For some reason, I’m reminded of this decades old new york times profile of Patricia Cornwall, a writer I haven’t read much of, and don’t care to, either.
“Patsy,” however, insists that “the mystery genre doesn’t apply to what I do, and if you expect that, you’re going to be shocked or disappointed. My books are crime novels and about the people who work crime – and not mysteries, which I’ve never read in my life anyway.”
Cornwell doesn’t “do clues,” as she puts it. Nor does she “do red herrings.” Instead, she tells the reader what it is like to be elbow-deep in blood and looking for pellets, and how hard it is to remove a shirt from death-stiffened arms. Or what it is to be scuba-diving in a murky river, as was a character in “Cause of Death,” and feel your loosened tank begin to slide down your back. She can tell all this because she has done all this, often in the company of an off-duty policeman named Michael McKee, researching it in the interests of an accuracy that is sometimes tough to take – not only for the reader but for her. When I ask if the body farm in “The Body Farm,” where corpses are left outdoors so the F.B.I. can study the rate of decay, is real, she answers sharply, “I don’t make up anything.”
I think I remember this profile because I briefly discussed it with the owner of a specialty mystery bookshop in Yellow Springs, where I went to college. She turned me onto Reginald Hill, who is very much a “mystery writer”. I enjoy mysteries.
