'Psychic Detectives' Only Shine in Fiction

A popular mystery subgenre features "psychic detectives," folks who help solve crimes with paranormal skills such as precognition or postcognition (extrasensory perception of future or past), psychometry (psychic info from objects), telepathy (mind reading), and "spirit medium" contact with the dead, including murder victims. These books offer a path to justice that is not blinded by the here and now, reading the secret thoughts of witnesses, culprits and victims, and detecting a crime unlimited by time, space or death itself. Psychic detectives certainly have won a place in popular culture--as seen from TV dramas and "reality" shows, such as NBC's "Medium" and Court TV's "Psychic Detectives," as well as repeated psychic detective appearances on hit talk shows. An example of a successful mystery series built around psychic detectives is Kay Hooper's Bishop/Special Crimes Unit (including her Shadows, Evil, Fear, Blood, and Haven trilogies). Yet, while fascinating to imagine, psychic detecting in real life has been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers. Evidence of psychic crime-solving often turns out to have been fed to an uncritical media by the psychics themselves rather than independent sources. The police, FBI, and victim families consistently deny psychics' claimed involvement and helpfulness. Even successful psychic insights tend to use generality, ambiguity and probability to boost the 50/50 success rate of guesswork. Take a prediction that a missing person will be found dead in/near woods/field/water (depending on local landscape), and that someone with a close personal connection is involved. Such a prediction is likely to pan out because a person mysteriously missing for a length of time is usually dead, most people are killed by someone they know, and missing bodies are dumped in out-of-sight places--but that's hardly a revelation to police. Many reports of psychic achievement then benefit from historical reconstruction; vague claims become specific, misfires are ignored or replaced with correct predictions, and fabrications become facts. Nevertheless, the fictional fascination with psychics continues because popular authors offer some fun reads, including writers such as Kay Hooper, Heather Graham, Charlaine Harris and Victoria Laurie. After all, a psychic character and an omniscient author are playing much the same role. For a psychic mystery sampling, see http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/super-super-natural-mystery-novels-on-the-cozy-mystery-site-psychics-6th-sense.html

Taking Romance From Staid to Steamy

With the rise of "erotic romance," the romance genre has come a long way since I first discovered it in my early teens, when most of the piles of love stories I brought home from the library ended with a kiss, and only a kiss (plus a proposal of marriage). Some things about romance fiction haven't changed, of course: It still claims the largest share of U.S. consumer book sales, still is an almost completely female pleasure (91% of readers are women), and still appeals to an audience that has graduated young adult but is still far from senior (mean age 49 for print and 42 for e-books). But the popularity of erotic romance (exemplified by the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon) definitely has added new heat, in terms of sales and content, to an old formula. One reason for the growth of the erotic subgenre is doubtless the advent of the e-book, which allows women to download and read a sexy story privately, without the embarrassment of publicly purchasing and carrying the telltale cover. (I used to wish paperbacks would do away with half-naked Fabio back in the day.) And because of the success of erotica, I've noticed that other romance subgenres, including contemporary, historical, paranormal and even Regency romances, are being spiced up with steamy sex scenes. (The inspirational romances remain chaste, of course.) Adding "romance" to mystery or sci-fi probably requires penning a few sex scenes in today's market, too. For an amusing PBS/POV infographic on the evolution of the romance novel, see http://www.pbs.org/pov/guiltypleasures/infographic-evolution-of-romance-novels-fifty-shades-of-grey-ebook.php#.U7M6pJRdWSo