex Marwood, Paula Hawkins, Sophie Hannah), Scotland (Val McDermid, Denise Mina), Ireland (Tana French), Norway (Karin Fossum), Japan (Natsuo Kirino).

That’s not to say the guys are gone, or even going away anytime soon. Elmore Leonard has now left the building, but the lowlifes and criminal idiots who peopled his stories haven’t altogether vanished; George Pelecanos keeps an eye on them for us. And the aging police detectives of Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, and Michael Connelly are still, at their stately pace, finding ways to make their grim investigations pretty interesting. It’s a struggle, though. Male crime writers seem never to have fully recovered from the loss of the private eye as a viable protagonist, and men, for whatever reason (sports?), appear to need a hero of some kind to organize their stories around. Cops and lawyers and the odd freelance avenger (Lee Child’s Jack Reacher) are about all that’s left.

The female writers, for whatever reason (men?), don’t much believe in heroes, which makes their kind of storytelling perhaps a better fit for these cynical times. Their books are light on gunplay, heavy on emotional violence. Murder is de rigueur in the genre, so people die at the hands of others—lovers, neighbors, obsessive strangers—but the body counts tend to be on the low side. “I write about murder,” Tana French once said, “because it’s one of the great mysteries of the human heart: How can one human being deliberately take another one’s life away?” Sometimes, in the work of French and others, the lethal blow comes so quietly that it seems almost inadvertent, a thing that in the course of daily life just happens . Death, in these women’s books, is often chillingly casual, and unnervingly intimate. As a character in Alex Marwood’s brilliant new novel, The Darkest Secret , muses: “They’re not always creeping around with knives in dark alleyways. Most of them kill you from the inside out.”

The awareness of that inside-out sort of violence sets the women writers apart, these days, from even the best of the men. Women’s murder tales have always been at least a little more psychologically acute than the guys’. Even in the so-called golden age of detective stories, the 1920s and ’30s, when the emphasis was on elaborate puzzles, the motivations of the culprits in Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers were usually more plausible—and nastier—than they were in Carr or Rex Stout or Ellery Queen (a low bar, but still). Later, while male pulp writers were playing with guns and fighting off those wily femmes fatales, women like Highsmith and Dorothy B. Hughes and Margaret Millar were burrowing into the enigmas of identity and the killing stresses of everyday life.

For beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence, see the Library of America’s two-volume Women Crime Writers (2015), which collects eight terrific thrillers from the ’40s and ’50s, including the novels that inspired the classic film noirs Laura , The Reckless Moment , and In a Lonely Place . Women have been writing books like those ever since, but until Gone Girl , publishers tended to look askance at stand-alone crime novels and instead encourage their writers to develop series characters, which could be marketed more easily. So the next wave of women—those who began to write between the mid-’60s and the early ’90s—turned out stories about private eyes (Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone) and medical examiners (Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta) and humane police inspectors (Ruth Rendell’s Reg Wexford). For a while, putting a feminist spin on the old, fading male-empowerment fantasies seemed reason enough for them to write crime stories.

Some of those novelists did solid work in the traditional forms, and many still do. Karin Slaughter, for example, specializes in muscular, action-packed police procedurals; Alafair Burke does expertly plotted legal mysteries; Val McDermid has invented more than her rightful share of homicidal sociopaths for her psychologist-cop team, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, to run to ground. Donna Leon and Karin Fossum have made significant contributions to the humane-inspector bloodline, and Alison Gaylin and Laura Lippman have managed to create plausible contemporary private eyes.

But they chafe at the limitations; all of those writers have produced books outside their main series. For half a century, the prolific Rendell (who died last year) took frequent breaks from her melancholy, low-key Wexford mysteries to write seriously twisted one-off psychological thrillers, in which the profoundly disturbed and the blithely clueless cross paths fatefully: ignorant armies clashing by night, with no victors. The outcomes are comically, almost surreally, awful. In her most powerful works— A Judgment in Stone (1977), say, or The Bridesmaid (1989)—fate is inexorable, an onrushing train with no one at the controls. There’s nothing for a reader to do but settle in for the ride and watch the darkness speeding past the windows.

In the Gone Girl era, that sort of novel is having its moment. Traditional mysteries are still with us, but tortuous, doomy domestic thrillers are what readers seem to want now, and dozens of women are ready, willing, and able to oblige. Last year, the publishing industry found, in Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train , its long-sought “next Gone Girl ,” which is to say another blockbuster bourgeois nightmare about terrible relationships, told in the voices of more than one profoundly unreliable narrator. Unlike Highsmith and Rendell, who preferred to ply their sinister craft in a dry, deadpan third person, writers of the current school tend to favor a volatile mixture of higher-pitched first-person tones: hectoring, accusatory, self-justifying, a little desperate. Reading these tricky 21st-century thrillers can be like scrolling through an especially heated comments thread on a Web site, or wandering unawares into a Twitter feud. Down these mean tweets a woman must go …

Compared with their male counterparts, today’s female crime writers seem more familiar with (or less wary of) the primordial ooze of ego and id that is social media, the swampy no-man’s-land where millions of self-created personal brands battle for supremacy. It’s dangerous territory, as the journalist Nancy Jo Sales shows in a harrowing new book, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers . Sales speaks with dozens of teenage girls—who are, she asserts, “in fact the number one users of social media”—about the peculiar mores of their online world. These kids are stressed , looking down at their phones as they navigate from locker to classroom to mall to home, leaning into a blizzard of words and images as they try to fight their way to something like adulthood.

The words are frequently unkind, the images can be downright rude, and not everything, by a long stretch, is true: It’s a fun-house universe, a hall of mirrors like the one where bullets fly in the climax of Orson Welles’s great noir The Lady From Shanghai . Women writers seem to know this place even if they didn’t grow up in it. (An awful lot of them—Abbott, Flynn, Hannah, Burke, Slaughter, French, Hawkins, Sara Gran, Attica Locke—are in their 40s, and many of the rest are at least a little older than that.) Jessica Knoll, who’s in her early 30s, is the only one almost young enough to have actually lived there, and what the narrator of her remarkable debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive (2015), says of her teenage self is this: “We were all young and cruel.”

For the older writers, it’s a matter of memory, of recognizing in the unlit alleyways of social media the labyrinthine geography of their own not-yet-forgotten adolescent psyches. The teenage mind is a strange and lonely place, and these women know a crime scene when they see one. In Megan Abbott’s superb new book, You Will Know Me , a young woman in her 20s reflects aloud: “The girl you were at fifteen, sixteen. Angry and nasty. Hungry for love … You’re always that girl. She never goes away. She’s inside you all the time. That girl is forever.” A male detective in French’s The Secret Place (2014), after spending a few hours questioning the 16-year-old boarders at a school outside Dublin about a murder, blurts out, “If I’ve learned one thing today, it’s that teenage girls make Moriarty look like a babe in the woods.” (For mystery-story innocents, and non-initiates in the cult of Cumberbatch: That’s Professor Moriarty, the evil genius who is the arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.) The exasperated cop later admits that he can’t quite get a handle on how these girls think. “She was written in a code I couldn’t begin to read,” he says to himself about one of them. “They all were.” But in her amazing, sorrowful book, French manages to crack the code because she was a girl once herself, and like the school’s headmistress, she remembers the key: “Girls like to reveal their secrets, and they like to be secretive.” Men who don’t read these books are missing some crucial information.

The eponymous secret place of French’s novel is a bulletin board that’s an explicit substitute for social media for the students of St. Kilda’s. The boarders are not allowed unsupervised access to the Internet, because, the headmistress believes, “young girls slip between worlds very easily.” She fears they could “lose their grasp on reality.” So the girls, anonymously and nonvirtually, do more or less what they’d do on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat. They post photos and clippings and drawings, small confessions and small aggressions, all these traces of their secret selves—jumbled, overlapping, out there for everyone to see. This physical site is of course no more fundamentally “real” than the social media it’s meant to replace, but its finiteness makes it appear more graspable. That’s an illusion: The girls are in an in-between world anyway, because that’s where teenagers live. And in The Secret Place , as in real life, that state can be perilous.

People revealing their secrets and being secretive (often simultaneously) is a fair working definition of social-media culture, and of the post– Gone Girl crime novel, too. In book after book, characters share , compulsively but selectively, until revelation and artful concealment become nearly indistinguishable. Unreliable narrators—Gillian Flynn’s, and Paula Hawkins’s in The Girl on the Train , and Sophie Hannah’s in her recent Woman With a Secret (2015), and many others—induce a sort of vertigo in readers’ minds, an effect good crime writers strive for.

In the golden age, they’d achieve it by furnishing their cozy murder scenes with too many suspects and too many physical clues—the bickering relatives, the shady servants, the cigar ashes, the restaurant matchbooks, the stopped clocks. Now the effect is managed with language alone. In the dizzying verbal performances of the new-style thrillers, every sentence can be a clue or a red herring. (It may be worth noting that Agatha Christie, who knew how to multiply potential killers and suggestive objects, also created one of the most fiendish unreliable narrators in English-language fiction; to name the book would be a spoiler, I’m afraid.) To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, who was a lifelong mystery fan, this new wave of women writers do the police—and the murderers and the victims and the innocent bystanders—in different voices. The line between high modernism and 21st-century entertainment is getting blurry.

Crime fiction isn’t the worst way of dealing with the too-much-information, too-many-voices overload of the present day. At least it holds out the possibility of a solution, of something approximating truth; that’s written into the form’s tacit agreement with its audience. In general, readers of mysteries and thrillers have an impressive tolerance for complication. We enjoy the feeling of being overwhelmed by masses of contradictory-seeming data, because the promised resolution, the daylight when the fog lifts, is so pleasurable. It’s like the moment of sweet clarity a poet experiences when he or she sees at last the right, the inevitable, word—the one that makes sense of everything. No wonder Eliot and W. H. Auden loved detective stories.

At our bewildering moment in history, the Internet-generated fog is thick, practically impenetrable: a pea-souper (as the Brits say) whose main component is talk, too much of it viscous with ulterior motive. Every voice in the new crime novels by women raises suspicions instantly. We can never be sure what any speaker’s agenda is. What’s not being said, and why? The verbal gamesmanship can be enjoyable, particularly when practiced by a wit like Sophie Hannah, who specializes in the apologias of middle-class women with incurable cases of the existential jitters.

Her chief narrator in Woman With a Secret (published in the U.K. as The Telling Error ) is Nicki Clements, an apparently ordinary suburban wife and mother, who is one of the funniest pathological liars in recent fiction. Although she seems to be reasonably happy, she lives a clandestine life online (“[email protected]”), which, to her alarm, begins to bleed into her everyday life. There’s a grisly murder and a series of mysterious posts on a hookup site called Intimate Links. Naughty Nicki is clearly involved, somehow; the precise nature of her connection takes a while to emerge, though, because in her panicky monologues she doles out actual truth as grudgingly as a Watergate conspirator. She takes that approach (the modified limited hangout, Nixon’s men called it) in all her interactions, online and off; this naturally has the effect of making just about everybody—family, police, readers—wonder whether she is, or is not, a crook.

Hannah (who’s also a poet) obviously has a taste for the language of evasion and deceit. She loves liars, especially ones who, like Nicki, aren’t terribly good at lying. Watching them thrash about in the tangled webs they’ve woven seems excellent sport to her. In a way, Woman With a Secret is the portrait of someone stuck in a sort of permanent adolescence, lying for the pointless thrill of it, for the drama it brings into her insufficiently awesome life. Mostly it’s about the writer’s delight in linguistic flimflam.

On the whole, though, today’s crime-writing dames deploy the deceptions and evasions of their shifty monologuists less gleefully, and more purposefully. The dubiousness of their narrators’ reliability is for mystification alone—which is a perfectly sound justification in, you know, a mystery. The only problem is that this technique is already, a mere four years after Gone Girl , beginning to harden into a convention. The time is coming, and it might not be far off, when dodgy first-person accounts of dire events won’t trick anyone but the most gullible readers. The audience for crime stories has been conditioned to anticipate startling, unguessable reversals—what an iBooks promotion that recently popped up in my inbox called “ gotcha! plot twists.” If the verbal pyrotechnics that these women writers have been so effectively using get predictable, if their narrators become reliably unreliable, the power to mystify dissipates like the smoke from a fired gun.

Fortunately, the best of the women now writing in the genre have more on their minds than bamboozling credulous readers. Thanks perhaps to the current cultural emphasis on youth—on girls in particular—many of these writers have turned their attention to the mysteries of growing up. Frequently their books are as much about old crimes, imperfectly understood, that date from childhood or adolescence as they are about new ones. In Laura Lippman’s non-series novels, like What the Dead Know (2007) and the new Wilde Lake , she likes to shuttle between the present and the past; mysteries are solved, elegantly, but the dominant mood is elegiac.

Brenna Spector, the private-eye heroine of Alison Gaylin’s And She Was (2012), Into the Dark (2013), and Stay With Me (2014), has a rare condition called hyperthymesia, which renders her, like Borges’s Ireneo Funes, incapable of forgetting anything she’s seen, read, heard, smelled, or touched since the disappearance of her older sister, when Brenna was 11. Brenna is a living metaphor for the persistence of memory. Random recollections flicker through her brain as she tries to find missing persons in the present and track her vanished sister down the dark passages of time.

Burnt-out Cassandra Neary, the “last punk standing” who narrates Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss (2007), Available Dark (2012), and this year’s Hard Light , is a variation on that theme. As a photographer, she, too, is a sort of metaphor for the recovery of memories. Her way of apprehending the world is to fix images and look at them as closely as she can, to find what she didn’t see clearly enough while it was happening. She needs that kind of aide-mémoire, because both her present-day experiences and her natural memories tend to be blurred by drink and/or drugs. Despite her various impairments, Cass is perhaps the only entirely reliable narrator in women’s crime fiction today. Like the camera, she doesn’t lie (not to the reader, anyway). She is also, in her rootless middle age, a cautionary tale about the folly of hanging on to youth too long: She’s still on the run, a girl gone for good.

All of these women seem to know that feeling. In so many of the crime stories they’ve been writing, the sense of loss is overpowering. People die or go missing, of course, because that’s the genre, but it’s more than that. The crimes in novels like French’s The Secret Place and Abbott’s You Will Know Me and Marwood’s The Darkest Secret come to represent some larger absence, a hole in the coherence of the world. In Sunset City , a striking first novel by Melissa Ginsburg (another poet), the murder of a high-school friend sends the young heroine into a self-destructive spin. In emotional free fall, she says to herself, “There were no boundaries anywhere”—which could be the motto of all the lost girls in today’s crime fiction.

The title of Gaylin’s latest book, a mournful Hollywood mystery, is What Remains of Me . Its main character, who was convicted of murder at 17 and spent the next 25 years in prison, knows that not enough does. Devon, the teenage gymnast whose prowess is the focus of an entire suburban community in You Will Know Me , is herself a vacancy; there’s a murder in the novel, but she’s the real mystery. The sisters in The Darkest Secret , one a teenager and the other in her aimless 20s, suspect throughout that there are important things they’re not being told, and they’re right: They’re drowning in other people’s lies.

These are terribly sad books, about the confusions of youth and the nagging emptiness beyond, and what enables these novelists to address these subjects excitingly is the crime genre itself—a form that can turn inchoate disaffections into bodies, into dire acts to be investigated. For these writers, it’s as if girlhood were a cold case, tantalizingly unsolved.

Although the Chandler-style femme fatale appears to have been laid to rest, maybe she’s just been internalized by a generation of crime writers who use their wiles for the different(ish) purpose of literary seduction. Genre aficionados—inquisitive women and melancholy guys like me—fall for it every time. Of course, there’s another agenda, and it is (final twist) surprisingly like Chandler’s, at least as Auden defined it in his provocative late-1940s essay “The Guilty Vicarage”:

I think Mr. Chandler is interested in writing, not detective stories, but serious studies of a criminal milieu, the Great Wrong Place, and his powerful but extremely depressing books should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art.

In the books I’ve been reading, the Great Wrong Place is sometimes suburbia, sometimes social media, sometimes high school, sometimes the marriage bed—everywhere something feels missing in contemporary life. The best of these novels are pure noir, velvety and pitiless. Writers like French and Abbott seem to have looked at the history of crime fiction the way Gloria Grahame looked at Humphrey Bogart in the 1950 film of In a Lonely Place : attracted but wary. They see the darkness in there, and in themselves. They’ve come a long way from the golden age, from Christie and Sayers, from the least-likely-suspect sort of mystery in which, proverbially, the butler did it. They know better. The girl did it, and she had her reasons.

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IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answer Essay: Crime TV Shows (Real Past IELTS Exam/Test)

by Dave | Real Past Tests | 6 Comments

This is an IELTS writing task 2 sample answer on the topic of crime TV shows from the real past IELTS exam/test.

It is a really interesting, really tough question.

I honestly don’t know why crime shows are so popular today. There are a lot of possible reasons and some of them may be true.

I just chose one reason and supported it full.

The real answer is fit for a book so just choose a simple reason and support it fully.

Read it below and check out my exclusive Patreon essays here !

Listen to the audio file before reading and take notes on the key vocabulary:

Watching TV shows and movies about crime is becoming more and more popular. Why is this? What effect does that have on society? Real Past IELTS Exam/Test

The frenzy over crime shows in recent years has led many to question both the origins of this morbid interest and its impact. In my opinion, people watch these shows to dispel or safely confirm psychological similarities with killers and the result for society will be negligible in most cases.

The reason people watch crime shows is to understand and compare the psychology of killers. The mystery of these shows goes deeper than figuring out which suspect is the real perpetrator. Audiences are chiefly concerned with motive and the best shows analyse compelling, complex personality archetypes. People can then try to parse out whether or not these individuals are driven by human nature and are just expressing their desires differently from law-abiding citizens or if they are qualitatively different from the average person. Some watch to try to unequivocally differentiate themselves while others experience a guilty, unconscious pleasure in identification and vicarious living.

The end result of all these shows related to crime will amount to nothing in the final analysis. There will be some exceptions where individuals develop an unhealthy obsession that isolates them from normal society or claim them as excuses for their own crimes but this is just as likely to occur with any form of entertainment. The majority of people watch these shows, think about them and talk about them just as they discuss a book or a sports team. Research has been unable to show any direct link between watching crime shows and committing crimes or altering one’s outlook towards others. Similarly, they will not have a positive impact since most people do not watch them to get tips to avoid criminals and the sample sizes for the crimes taking place are too small relative to the knowledge gained.

In conclusion, people watch crime shows to exonerate or convict themselves and it is a benign obsession. It is more important for psychologists to examine the drive to fascination than its object.

1. The frenzy over crime shows in recent years has led many to question both the origins of this morbid interest and its impact. 2. In my opinion, people watch these shows to dispel or safely confirm psychological similarities with killers and the result for society will be negligible in most cases.

Paraphrase the overall topic for the whole essay.
Answer both questions directly.

1. The reason people watch crime shows is to understand and compare the psychology of killers. 2. The mystery of these shows goes deeper than figuring out which suspect is the real perpetrator. 3. Audiences are chiefly concerned with motive and the best shows analyse compelling, complex personality archetypes. 4. People can then try to parse out whether or not these individuals are driven by human nature and are just expressing their desires differently from law-abiding citizens or if they are qualitatively different from the average person. 5. Some watch to try to unequivocally differentiate themselves while others experience a guilty, unconscious pleasure in identification and vicarious living.

Write a topic sentence with a clear main idea at the end.
Explain your main idea.
Begin developing your main idea with specific details.
Keep supporting your argument. Make sure your ideas are logical and link to the previous sentence.
Conclude your argument – you don’t have to summarise the paragraph!

1. The end result of all these shows related to crime will amount to nothing in the final analysis. 2. There will be some exceptions where individuals develop an unhealthy obsession that isolates them from normal society or claim them as excuses for their own crimes but this is just as likely to occur with any form of entertainment. 3. The majority of people watch these shows, think about them and talk about them just as they discuss a book or a sports team. 4. Research has been unable to show any direct link between watching crime shows and committing crimes or altering one’s outlook towards others. 5. Similarly, they will not have a positive impact since most people do not watch them to get tips to avoid criminals and the sample sizes for the crimes taking place are too small relative to the knowledge gained.

Write another clear and simple topic sentence.
Again begin to develop it. I start here with a concession.
Here I use an analogy to make my argument stronger.
I also quote research which is a good way to add in support.
I conclude by covering whether or not there is any positive impact.

1. In conclusion, people watch crime shows to exonerate or convict themselves and it is a benign obsession. 2. It is more important for psychologists to examine the drive to fascination than its object.

Repeat your answer to both questions to be 100% sure you get above band 5 for task achievement by fully answering the topic.
Add in an extra detail/final thought.

The reason people watch crime shows is to understand and compare the psychology of killers. The mystery of these shows goes deeper than figuring out which suspect is the real perpetrator . Audiences are chiefly concerned with motive and the best shows analyse compelling , complex personality archetypes . People can then try to parse out whether or not these individuals are driven by human nature and are just expressing their desires differently from law-abiding citizens or if they are qualitatively different from the average person . Some watch to try to unequivocally differentiate themselves while others experience a guilty , unconscious pleasure in identification and vicarious living .

The end result of all these shows related to crime will amount to nothing in the final analysis . There will be some exceptions where individuals develop an unhealthy obsession that isolates them from normal society or claim them as excuses for their own crimes but this is just as likely to occur with any form of entertainment. The majority of people watch these shows, think about them and talk about them just as they discuss a book or a sports team. Research has been unable to show any direct link between watching crime shows and committing crimes or altering one’s outlook towards others . Similarly, they will not have a positive impact since most people do not watch them to get tips to avoid criminals and the sample sizes for the crimes taking place are too small relative to the knowledge gained.

In conclusion, people watch crime shows to exonerate or convict themselves and it is a benign obsession. It is more important for psychologists to examine the drive to fascination than its object .

frenzy obsession with

question wonder about

origins source

morbid interest dark fascination

dispel dismiss

safely confirm without risk show the connection

psychological similarities same way of thinking

negligible not a major factor

mystery enigma/riddle

deeper not superficial

figuring out knowing

suspect who might have done it

real perpetrator actual guilty criminal

chiefly concerned mostly interested in

motive reason

compelling influential

complex personality archetypes complicated type of person

parse out break down

driven encouraged

human nature nature

expressing their desires differently sublimating

law-abiding citizens people who don’t break the law

qualitatively different a real distinction

average person common person

unequivocally differentiate definitely different

guilty did the crime

unconscious pleasure unacknowledged joy

identification relate to

vicarious living living through others

amount to adds up to

in the final analysis in the end

exceptions outside the norm

unhealthy obsession dark faschinations

isolates makes separate

claim say/think

excuses reasons

just as likely to occur equally possible it will happen

just as the same as

direct link clear cause/effect relationship

altering one’s outlook towards others being less empathetic

sample sizes a group representing a larger group

crimes taking place criminal acts happening

relative to in comparison to

exonerate clear of all wrong-doing

convict criminal

benign harmless

fascination interest in

object who/what is acted upon

Pronunciation

ˈfrɛnzi ˈkwɛsʧən ˈɒrɪʤɪnz ˈmɔːbɪd ˈɪntrɪst dɪsˈpɛl ˈseɪfli kənˈfɜːm ˌsaɪkəˈlɒʤɪkəl ˌsɪmɪˈlærɪtiz ˈnɛglɪʤəbl ˈmɪstəri ˈdiːpə ˈfɪgərɪŋ aʊt ˈsʌspɛkt rɪəl ˈpɜːpɪtreɪtə ˈʧiːfli kənˈsɜːnd ˈməʊtɪv kəmˈpɛlɪŋ ˈkɒmplɛks ˌpɜːsəˈnælɪti ˈɑːkɪtaɪps pɑːz aʊt ˈdrɪvn ˈhjuːmən ˈneɪʧə ɪksˈprɛsɪŋ ðeə dɪˈzaɪəz ˈdɪfrəntli ˈlɔːəˌbaɪdɪŋ ˈsɪtɪznz ˈkwɒlɪtətɪvli ˈdɪfrənt ˈævərɪʤ ˈpɜːsn ˌʌnɪˈkwɪvəkəli ˌdɪfəˈrɛnʃɪeɪt ˈgɪlti ʌnˈkɒnʃəs ˈplɛʒə aɪˌdɛntɪfɪˈkeɪʃən vaɪˈkeərɪəs ˈlɪvɪŋ əˈmaʊnt tuː ɪn ðə ˈfaɪnl əˈnæləsɪs ɪkˈsɛpʃənz ʌnˈhɛlθi əbˈsɛʃənz ˈaɪsəleɪts kleɪm ɪksˈkjuːsɪz ʤʌst æz ˈlaɪkli tuː əˈkɜː ʤʌst æz dɪˈrɛkt lɪŋk ˈɔːltərɪŋ wʌnz ˈaʊtlʊk təˈwɔːdz ˈʌðəz ˈsɑːmpl ˈsaɪzɪz kraɪmz ˈteɪkɪŋ pleɪs ˈrɛlətɪv tuː ɪgˈzɒnəreɪt ˈkɒnvɪkt bɪˈnaɪn ˌfæsɪˈneɪʃən ˈɒbʤɪkt

Listen and repeat:

Vocabulary Practice

The f______________ over crime shows in recent years has led many to q______________ both the o______________ of this m______________ and its impact. In my opinion, people watch these shows to d______________ or s______________ p______________ with killers and the result for society will be n______________ in most cases.

The reason people watch crime shows is to understand and compare the psychology of killers. The m______________ of these shows goes d______________ than f______________ which s______________ is the r______________ . Audiences are c______________ with m______________ and the best shows analyse c______________ , c______________ . People can then try to p______________ whether or not these individuals are d______________ by h______________ and are just e______________ from l______________ or if they are q______________ from the a______________ . Some watch to try to u______________ themselves while others experience a g______________ , u______________ in i______________ and v______________ .

The end result of all these shows related to crime will a______________ nothing i______________ . There will be some e______________ where individuals develop an u______________ that i______________ them from normal society or c______________ them as e______________ for their own crimes but this is j______________ with any form of entertainment. The majority of people watch these shows, think about them and talk about them j______________ they discuss a book or a sports team. Research has been unable to show any d______________ between watching crime shows and committing crimes or a______________ . Similarly, they will not have a positive impact since most people do not watch them to get tips to avoid criminals and the s______________ for the c______________ are too small r______________ the knowledge gained.

In conclusion, people watch crime shows to e______________ or c______________ themselves and it is a b______________ obsession. It is more important for psychologists to examine the drive to f______________ than its o______________ .

Listen and check:

Listening Practice

Watch the video below from some ideas from a real psychologist:

Reading Practice

Here is an article about its effect for your other paragraph:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47474996

Speaking Practice

Answer these questions from the real IELTS speaking exam :

Why do people commit crimes?
How can criminals be rehabilitated?
What is the purpose of punishment?
Are punishment and revenge the same?
Will crime become less common in the future?

Writing Practice

Write about the following topic then read my sample answer below:

The crime rate nowadays is decreasing compared to the past due to advances in technology. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Real Past IELTS Exam/Test

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answer Essay: Crime & Technology (Real Past Tests)

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Nowadays, it is true that films and TV shows which are connected with violence are gaining popularity. Many people believe that the cause of this is the substantial entertainment we can get on watching crime-related scenes. However, I believe this kind of practice is detrimental in society for various reasons.

It is undeniable that TV programs and movies are interesting to watch as they brought us to a state of thrill and suspense, especially when they are about crimes. It is a way of escaping the hustle and bustle of daily life for many people as it gives a sense of enjoyment. One example of movies about the violence that can keep our attention from watching is the sequel of John Wick. This movie is about a man who is fighting through killing bad people for his own protection. With this, people can be entertained for the reason that they can experience the thrill of watching it.

However, though watching crime-related films and programs is somewhat entertaining, it can be disadvantageous if the viewers are too much attached to it. Firstly, people can adopt what they are seeing on television because they are taking up the behaviors of the characters, which is not good especially in children. Children are usually hungry for learning so the parents should be careful about letting their children watch this kind of act.

In conclusion, violent movies and TV shows are becoming more popular as time goes by because it is quite impossible to deny the fact that anyone can feel a sense of excitement in watching this. However, individuals should keep in mind that crime is immoral when applied in reality. I believe that people should just consider this act as a warning to take care of themselves.

Hi Jessica, good effort!

The idea that these films are thrilling that you develop in your second paragraph could be better developed. In fact, I think you want to say they are easy escapist entertainment.

Good specific example for that paragraph though – you just need more specific details and development around it!

In the third paragraph, it also needs more development and would benefit from a real or hypothetical example or more nuanced argument. It is also a vit short – almost the same length as your conclusion!

Thank you so much for always giving feedback on my essay! I hope that I am improving as time goes by to achieve 6.5 in writing.

Keep up the hard work and it is inevitable!

Nowadays, we can see rising popularity in crime novels and TV crime shows in the world. Viewers are attracted towards it because of excitement, thrill and suspense. In addition, it also provided good reflection of human justice. In my opinion this type of books and shows related to crime have both advantages and disadvantages on its audience.

A book or drama, seeking high rating, must be able to present all sequence acceptable and attractable to its audience. So, what is there in crime novels and crime shows? A well-presented sequence of an amusement, thrill and a suspense as a main weapon of attraction. As an instance, while watching Sherlock’s Holmes- a detective series, I was always in a hurry to watch the next episode. This is because they leave suspense in the end of first episode and moving deep inside the episodes, there are so much twists characters that would make series more interesting. Apart from the way of presentation, this types of books also shows people’s right to live in healthy and vibrant society.

However, popularity doesn’t meant that it always have advantages on the society. In the first hand, these types of writings and programs acts as a source of entertainment where people learn the ways of being safe, avoiding certain circumstance and know the power of law. However, if we take the flip side, this also motivates society towards the criminal activities. For an example, after reading the book on how a person was able to escape through a prison in South Africa, three criminals planned in the same way and they were able to succeed. In another instance, a robbery gang in India adopted the same method as shown in crime TV shows and left people terrified.

To recapitulate, although crime novels and TV shows have been flourishing rapidly due to nicely plotted exhilaration, thrill and twists, there are both positive and negative influences in the society. An explicit message must be clearly displayed to demotivate crime activities in the community.

Nice writing!

Careful with referencing – attrated to ‘them’, don’t use questions in your writing and keep writing long specific examples like you did!

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How to Write a Mystery or Crime Novel: 8 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction

By Krystal N. Craiker

Crime fiction is a leading genre, and readers love the intrigue and suspense of a good mystery.

But writing crime fiction can be daunting. You must leave clues, create captivating characters, build tension, and have a believable villain and crime.

Today, we're giving you our top eight tips on how to write a crime novel.

What Is Crime Writing?

What is mystery writing, 8 tips for writing mystery or crime fiction.

Crime writing is a genre of fiction in which the main plot conflict revolves around a crime.

Crime fiction encompasses many subgenres, including police procedurals, psychological thrillers, and cozy mysteries.

The difference between subgenres depends on the level of violence described, setting, and types of characters, but they all have crime as the driving force.

There are three types of mysteries within the crime genre:

Whodunits are traditional mysteries in which the perpetrator is hidden until the end. Think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
Howdunits focus on the "how" of the crime. These are police procedurals and detective stories where the protagonist tracks down the perpetrator. Famous writers in this subgenre are Joseph Wambaugh and Michael Connelly.
Whydunits focus on the motivation of the perpetrator. This genre shifts the focus from law enforcement to the criminal, who functions as the protagonist. Examples are Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and many of Elmore Leonard’s criminal novel depictions.

The mystery genre is, for all intents and purposes, synonymous with crime fiction. Mystery is a major component of any crime story.

It is possible to have a mystery novel that does not involve a crime, such as uncovering a secret identity, but these are very rare.

Other genres may include a mystery as a secondary plot, but that doesn't make them part of the crime genre. The mystery must be the main plotline in order to be classified as a mystery or crime novel.

There are many elements to consider when writing crime fiction, so we've broken down the most important steps into eight easy tips.

1. Choose Your Crime

Crime novels feature a variety of crimes, which keeps the genre fresh and exciting.

You could go with a classic murder mystery or serial-killer story. There are heists, organized crime, kidnappings, blackmail, extortion, trafficking, and more.

First, choose your crime. As this is the primary source of conflict in your book, it's important to have the crime first and foremost in your planning.

Once you decide what type of crime your novel is about, plan more of the details. Where did the crime take place? Who was the victim?

You should consider whether it's a locked-room mystery, where the crime seemed impossible to commit, or whether there are multiple leads for your protagonist to follow.

2. Profile Your Villain

Police and other agencies often have criminal profilers. They create a profile for likely demographics, upbringings, and motivations. For your novel, you must become the profiler.

It's important to plan your villain(s) in a crime novel well. The mystery is only as interesting as the character committing the crime. But you must do so in a way that makes sense.

If your villain is pure evil, it can be hard to "humanize" them and make them feel real. If you go down the route of the twisted psychopath, they must have intriguing features to draw readers in.

Maybe there's an extra disturbing element to the crime scene, or maybe they play mind games with the detective.

But most criminals aren't evil, they are human. In fiction, this makes them just as interesting because readers like to see relatable elements, even in a villain.

Start with your villain's motives, then work backward. Ask yourself, why did they commit this particular crime? Give them a solid backstory and plenty of character flaws and character strengths.

3. Know Your Characters Inside and Out

Crime stories must have interesting characters besides the villain, too. In a mystery, the protagonist is the main character in the investigation.

They might be in law enforcement, a private investigator, or even an amateur detective.

The protagonist must have a strong motivation for wanting to solve the case. They will also need some internal conflict that holds them back or causes them to slip up during the story. Overcoming this internal conflict is important for a good character arc .

There should also be a cast of compelling characters who support the protagonist. Understanding how each of them connects to the mystery will help guide you as you plan conflicts and subplots.

Some subgenres have expected character archetypes. For example, cozy mysteries feature amateur sleuths and quirky side characters.

Most hard-boiled mysteries with a law enforcement protagonist feature a demanding superior officer and a nerdy scientist.

4. Research for a Realistic Crime

The details of criminal activity fascinate readers who love crime novels. They expect a crime novel to feel realistic. Researching the type of crime in the story is especially important for mystery writers.

The internet is a great starting point, but there are many other ways to find answers to those hard-to-search questions. Here are some other places you can find research material:

Detective memoirs
Specialty social media groups or accounts, like "Trauma Fiction" on Facebook
News stories of similar crimes
Interviews with experts
True-crime documentaries

You can also find a research librarian at your local library to help you find great sources.

The more details you know about the crime in your novel, the more realistic your writing will be, even if they don't all make it into the final draft.

5. Decide on Your Sub-Plots

Mysteries are exciting, but they are just one external conflict in a story. A crime novel should have subplots that help drive the story along.

Romance is a common subplot in crime fiction. Family issues, career turning points, or a nemesis colleague can also form smaller conflicts and subplots.

Get creative and find subplots that match your genre but also feel fresh and exciting.

You'll also need a strong internal conflict , as we mentioned previously. Your protagonist needs to undergo character growth in the story so readers feel connected.

Your external conflicts do not necessarily need to be tied to the crime, but the mystery should drive your protagonist's character arc .

The case should teach them something or force them to overcome something.

6. Plan Your Clues

No mystery is complete without really great clues. But throwing in random clues as you write can feel inauthentic and trite.

It's a good idea to spend some time planning your clues before you start writing—even if you aren't much of a plotter .

Once you have researched the crime and know everything about how it happens in your book, you will have plenty of fodder for clues.

Start at the beginning. What clues will be immediately revealed to the detective or sleuth?

These are clues that are present at the scene of the crime, like suspects, blood splatter, broken locks, and dropped belongings.

Then plan the clues your protagonist will discover as the story goes on. They might come from forensic analysis or lab information.

Clues will also appear as your protagonist interviews witnesses and suspects, or as they dig into the victim's back story.

You should also plan a final clue that makes everything "click" for the protagonist. This is the last piece of the puzzle to discover the who/why/how of the crime.

7. Build Tension with Plot Twists

One of the best parts of crime fiction is the plot twist. Plot twists keep readers guessing. It can feel disappointing if the story unfolds in a way that is too easy to figure out.

Plot twists also build tension. Sometimes this tension will come in the form of your protagonist being certain of a lead, only to have it result in a dead end.

Other times, the usual suspects are ruled out, only to be brought back in as suspects at the end.

Red herrings are a common but exciting way to add tension to a mystery.

A red herring is a clue that is placed in a story to mislead or distract the readers. Adding multiple red herrings will make readers even more surprised when the truth comes out.

Avoid the deus ex machina , however.

This is an easy solution to the crime that appears out of nowhere. It does the opposite of building tension and feels clichéd.

8. Outline Your Story

It's a good idea to have a basic outline before you start writing because there are so many important details in a crime novel.

One outline method you can use is to modify the Hero's Journey . Here are what the stages of your story would look like:

Establish the detective and crime.
Set up the story.
Show reluctance of the protagonist.
First attempt to solve the case.
Establish facts and create urgency.
Broaden the scope of the crime and investigation.
Deepen the detective’s backstory.
Establish the big change where the detective realizes they're on the wrong track.
Reveal the criminal’s motive.
Find the mistake or missing piece of the investigation.
Solve the crime.

You can also use other plotting methods like a Save the Cat! beat sheet, a Story Circle, or the snowflake method.

Be sure to include the clues that you planned in your outline. This will help them feel logical to the story and serve the overall mystery.

Writing crime fiction doesn't have to be overwhelming. With solid research and deliberate planning, you can write the next great mystery novel.

Writing crime? Join us for Crime Writers' Week: June 20 - 23, 2022

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Krystal N. Craiker

Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Why the Epistolary Format Works So Well in Crime Fiction

"letters are a great way to manipulate your vict—i mean, audience.".

Dear crime writer,

Need to breathe a little life into the bloated corpse of your narrative? Looking for a new, downwind angle from which to approach its fetid stench? Then pull on a pair of surgical gloves and prep those nibs, because the epistolary format is the break in the case you’ve been hoping for.

Epistolography lends itself to the crime genre quite nicely. I should know. I wrote my new novel as a series of missives. It’s called Letters to the Purple Satin Killer , and it explores the aftermath of a serial killer’s crimes via the correspondence he receives while on death row. It comes out August 6th through CLASH Books. Here are some of the lessons I learned while writing it.

Complicity is Caring

Say you are writing from the perspective of an irredeemable sociopath, as one does. No matter how abhorrent a character they are, you still want people to connect with them on a certain level, right? Letters are an ideal way to achieve this. Letters are personal, confidential, and intimate. Their confessional nature helps establish empathy, authority, an immediate rapport. Hell, they practically make the reader an accessory! And once you’ve won them over to the dark side, you’re free to abuse their trust to your heart’s content. Force feed them whatever disinformation you like. Because that’s another benefit to writing in the epistolary format. Letters are a great way to manipulate your vict—I mean, audience.

What, you thought that irredeemable sociopath was going to be a reliable narrator?

Here are some epistolary novels featuring a sociopathic main character that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster ride: The Collector by John Fowles, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, and The End of Alice by A.M. Homes.

All Readers are Voyeurs at Heart

Reading someone’s personal correspondence is akin to eavesdropping on a conversation. Reading their diary is like wiretapping their innermost thoughts. How about perusing someone’s medical records? It doesn’t get any more intimate than that, right? What better way to draw the reader in, allow them to truly understand your characters, than by giving them complete and unfettered access? It satisfies the voyeuristic urge without the associated ethical concerns. Because if readers are anything, they are a group that gets off on the lives of other people.

Hell, maybe your main character is an exhibitionist, letting it all hang out for the reader’s pleasure. Sure, you can have voyeurism without exhibition, but can you have exhibition without voyeurism? What would be the point?

One book that really satisfies the voyeuristic urge is The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. This masterful novel is written as a compilation of fictional posts and emails between members of an online community obsessed with the death of a sex worker named Brad. Despite literally every single character being an unreliable sock puppet, the lurid subject matter proves an inescapable trap for the scopophilicly inclined.

This Evidence Ain’t Gonna Disseminate Itself

Although they may have started out that way, the contents of the modern epistolary novel aren’t restricted to solely letters. They can include any number of textual forms, such as magazine articles, newspaper clippings, audio transcriptions, legal documents, diary entries, grocery lists—which makes them the perfect vehicle for disguising your info dumps. So instead of having the villain explain the minutiae of their evil plan to the rolled eyes of all involved, or trotting out the chief inspector to give an overview of the evidence for the benefit of the reader, you can lay everything out in a more organic, more intellectually stimulating fashion. You can make the reader part of the investigation, instead of a gawker on the sideline. It makes sense for a police file to read like the outline of a college lecture. A monologue from your main character? Not so much.

Lots of different epistolary novels have presented exposition in unique and exciting ways that go beyond the florid recitation of events via formal correspondence like in the classic mystery novel, The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace (wherein most of the documents in question are letters). There is the fabricated dossier of The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost; or the decoder app of Night Film by Maria Pessl, which gives the reader access to all manner of supplemental material to the story. Stephen King’s Carrie interrupts the main narrative with news reports, book excerpts, and even defamatory graffiti scratched into desks. The otherwise non-epistolary In the Lake of the Woods includes “evidence” and “hypothesis” chapters to enhance the narrative experience.

These are just a few of the reasons the epistolary format works so well in crime fiction. It is deceptive in its simplicity, yielding big emotional and thematic results. It adds a layer of realness to your writing, a non-fiction sheen, like in a mockumentary or found footage film. At the very least it gives you a change of scenery, a new sandbox to play in, which is sure to reinvigorate your work and give you a newfound sense of artistic purpose.

Good luck and enjoy!

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IELTS Sample Essay: Popularity of Crime Novels and TV Dramas
In this post, I'm going to write an IELTS sample essay in response to a task published in Cambridge IELTS 15 General Training. It's a question about the popularity of crime novels and crime dramas on TV. Contents show. As with my other IELTS sample essays, I'm going to use my 5 Step Approach for planning and writing an IELTS Writing Task ...
Band 6: In many countries today, crime novels and TV dramas are
The essay addresses the prompt by discussing the reasons for the popularity of crime novels and TV dramas, as well as providing the writer's opinion on crime fiction and TV crime dramas. The position is clear and well-developed, with relevant ideas that are supported throughout.
IELTS Essay # 1247
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Essay 224
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Nowadays, we can see rising popularity in crime novels and TV crime shows in the world. Viewers are attracted towards it because of excitement, thrill and suspense. In addition, it also provided good reflection of human justice. In my opinion this type of books and shows related to crime have both advantages and disadvantages on its audience.
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8 Tips for Writing Mystery or Crime Fiction. There are many elements to consider when writing crime fiction, so we've broken down the most important steps into eight easy tips. 1. Choose Your Crime. Crime novels feature a variety of crimes, which keeps the genre fresh and exciting. You could go with a classic murder mystery or serial-killer ...
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These are just a few of the reasons the epistolary format works so well in crime fiction. It is deceptive in its simplicity, yielding big emotional and thematic results. It adds a layer of realness to your writing, a non-fiction sheen, like in a mockumentary or found footage film. At the very least it gives you a change of scenery, a new ...

IELTS Sample Essay: Popularity of Crime Novels and TV Dramas

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IELTS Essay Topic: In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

Q- In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular. Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular? What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

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