Pushing Boundaries
by Kristi chadwick
YEAR AFTER YEAR, MYSTERY remains the number one circulating genre in libraries, as LJ’s annual materials buying survey (see Barbara Hoffert’s “Materials Shift,” LJ 2/15/14) reveals (95 percent of respondents name it as their top circulator in print, 88 percent in ebook format). While mystery fans have their favorite cozy, police procedural, or historical thriller, the increasing number of releases that allow readers to cross the boundaries from one genre to another in the same book proves that today there is no one true way of presenting this beloved genre. Crossovers enable readers to enjoy what they love best about mysteries—the puzzle and its solution—while giving writers a broad landscape across which to write.
These days publishers are seeing far fewer novels that fit cleanly into one category or another. “More common now are novels that cross those genre lines or blend elements of various categories,” explains Mark Tavani, vice president and editorial director at Ballantine Bantam Dell. “Gone Girl is [a] novel that I don’t think fits easily into a category. Obviously it generates fantastic suspense and is a true page-turner, but it benefited from being aimed at a mainstream audience.”
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Source: Library Journal
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