Tag Archives: readers

Bad Language in Crime Fiction

There seems to be/or has been an increasing pressure, steadily building, on writers to avoid using bad language in their mystery novels. How do you feel about that? This is seen more in the U.S. than abroad. Readers are pushing against bad language and are penalizing writers with one star reviews on Amazon (who takes those reviews seriously anyway?). I’m not sure if the complaint is about the use of bad language period or the excessive use of bad language in crime fiction.

At any rate, readers have felt the need to complain about it to the writer, to the publisher, to whoever. Editors are responding to it, too, which is troublesome to me, because these folks aren’t representative of me and vice versa. I will direct you to read reviewer Sunita’s conference notes from her attendance at Bouchercon this year where authors voiced their frustrations about this very thing. Continue reading →

Does A Bad Ending Always Equal A Bad Book?

Let’s talk about endings because I’m curious. How much weight does an ending carry for you? For me? Eh, it depends. A bad ending doesn’t always kill the book for me. For example: In the Woods (2007) by Tana French. The ending completely and thoroughly fell apart to me. Just made no sense whatsoever but I loved the book overall. It helped that the characters were interesting. The pacing wasn’t all that great from what I remember but still, I really enjoyed reading the book. So the bad ending didn’t subtract much of anything in my total enjoyment. Just like some novels can transcend spelling errors and bad grammar, the same can be said for a bad ending don’t you think?

Photo source: “LOLcat’s ‘n’ Funny Pictures