"Oh I don't read mysteries"

I won't say I could get rich if I got a dollar every time I heard it, but I could buy lunch perhaps once a month. But now a wrinkle presents itself as much loved writer and almost-local hero Jane Urquhart has apparently dipped a toe into the genre pond.
Sarah has made the call in Macleans magazine and its an intriguing prospect. Any thumbs up from her is a fine thing, but my favourite graf (right on the money) reads:

"What is odd is that Wolfe (Urquhart's agent) would choose to keep her identity so tightly concealed, almost as if there's a stigma attached to writing genre fiction. Perhaps long-time Urquhart readers of a snobbish nature would blanch at reading a crime novel under her name, but mystery readers, being of greater number and of voracious habit, have no qualms about the reverse as long as the work is good — and might then be inclined to pick up one of Urquhart's literary efforts."

She notes that it's not exactly novel anymore for literary novelists to turn to crime fiction.
And it's not like George Pelecanos, Louise Welsh, Michael Connelly etc. give away a damn thing next to their literary cousins.
Writers that good are not to blame for every crappy crime novel, just as the Booker Prize doesn't guarantee literary merit.

Posted by Dave