TWO of Britain’s best-loved authors have hit out at literary snobbery, saying that crime writing is long overdue the recognition of a mainstream literature award.

Baroness James of Holland Park, better known as P.D. James, and Ian Rankin said at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that genre writing at its best was the equal of so-called “prestigious literature”.

Despite the popularity of crime writing with the public, they said, the literary world looked down on it and on other genres as “inferior”.

James, the creator of the detective Adam Dalgliesh, told The Times: “I would say genre writing tends to be less well regarded. I don’t think that’s fair.

“Genre writing at its best can stand with any good, straight novel. It can tell you more about life today than more ‘prestigious’ novels.

“What’s interesting about the crime novel is it can explore all sorts of problems that worry people today and often does it more realistically. It often tells you more about the age in which it’s written . . . the crime novel can tell you more about the social mores and problems and complexities of the age.”

She said that crime fiction had moved on since the “golden age” when authors such as Agatha Christie concentrated on planting clues for the readers.

Crime authors today put far more effort into psychological realism: “Any clues these days arise more from people’s characters. These books should be regarded as serious novels. You get to know real people. It’s a great deal more subtle than planting the clues and deciding who done it.”

Much of the intellectual snobbery towards crime novels, she said, arose from the way the books tended to have a common structure and form, with the murder, the detection and the solution.

This, she told an audience, was a mistake. “The novel itself is a very artificial form — and none the worse for that. I would regard the idea that because there’s a structure and there is a form that someone denigrates it as wrong.

“One of the advantages of the classic detective story is, at the end, you get a solution. That’s why it’s so popular in times of great social unrest.”

Ian Rankin, best known for his 18 novels featuring the Edinburgh detective John Rebus, said that the argument about structure was used to exclude crime from major literary awards.

“That’s what separates us from Booker Prize novels — the fact there’s a very conscious structure to the crime novel,” he said. “It’s a bete noir of mine. It’s a bete noir to a lot of crime writers. You see the Booker Prize and see novels that aren’t talking about contemporary issues and, when they do, it’s in a slightly skewed way.

“For me, there are just good books and bad books. Crime fiction thinks out of the box. It gets you thinking about the biggest moral questions you can, whereas ‘literary fiction’ can be quite introspective. The crime novel at its best deals with contemporary social issues in a way that isn’t preaching and is not talking down to people.”

He added: “We don’t get as raw a deal as science fiction writers. Science fiction is dealing with some of the biggest ideas — where we are going to go as a race — but for some reason it’s not taken seriously.

“J.K. Rowling reads a lot of crime fiction. Lots of people read it, but they are often surreptitious about it. A lot of readers crave traditional novels with a good beginning, strong middle and good end. Crime fiction does do that.”

Mr Rankin recognised that the standing of crime fiction was improving, but more slowly than in other countries and it still appeared to be a long way from being recognised by a major award.

He pointed out that authors could be taken seriously by the Booker if they wrote about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle solving a crime, as Julian Barnes did with his shortlisted Arthur and George, but not if Sherlock Holmes solved a crime.

WHODUNNIT BEST?

Ian Rankin on David Peace “In a few years’ time we’ll be talking about David Peace. He’s got a strong moral core to his books, he’s writing about what it means to be English and tackles issues like racism and xenophobia”

P.D. James on Dorothy L. Sayers “If you want to know what it was like in a Fens village between the wars or what it’s like to work in an advertising agency, she’s extraordinarily realistic”

Admired by P.D. James The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins; The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

Admired by Ian Rankin GB 84 by David Peace; Garnet Hill by Denise Mina; The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh; The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham

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