The Dark Lure
Megan Abbott discusses sex and violence in the crime fiction genre – and wonders what the attraction is for women writers. She also talks about the research for her novel The Song Is You.
One of the most common question women crime authors are asked is some version of “Why do you write such dark things?” In July, I had the great fortune of being on a panel at Harrogate with authors Denise Mina, Caro Ramsay and Zoë Sharp, moderated by Stuart MacBride. The subject was “Sex, Drugs and Ultraviolence.” At one point during the discussion, Denise said (I’m liberally paraphrasing), “I think we should stop apologizing for being interested in these things.” I could almost feel the relief in the room, and surely did in myself. The attraction to darkness, to lifting dark things to the light, turning them around in our hands and trying to make meaning of them—well, it’s as old as time.
When they are done well, as in the works of my esteemed co-panelists, we wouldn’t even call these laid-bare moments “sex scenes” or “violence scenes.” They feel integral to the story and revelatory about its characters. They also pluck nerves in us, quiver through us, tell us something about ourselves. In many ways, sex and violence in books tear away all the filigree of civilization and show us for who we really are, both light and dark.
For me, as a reader, crime novels do this best. Far from exercises in genre they can be heart-laid-bare portraits of us at our worst, and best. My favorites have always been those in the noir or hardboiled tradition—a man’s world both in terms of its canonical authors (Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, James Ellroy) and its most famous characters (the private eyes, cops, gangsters). My novels generally are my attempt to sneak my way into this world.
My third novel, Queenpin, is my attempt to write a kind of love letter to the classic pulp paperbacks of the 1940s and ’50s—the ones with the lurid covers (which Pocket has so beautifully emulated for my books) and their fast-paced, addictive tales of crime and tabloid murder.
In classic pulp novels, women are most famously and prominently the elusive femme fatale, or the beautiful victim, but very rarely are they the center of the book. When starting Queenpin, I had this thought of a gender switch. I’ve always loved those tales of an aging tough guy who’s schooling a young up-and-comer in the ways of crime. Instead of a tough guy at the center, Queenpin has a tough woman. Two tough women, actually: an ambitious young girl taken under the wing of Gloria, a legendary gang moll nearly past her prime. As the story unfolds, Gloria shepherds her young protégée through after-hours gambling dens, mobbed-up racetracks and an excess of underworld glamorous. Like any hungry young pup, the young girl can’t get enough of it.
Somewhere in my head was the thought that reversing the characters’ gender would change everything. In some ways, it did. The two women in Queenpin have to be very conscious of the way others see them, the way they are viewed. They’re still operating in a world where women hold fewer cards. But mostly, I was struck by how easily the story fell into the grooves of its traditional cross-double-cross story. I came to think that it’s because these books aren’t really (or not just) about a uniquely man’s world, about weak men and the cold-blooded femme fatales who unman them. These are books about power. And sex-and-violence in these books is almost always a stage for displays of power, exercises of power, wrangling over power. Wanting it, losing it, surrendering it, fighting over it, protecting it—with your fists, your body, your gun.
In Queenpin, then, desire makes you weak, it makes you screw up. Power is in withholding, steeling yourself up. The older woman, Gloria, tries to “school” her young protégée—our narrator—and warn her against making herself vulnerable.
But didn’t you ever fall for one? I asked once, sucking on a swizzle stick and hoping for some sign of soft in the old lady, something beating under the finely pressed shantung suit. Sure, kid, she said, eyelashes grazing her cheeks. There were a few. I lived this life, you know. But I watched myself and I never mixed business with anything else. There were men, but not these men. No. Straight men. Straight enough. Men who may not have lived by the book but lived by some book. In this life, she said, crossing these glorious gams, shimmering in the filmy light, you can’t let your guard down. If you can control yourself, you can control everyone else.
If only her protégée listened.
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Megan Abbott talks about her research for The Song Is You
Megan Abbott was born in the Detroit area, and has taught literature, writing and film at universities in New York. She lives in New York City. Visit her website at www.meganabbott.com
