Ignorance About The Current State Of Crime Fiction Is Rampant

(This piece originally appeared in Mystery Tribune.)

The old-school pulp writers are all dead, but their creations’ shadows loom over the crime fiction genre. That’s the only conclusion I can draw after reading articles like Jacqueline Sheehan’s hilariously misinformed piece in “The Writer.”

Sheehan insists that the crime/thriller genre is male dominated, overstuffed with “the old tropes of hookers, cheating wives, or objects of sexual desire for the male protagonist.” In addition, she writes, “some female characters seem to be so enthralled with the male protagonist that they flip up their skirts after the first hello.”

Wow, I didn’t know Mickey Spillane was still churning out books from beyond the grave! And if some part of his consciousness is swimming through the ether, I bet he really enjoys being positioned as a facile straw-man!

Fortunately, Sheehan has found the counterbalance in an unbearably chauvinistic genre, two guiding lights who are leading the way forward when it comes to creating compelling, realistic women characters in an otherwise male-swamped genre landscape. Get your applause ready, everyone, because here they are:

“First is Lee Child, the world-famous author of the Jack Reacher series, and next, Paul Doiron, the…