It’s no mystery that readers love crime fiction . . .

Crime and thriller titles often dominate the list of most borrowed titles from UK libraries.  But just what is it about the genre that keeps us coming back for more? We take a sleuth’s eye look at the hugely popular genre. . .

Crime fiction has long had the power to keep readers hooked. Way back in the 1800s, Penny Dreadfuls - often featuring crime and detection - were nothing short of a publishing phenomenon.  And today, the genre often dominates both the bestseller and most borrowed lists. In fact, until last year, crime author James Patterson had held the accolade of most borrowed author from UK libraries for a staggering 14 years, only being overtaken in 21/22 by children’s author Julia Donaldson. Yet even so, when it came to the top 10 most borrowed titles last year, crime and thriller titles still outnumbered any other genre, and for the second year running, Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, was the most borrowed title overall.

So just why is crime fiction so irresistibly popular? For many of us, the enjoyment of trying to solve a fictional mystery brings the same satisfaction that we get from solving a riddle or a puzzle. And it’s in our very nature to want to know how things turn out.

As author Sophie Hannah, who was awarded the prestigious Dagger in the Library just last month, said in the Guardian in 2018; “Solving the puzzle; for most of us that’s life. Will we get the job we want? . . . Is our current relationship going to last? We’re spurred on by not knowing and desperately wishing we did. Crime is the only genre that puts puzzle-solving – making sense of what the hell’s going on – at the centre of everything.”

What crime fiction also does, is let us explore the many varied aspects of life – even the most unpleasant. As Jo Nesbo has said: “Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people - about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition.”

A crime novel allows us to experience the darker side of life, but at a distance, and safe in the knowledge that good will win out in the end, or at the very least, that we’ll find rational answers to the mystery.  As PD James once put it: “Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.”  

And in uncertain or troubling times, the craving for rational solutions comes even further to the fore.

As Richard Osman has said: “We live in a world where, increasingly, our problems seem to have no clear solutions. But in crime novels, however impossible the initial problem, the author promises you there will be a solution. That’s the contract that makes crime fiction so addictive and so enduring.” (The Guardian, 2022)

Of course, Richard Osman is one of a number of high profile authors whose brand of ‘cosy crime’ has become hugely popular in recent years - perhaps as a direct antidote to the times we live in.  

Garrick Webster, co-founder of the Crime Fiction Lover website, certainly thinks so;

“ . . .readers today feel that their world is in turmoil," he has said, "and for many of us life is challenging enough without being challenged by the next novel we pick up.” What readers are looking for, Webster says, is to feel ‘comfortable’. “Cosy crime fiction fits the bill. There’s a sense of mystery and a touch of peril, but there’s an order to things. There will be an investigation and there will be a fair outcome, which people aren’t seeing in everyday life at the moment.”

But whether it’s the safety and comfort of cosy crime, the nostalgia of classic crime, or the page-turning adrenaline rush of the modern psychological thriller, the lure of the crime genre looks certainly here to stay.