Modern Echoes of the 'Penny Dreadful'

The term "Penny Dreadful" has been revived by the recent Showtime horror-thriller series. "Penny dreadful" refers to cheap and lurid British publications catering to the newly literate youth of the late 19th century. Thanks to increased public education, a growing number of English working class adolescents had learned to read at a basic level, and had income for inexpensive escapist entertainment. An American parallel would be the "dime novel." Aimed mainly at young adult males, the "penny dreadful" began as serialized stories on cheap pulp paper (costing a penny per installment). They offered sensational tales of paranormal chills, violent crime and youthful adventurers. For example, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who has been recently reincarnated as a Broadway and film star, was a penny dreadful invention. Other series featured "Varney the Vampire" and "Wagner the Wehr-Wolf." Actually, the penny dreadful tales don't sound that different from current best sellers in the Young Adult genre. Clearly, the teen taste for horror-thriller adventure is unabated. But I wonder if the penny dreadful content has modern-day parallels because the elementary literacy of Victorian youth--who demanded short-attention-span excitement devoid of literary and historical allusions and difficult vocabulary--is also still with us. A 2012 study of reading trends among high school students found that the average student reads at the 5th grade level--the reading level of the Hunger Games and Twilight series. For more on penny dreadful history, see http://vichist.blogspot.com/2008/11/penny-dreadfuls.html

Mystery Fiction Embraces Genre-Bending

I've noticed, and a recent Library Journal article confirms, that the genre boundaries of mystery fiction are expanding and blurring. Mystery authors seem increasingly prone to borrow from other genres, ranging from romance, paranormal/fantasy, horror and thriller to Westerns. The resulting crossover novels may have the traditional mystery puzzle solving, but they've got a genre-bending persona. For example, how do reviewers categorize the hit Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn? The page-turning psychological mystery about a husband suspected in the disappearance of his wife seems to have jumped right over genre into "literary fiction" status. The current paranormal craze is especially infectious, with paranormal mysteries, like paranormal romances, proliferating. So no surprise that Southerner Maggie Toussaint (author of Cleopatra Jones and Mossy Bog mysteries) is going paranormal with her new book Gone and Done It about a landscaper/pet-sitter who uses dream-walking to help police. The crime-solving Western, following the trail of the late Tony Hillerman, seems to be another mystery crossover category; an example is the Western noir Bad Country by C.B. McKenzie (featuring a Native American rodeo-cowboy-turned-PI). Meanwhile, the success of the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series has paved the way for imports with a foreign accent, and not just from Scandanavia. I'm looking forward to the summer arrival of Bernard Minier’s Frozen Dead, set in the French Pyrénées and winner of several French literary prizes. Of course, American authors are also pumping out standard mystery fare and doing it well: Police procedurals, spunky women sleuths, historicals and small-town "cozies" abound. But based on sales trends, I'm thinking about penning an erotic paranormal mystery set in Iceland. For the Library Journal preview of 2014 mystery debuts, go to http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2014/04/books/genre-fiction/mystery/pushing-boundaries-mystery-preview-2014/