Dan Brown

In my last post I wrote about a few problems I have with modern crime fiction, particularly with the issue of how simple crimes are no longer enough and a massive conspiracy must be lurking somewhere. There is a fictional crime programme airing on British television at the moment named Broadchurch. I haven't seen this but the review I watched here http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/video/2013/mar/12/broadchurch-mayday-parks-recreation-video-review?INTCMP=SRCH strongly hinted that after a child is found murdered everyone is hiding something. Of course they are, because as I have said, now all murders have to be part of a conspiracy.

I blame Dan Brown for this. After his massive runaway success The Da Vinci Code (2003), hundreds of copycat novels were published in an attempt to cash-in on the conspiracy genre - the classic outline of which, as superbly demonstrated in the excellent Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), is always about a murder or a problem of some kind that leads the protagonist down a rabbit hole where he must solve a mystery rooted in the depths of antiquity, etc.

The Da Vinci Code was along the same lines, using Christian iconography and history to create a mystery from the past that had to be solved by someone in the present, but its enormous success changed a lot of genre fiction, and I'm not just talking about the insane number of books about Knights Templar and codes and so on that came out immediately afterwards. I'm talking about a broad demand from people looking for more of the same that manifested its way into many other genres of fiction, usually in the form of some kind of conspiracy. Of course conspiracy books have always existed, especially in the political thriller genre, but post-DVC things got totally out of hand. Now, people expect every mystery to lead to various exotic locations and have a cause that will CHANGE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER BELIEVED, etc., when once upon a time Poirot bumbling around the village green was enough. Some might think I am conflating two genres here - mystery thriller and crime, but I don't think so.

It is an interesting development that in the last few years private detective books have ballooned in success - but they are not seen as private detective books. Robert Langdon is a private detective, who solves a murder to resolve a storyline problem, yet he is called a professor. Jack Reacher is a private detective who solves a murder to resolve whatever story he is in, yet he is called a "drifter", not a private detective. Let's face it - all these books are simple crime novels whose settings or characters are tweaked slightly to elevate them out of the crime genre and place them somewhere else - such as "international mystery thriller" etc.

With the publication of Inferno in May, we can expect a deluge of international mystery thrillers set in Florence, with the protagonist and his beautiful Italian assistant running through the Vasari corridor or through the hidden tunnel under the River Arno, hiding in secret passageways in the Palazzo Vecchio or any of the other things they will have to do to solve the five-point mystery plan. I'm guessing Inferno is going to be about Cybernetics and cybernetic immortailty, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality#Cybernetics, for anyone who is interested, but I might be wrong. I say this because every Dan Brown novel is a blend of science and religion, and immortality through cybernetics is something that could easily be linked to Dante.

If I'm wrong, I suppose I could always write about it myself - and it's my idea! I'm claiming it if Dan Brown hasn't got there first... and then I can throw petrol on the fire by adding to the genre and writing about something that WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING YOU EVER BELIEVED IN....