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Books That Criticize Police Brutality, Racism, and Our Real Crime Obsession: Your Weekly Guide to the Best of Books
In mainstream crime stories, sharp detectives (usually police officers and almost always white men) gather evidence to avenge gruesome murders (usually young white women) and seek justice. They offer crisp visions of how crimes are committed and solved, making people heroes, villains, or victims. They are also deeply misleading.
In recent years, many writers have started to target these imperfect tropes. They criticize the genre and in doing so help create a new and better way to write about crime. For the authors of the subgenre “cozy mysteries”, this calculation has meant the recognition of reality in books based on willful ignorance. Mainstream cozies bend over looking for clues and play down the gore, but newer writers like Mia P. Manansala are disrupting that fantasy with stories about police misconduct and racism. Less cozy novels, like Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead, destabilize our most basic assumptions about what constitutes a crime. Even if Harlem Shuffle seems to have a simple heist plot, it is also firmly grounded in history, reminding readers that the free existence of black people was once illegal and highlighting the corruption of capitalism. Having established this systemic context, Whitehead separates notions of criminality and wickedness, and deconstructs the simplistic moral framework of traditional detective stories. Pola Oloixarac, the author of Mona, similarly complicates the roles that characters in detective novels are allowed to fill, writing about a woman who has herself been raped and who is also pursuing an amateur investigation into a different crime. By mixing two genres – each with their own flaws (detective fiction tends to sensationalize and literary fiction is filled with passive women) – Oloixarac was able to write with sensitivity and without denying his agency of character.
Ottessa Moshfegh takes a different approach in Death in his hands, which follows a woman’s obsessive quest to solve a murder that likely never happened. The protagonist tries to use this investigation as a means of finding an agency and instead loses his sanity. So Moshfegh turns a mirror on the readers, exposing the limits of any crime story.
Every Friday at the Books Briefing, we slip on together Atlantic stories about books that share similar ideas. Do you know of any other book lovers who might like this guide? Forward this email to them.
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What we read
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Atlantic
The unreality of The cops
“The cops didn’t really represent reality. It was propaganda, crystallized and edited in addicting portions, served without any local context, personal information, or historical details that could slow the rush of so-called criminals pulled off the streets. “
?? The cops, created by John Langley and Malcolm Barbour
Getty; Atlantic
The Dark Reality Behind the “Cozy Mysteries”
“Getting away from the cozy has never really been an escape. Despite the gentle repackaging of crime, despite the humor and novelty, what draws readers to the genre is still crime at the heart of every story.
?? Three Chocolate Cheesecake Murder, by Joanne Fluke
?? Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala
Matt williams
What is crime in a country built on it?
“In the context of the Harlem race riots of 1964, looting, gentrification and corrupt black capitalists, Harlem Shuffle is a story about property and the frustrated relationship African Americans have with it. Indeed, what is theft for a people who were themselves once property … and for whom their very freedom was the ultimate theft? “
?? Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
Vanessa Saba / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty
On accounts of rape and the surprising value of the plot
“Especially when it comes to complex stories about sexual assault, the mixing of genres can open up our storytelling capacities, giving writers – and readers – access to ever more empathy and nuance.”
?? Mona, by Pola Oloixarac
?? Leda and the swan, by Anna Caritj
The fascinating meta-mysteries of Ottessa Moshfegh
“How much control can women have over their stories? “
?? Death in his hands, by Ottessa Moshfegh
About Us: This week’s newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she reads next is Redemption Land by Lorna Goodison.
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