The contemporary glut of stories in which a criminal is the protagonist is far from an unalloyed good—for aesthetic reasons, not only moral considerations, writes mystery author and critic James Lincoln Warren.

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Don’t stories that feature criminals as heroes romanticize the worst in human behavior? Disregarding the “gentlemanly” part [regarding E. W. Hornung’s stories about the gentleman-thief and murderer A. J. Raffles], much of contemporary crime fiction regularly features ruthless assassins and psychotic serial killers as protagonists. Is that really want we want? . . .

I’ve written two stories where the murderers get away, “Black Spartacus” and “Jungle Music”, but in both of the stories the point was clearing the name of an innocent man wrongly accused. In every other story I’ve written that I can think of, Justice Is (Completely) Served. I like it better that way. After all, if one is going to bother to write a story about morality (and what else is crime fiction?), then there ought to be some sort of moral in it.

But the absence thereof is not what really bothers me about the relatively recent spate of committing-crime stories. What really bothers me is that, in most cases, they evince a certain laziness on the part of the authors. Frankly, I feel cheated as a reader. After all, it’s easier to plan and execute a crime than it is to solve one. Accordingly, it’s easier to write about committing a crime than about solving one. Committing a crime may require resolve, but bringing one to justice requires wit or character or both. That’s what makes ratiocinative fair-play mysteries so much fun to read. It’s also what burnishes Travis McGee’s and Philip Marlowe’s ever-so-slightly tarnished armor, and makes Harry Bosch such an entertaining implacable foe to evil-doers.

Full article here.