We’ve looked before in this blog at reasons why crime fiction is so popular – why we like to read it and why we keep on going back for more. Today, our topic is the sheer variety of crime fiction that is available out there, which surely has to be at least one of the reasons we all like it so much.

‘Crime’ as a genre is very broad. It covers everything from relatively cosy ‘whodunnit’ murder mysteries to horrendous serial killings to epics spanning decades in order to solve a single crime. It covers different countries and different continents. There is almost an endless number of variations and options for crime fiction writers.

One of the great things about that is it means that we never run out of stories. Another of the great things about it is that it means people who like somewhat different types of book can generally still find something to appeal to them in the crime genre. It means there is always something new to read.

One of the reasons I think all this works so well is that no matter where you live, no matter what language you read or write in, crime is something we all understand. Whether we’re talking about a lightly humorous caper or something much darker, crime is familiar to us all. We all know right from wrong, and we all know that sometimes the lines get a little blurry.

In a way, crime is a universal language, and I think – in amongst all that excellent choice and variety – that it is one of the reasons we keep reading these books. It doesn’t matter whether you’re reading a Scandinavian thriller or a mystery set in suburban England, you can take a look at the crime and think ‘yeah, that means something to me.’

That familiarity, even if we have no direct experience of crime ourselves, acts a sort of foundation to support all of those variations on a theme. Crime is of course terrible, but it is something that is present in every society, and crime novels provide an interesting way of examining issues related to that. And since everyone’s experience is unique and we all have different views on things, it means we’ll never run out of variations.

What do you think? Do you like the variety available in crime fiction or do you tend to stick a particular sort of crime novel?