‘ Suit the action to the word, the
word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep
not the modesty of nature:
for any thing so o'erdone is from the
purpose of playing, whose
end, both at the first and now, was
and is, to hold as 'twere the
mirror up to nature: to show virtue
her feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and
pressure.’
‘we will always have her work to remind us
that crime fiction at its best holds a mirror up to society, showing us that
dark corners exist everywhere and within us all.’
Ian Rankin on Ruth Rendell (New
Statesman, 16th October 2015)
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© Tim Wheeler
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Fog
clung in skirts around the city’s buildings, and November’s sunlight was
reduced to a splutter, when I attended Reading Crime Festival in 2011. At the
time I was writing a humorous account of working in the fashion industry, comfortable
in my tongue-in-cheek style, I was there only as a keen reader of the darker
genre. My sister-in-law and I juggled our three-month-old niece between us, and
joked she was the youngest crime fan in attendance.
I
was attracted to a panel discussion between NJ Cooper, Denise Mina, Ronnie
Thompson, David Wilson and Dreda Say Mitchell, which posed the question: Crime and Society: How is crime, fact and
fiction, influenced by the society in which it occurs? I wanted to understand
why crime fiction, above other genres, is so readily cast as Hamlet’s players:
tasked with holding up a mirror to nature.
For
crime thrillers are revered for their ability to reflect society. Authors are praised
for unearthing truths about humanity. What is it about these tales of dark shadows,
of the grubby underbelly, of desperate acts, of criminality, of death, that we
so strongly and readily relate to? In writing about crime, authors show the
worst of us. Our grim urges and impulses laid bare when decency and law collapse.
As economies go into recession, government cuts begin to bite, and life gets
that little bit harder for the many, UK sales of crime fiction hold strong and steady.
When even militant extremists release choreographed videos in carefully coordinated
PR campaigns, and our everyday life is reset through a more flattering filter
online, our cynical side knee-jerk reacts against the air-brushed, candy-floss rebrands
of our own hopes and dreams pitched at us by globalisation’s uber brands. We’re
savvy. We know there’s no pearl if there’s no grit in the oyster.
Society,
as so readily reflected in crime fiction, is often shaped by geography. Our
communities defined by location. You’re a Londoner. A Northerner. Urban.
Suburban. Provincial. We group together for support, understanding, growth, protection.
We carve ourselves up. Draw boundaries. Raise walls. Are you one of us? The
police utilise independent mediators (religious leaders, advocates, voluntary
sector workers), to reach those in specific communities. The dark morally
complex Scandinavian Noir, mirrors the twenty-four-hour darkness of their winter.
Morse has Oxford, Rebus has Edinburgh, the cities almost characters in their
own right. And we’re back to the spotlight crime fiction shines on our
communities.
In
the last decade we’ve seen the growth of new communities: those online. Beyond groups which have collected around shared interests
- Marvel comics, make up tutorials, fanaticism – huge swathes of the population
have joined social media platforms. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat,
Blogger, have become part of our daily lives. Part of our language. With fifteen
million users in the UK, Twitter must be the biggest single community to form
in the last decade. What dark corners lay hidden within this community?
Four
years after I questioned why crime fiction does it best, I found myself writing
about a killer who tweets clues about their next victim. A killer whose tweets
are shared, replied to, liked, followed. I’m turning the mirror to face society,
I’m turning the mirror to face social media.
Follow Me (HarperCollins) by Angela Clarke is out in e-book on 3rd December
2015 and in print on 31st December 2015.
