Rough in Ways Never Intended

One of the pleasures of bookselling is no matter how up to date you think you are on the new releases there are still surprises. A recent one for me was The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Rough Guide series they are, as the name suggests, a kind of quick and dirty guide started in the UK in the 1990s when the series founder couldn't find a travel guide for Greece that strayed at all from the traditional tourist beat. These days the series covers a broad variety of topics, the latest of which is crime fiction.

Now I have been reading mysteries for years and after 16 years of bookselling I'm definately not the intended audience for this book. It's meant to offer suggestions to the novice, the literary equivalent of a knowledgeable bookseller. I will also say up front that of course the only book of this kind that would completely please me is the one I wrote my own self but, regardless, I find I must quibble with the editor, Barry Forshaw, on one particular entry.

From the chapter on private eyes, page 72:

"Pelecanos has written cogently before about the cycle of violence that cripples the potential of so many young men, and his anger has a keen personal edge (the author has a black wife and son). "

Hats off to Mr Forshaw for recognizing Hoyden fave George Pelecanos (not just once either) but I'm not really sure who the author is married to should come into play in legit criticism of fiction. As my friend, Mike, put it, "What does it have to do with anything? Would Elmore Leonard write better Westerns if he were married to a cowboy?"

(Not necessarily Mike, but wouldn't you want to read that book?)

I would say any author who wants to write modern urban crime stories must by necessity address the question of race and by doing so Mr. Pelecanos accurately represents the city he so obviously loves. I don't know of any science fiction writers who've actually been to space-good writers make their topics personal through their passion and talent. And though I realize we're talking about a single blurb in an overview book, as a fan I hope that my favorite artists and writers' motivations could not be so easily summed up. To paraphrase the Leonard Cohen quote I used a few entries ago, I stand by my original astonishment.