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IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Popularity of Crime Novels

In this post, I’m going to write an IELTS sample essay in response to a task published in Cambridge IELTS 15 General Training . It’s a question about the popularity of crime novels and crime dramas on TV .

As with my other IELTS sample essays , I’m going to use my 5 Step Approach for planning and writing an IELTS Writing Task 2 essay.

Step 1: Understand Task

Step 2: decide position, step 3: plan, step 4: write, step 5: check.

Here is the task:

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular?

What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

First I need to make sure I understand the task fully.

So my task is to discuss why crime novels and TV crime dramas are popular , and what my opinion is of them . It’s NOT asking me to discuss documentaries about crime, or news stories about crime. Only novels and TV dramas. So I think this perhaps means not movies.

Discuss : novels, TV dramas about crime Don’t discuss : news stories, documentaries (movies about crime?)

There is a slightly confusing thing in the task:

The topic statement says: “ becoming more and more popular ”
The question says “ are popular ”

So am I being asked to discuss why they are becoming more popular (i.e. a trend over time) or why they are popular (i.e. a situation today)? I think it’s better to go with the question: “why…are [they] popular”.

Re-worded Task

So a re-worded task might be this:

Why are crime novels and TV crime dramas popular?
What do I think of them?

This helps me to understand the task more clearly (assuming my re-wording is accurate!)

Ok, so I understand my task. Next… what’s my position on this topic? What’s my answer to this question? What do I think?

I don’t like this task at all! I rarely watch crime shows on TV and I almost never read crime fiction. I have little interest in them, and so I’m not sure why other people read and watch them. I had to really think hard to come up with some reasons why.

I eventually thought of 2 reasons:

People love stories where good people overcome bad people, and crime stories fit into this kind of story well: the good detective overcoming the evil criminal
People are fascinated by the lives of criminals, because criminals often have extreme lifestyles: violent, wealthy, etc.

I thought of a 3rd reason, but discarded this: crime stories are gripping. That’s a bit harder to explain, so I went with the fascination with the lives of criminals.

However, I must be careful with my 2nd reason – my task is to discuss TV crime drama (as well as novels), not documentaries or movies, so I would have to make sure I discussed TV drama that’s based on real life stories. As you will see from the essay, I mentioned a movie (Legend) as an example of crime drama – strictly speaking, it’s not TV crime drama, so it’s risky. However, I worded this carefully, mentioning that I watched it on TV, and I called it a dramatisation, so I think an IELTS examiner would see it as relevant to the task. (It’s a little risky, but I think it’s the only crime drama I’ve watched in 10 years!)

Then I have to answer the question: “What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?” What do I think of them?

Not much, to be honest! I don’t really watch them. But this is a perfectly fine opinion to present. I do, however, like watching crime dramas that are about real life stories.

Ok, so that’s my position, and it’s helped me to generate my main ideas. Next I need to plan out my ideas. This will help me do 2 more things: (1) develop these ideas (i.e. extend and support them), and (2) organise my ideas.

Here’s a photo of my essay plan. (I hope you can read my handwriting!) I’ve also annotated the plan with BP1, BP2 and BP3 to indicate which body paragraphs to write each idea in.

(By the way, I kept changing my example of the good detective – in my plan I crossed out Hercule Poirot and changes it to Sherlock Holmes. While writing, I realised Miss Marple was a better example!)

So I’ve got a clear plan – I’ve got a map of my essay. My next step is to turn this plan into an essay. Here is my essay for this question:

Stories about criminal activity, both fictional and real-life, have become increasingly popular over the last few decades. There are many possible reasons for this, but the two primary ones that I can think of are the underlying desire of people to see good overcome evil, and a fascination with criminal lifestyles.

Almost all stories about crime, whether in print or on TV, are about good people, such as detectives and law-abiding civilians, triumphing over bad people, namely criminals. We often see this in fictional detective stories, where an otherwise ordinary person uses their intellect and skill to identify evil criminal masterminds. A good example of this is Miss Marple, an elderly woman who always manages to track down and apprehend evil criminals.

A second reason is that people have a fascination with the lives of criminals. Perhaps this is to do with people’s need for escapism. One of the most popular crime dramas in the UK of the last 20 years was ‘Legend’, a dramatisation of the lives of the Kray Twins, two violent London gang leaders of the 1960s. The film, which I watched on TV, portrayed their violent behaviour, along with their opulent and chaotic lifestyles, and I do feel that people find this compelling viewing, despite how it shows evil people succeeding.

Personally, unless it is related to real-life stories, I have little interest in either crime fiction or crime drama. I find their plots too repetitive. With true crime stories, however, I can learn something about social history and psychology. Why, for example, do people turn to lives of crime? Is it simply for money, or are they motivated by power as well? And what causes people to join gangs and follow people like the Krays? These are all interesting questions.

In summary, a desire to see good triumph over evil, along with a fascination with evil, are two reasons I think underlie the popularity of crime stories, but my interest in them is mainly limited to dramatisations of real lives.

(335 words)

Step 5 would be to check your essay. Because I’m writing a blog post, I checked and edited my essay before publishing!

Comments on Vocabulary

I’ve used a wide range of phrases which have a clear, precise meaning, for example:

criminal activity
a fascination with criminal lifestyles
law-abiding civilians
an otherwise ordinary person
evil criminal masterminds
manages to track down and apprehend
people’s need for escapism
their opulent and chaotic lifestyles
compelling viewing

“crime” and “criminal”

I used the word “crime” 7 times and “criminal” 6 times. It’s almost impossible to avoid repeating these words as they have no exact synonyms.

Some IELTS test takers might change “crime” to “offence”, e.g. they would change:

“Almost all stories about crime ” to
“Almost all stories about offences ”

But “offences” has a more general meaning than “crime”, so it makes the writing less precise. It also makes the writing less natural

Or test takers might change:

“Stories about criminal activity, both fictional and real-life” , to
“Stories about illegal activity, both fictional and real-life”

But “illegal” has a more general, less clear meaning than “criminal”.

So you often have to repeat words which have a precise meaning. The alternative is to use imprecise, unnatural vocabulary, which will limit your band score for lexical resource.

I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions or thoughts about my essay, please add them in the comments below. Thanks for reading! And don’t forget to read my other IELTS sample essays .

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In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

“in many countries today, crime novels and tv crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.”, sample answer:.

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in the popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas in many countries around the world. This trend has sparked a debate about the reasons behind this surge in interest and its potential impact on society. In this essay, I will discuss the factors contributing to the growing popularity of crime fiction and its potential consequences.

One of the key reasons for the increasing popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas is the human fascination with mystery and suspense. These genres often provide an escape from the mundane realities of everyday life and offer a thrilling and captivating experience for the audience. The element of suspense and the intricate plotlines in crime fiction can keep readers and viewers engaged, making it a compelling form of entertainment.

Furthermore, the rise of technology and social media has made it easier for people to access and consume crime-related content. With the advent of streaming platforms and online bookstores, individuals can easily find and indulge in crime novels and TV crime dramas. The convenience of accessing these materials has undoubtedly contributed to their growing popularity.

However, the increasing popularity of crime fiction also raises concerns about its potential impact on society. Some critics argue that the glorification of crime and violence in these narratives may desensitize individuals to real-life criminal activities. Moreover, the portrayal of law enforcement and criminal justice systems in a sensationalized manner could lead to misconceptions about these institutions.

In conclusion, the growing popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas can be attributed to the human fascination with mystery and suspense, as well as the accessibility of such content through technological advancements. While these genres offer entertainment value, it is important to consider the potential implications of their widespread consumption on societal perceptions of crime and justice.

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Ielts essay # 1247 - crime novels and tv crime dramas are becoming more popular, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, in many countries today, crime novels and tv crime dramas are becoming more and more popular., why do you think these books and tv shows are popular what is your opinion of crime fiction and tv crime dramas.

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Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular – IELTS Writing Task 2

Updated On Mar 24, 2024

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Band 7 Sample Answer for Writing Task 2 Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular
Band 8 Sample Answer for Writing Task 2 Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular
Band 9 Sample Answer for Writing Task 2 Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular

IELTS Writing Task 2 Connectors for Gaining Bonus Points in the Sample Answers for Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular

Additional resources.

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The IELTS Writing Task 2 evaluates your ability to write a coherent essay on a specified subject. So, you must familiarize yourself with the aim of the question and the structure of the answer because Task 2 includes Direct Question Essays, such as ‘Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular’ from Cambridge IELTS 15 General Training Test 1.

The IELTS essay topic, ‘Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular’ is a direct question essay. Direct question essays, also known as two-part question essays, often consist of two questions. After you’ve understood the question, you must ensure that your response is clear and that your points are backed up with relevant examples. Check out more IELTS writing Task 2 practice tests to get some experience writing essays similar to this one.

For many IELTS examinees, the essay writing section of the IELTS Writing Module proves to be an intimidating undertaking. To help you polish your essay writing before taking the IELTS, we have offered well chosen Band 7, 8, and 9 sample answers on the topic, Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular.

Let’s examine the IELTS Two Part Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular, also known as the Direct Question Essay .

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

In many countries today, crime novels and tv crime dramas are becoming more and more popular. why do you think these books and tv shows are popular what is your opinion of crime fiction and tv crime dramas, give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience., write at least 250 words..

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Band 7 Sample Answer for Writing Task 2 Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular

Crime novels and TV crime dramas have been becoming more prevalent in many countries worldwide. This essay will cover my views on crime literature and TV crime dramas as well as examine the factors that contribute to their appeal.

One reason for the popularity of crime fiction is that they present intricate puzzles and mysteries that challenge viewers’ reasoning abilities. Audiences enjoy trying to solve crimes alongside the characters, engaging in a mental exercise that adds an interactive element to the viewing experience. Also, crime shows allow viewers to immerse themselves in fictional worlds where they can experience suspense and excitement without real-life consequences.

According to me, TV crime dramas and criminal fiction are instructive and enjoyable. Being a bookworm and watcher of crime fiction, I value its capacity to keep my mind active and offer a way to escape reality. I am aware that they sometimes spread false information and negative perceptions about crime and the criminal justice system. So, it is important to read these stories critically and understand that they are fictional works that might not accurately depict the truth.

To sum up, the appeal of crime novels and TV crime dramas can be traced to their capacity to hold the attention of readers, and challenge the mental capacity of the viewers. As a result, people view them as a source of entertainment even though they have limitations. (231 words)

Vocabulary

Prevalent

Meaning: existing very commonly or happening often

Example: Wearing colourful dresses on festive occasions is prevalent in India.

Meaning: a quality that causes people to like someone or something

Example: Being secretive has its own appeal to some people.

Intricate

Meaning: difficult to understand; obscure; complex; puzzling

Example: The tourists admired the intricate work on the temple idols.

Bookworm

Meaning: a person who likes to read books and who spends a lot of time reading and studying

Example: Although she is a bookworm, do not present her books without knowing her preferences.

Perception

Meaning: a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem

Example: It is a common perception that salaried women cannot be good housewives.

Depict

Meaning: to represent or show something in a picture or story

Example: The color white depicts peace.

Limitations

Meaning: something that controls or reduces something

Example: You have to overcome your limitations by practising regularly.

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Band 8 Sample Answer for Writing Task 2 Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular

Recently, crime novels and TV dramas have become incredibly popular, frequently topping lists of the best-selling books and series. There could be a number of explanations for their growing appeal, which will be discussed in the following paragraphs along with my opinion.

Firstly, crime shows and fiction frequently have intricate and compelling plots that keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The storyline of the television show “Breaking Bad,” for instance, is gripping because it follows the transformation of a high school chemistry teacher into a drug producer. Secondly, crime dramas frequently function as a platform for social commentary, tackling topics like injustice, corruption, and weaknesses in the legal system. “The Wire” is well known for its examination of how Baltimore’s drug trade affects society.

I like reading crime fiction and watching crime dramas on TV. They combine drama, suspense, and intellectual challenge in a way that other genres might not. I find it intriguing to work through the mystery with the story’s characters and see if my deductions agree with theirs. In addition, crime fiction has the potential to be a powerful tool for presenting difficult societal topics in an interesting manner. However, these TV crime dramas and crime novels have their limitations. Certain stories have the potential to normalise crime and violence while also fostering unfavourable perceptions about particular racial groups.

In conclusion, the thrill of cracking a case and the examination of significant societal issues are the reasons behind the popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas. Even though these genres have their critics, I think that crime fiction and TV crime dramas may be entertaining when read critically and thoughtfully. (276 words)

Incredibly

Meaning: extremely; used for saying that something is very difficult to believe

Example: The sunset view from the top of the mountain on the snow is incredibly beautiful.

Compelling

Meaning: very exciting and interesting and making you want to watch or listen

Example: The movie was admired by many due to its compelling plot.

Gripping

Meaning: so interesting or exciting that it holds your attention

Example: My grandmother used to tell gripping stories that all of us enjoyed.

Meaning: an expression of opinion; an explanatory series of notes or comments

Example: All of this author’s books are social commentary to different aspects of the society.

Genre

Meaning: a style, especially in the arts, that involves a particular set of characteristics

Example: Mr. Rasem prefers the thriller genre to the romantic.

Thoughtfully

Meaning: in a way that shows you tend to think seriously about things or treat people with care and consideration

Example: The nurse took care of the newborn quite thoughtfully.

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Band 9 Sample Answer for Writing Task 2 Question – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular

Unlock Answer & Vocabulary

Crime novels and TV crime dramas have been increasingly popular in several nations in recent years. The reasons for this trend will be examined in this essay. In my view, criminal fiction and non-fiction writings are significant and ought to be appreciated for what they have to offer.

To begin with, crime fiction is inherently suspenseful, making it a genre that consistently provides thrills and excitement. The constant twists and turns in shows like “Sherlock” or “True Detective” contribute to the genre’s popularity. Moreover, the appeal of these shows or books deepen through intricate character development, as seen in “Dexter,” where the protagonist evolves from a blood spatter analyst to a vigilante serial killer. Besides exploring the application of cutting-edge forensic techniques in shows like “CSI” and “Forensic Files”, crime fiction also explores the psyche of characters, as demonstrated by Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” showcasing the allure of brilliant yet deranged personalities.

The popularity of crime literature and TV crime dramas, in my opinion, is a double-edged sword that attracts both compliments and criticism. While these genres attract spectators with character development and complex storytelling like in “Mindhunter” and “True Detective”, certain storylines glamorize criminal behaviour. Therefore, I believe producers should tread carefully so as to maintain the genre’s popularity while being both enjoyable and socially conscious.

To sum up, various factors like gripping stories, psychological twists, technical elements, and obsession with crime in culture are some of the reasons for the rising popularity of crime shows and crime novels. Although we enjoy these thrillers, we must also consider the effects they might have on society as a whole. (273 words)

Inherently

Meaning: in a way that exists as a natural or basic part of something

Example: Mary is inherently a quiet child and it worries her parents.

Protagonist

Meaning: the leading actor or principal character in a television show, movie, book, etc.

Example: The protagonist dying at the end of the fight was quite realistic and shocking.

Vigilante

Meaning: a person who tries in an unofficial way to prevent crime, or to catch and punish someone who has committed a crime

Example: Batman is a vigilante in Gotham city.

Cutting-edge

Meaning: the most recent and advanced stage of development in a particular type of work or activity, with the newest systems, equipment, etc.

Example: The scientists are using cutting edge technology to come up with the cure to cancer.

Psyche

Meaning: the mind, or the deepest thoughts, feelings, or beliefs of a person or group

Example: The human psyche is a complex and interesting system.

Deranged

Meaning: mad; insane

Example: After losing his wife and child in the accident, Mr. Gomes became deranged.

Double-edged sword

Meaning: a situation or course of action having both positive and negative effects

Example: Taking her to the party turned out to be a double-edged sword as many people admired her and some became insecure.

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To help you bring coherence to your writing and get points for the IELTS Writing Task 2 – ‘Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular’, check out the list of connectors/linking words used in the sample responses provided above.

According to me
Also/Moreover/
Firstly…Secondly
For instance
In my view/In my opinion
To begin with
To sum up/In conclusion

Now that you have gone through the sample answers on the topic – Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular – it is time for you to try writing on your own. For that, leave your answers as a comment below or you can use our FREE evaluation service !

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Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming More and More Popular - Task 2 Band 9 Essay Sample

Updated: Mar 17

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.

Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular?

What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experiences.

You should write at least 250 words.

Task 2 Band 9 Essay Sample (Crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.)

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Model Essay 1

In contemporary societies globally, the allure of crime fiction and television dramas is markedly on the rise, a phenomenon driven by the genre's capacity to engage and entertain. This essay posits that the popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas stems from their ability to provide psychological thrills and a sense of justice, which will be explored in depth.

Firstly, crime fiction and dramas cater to the human fascination with the psychological aspects of crime. The intricate plots and complex characters allow viewers and readers to delve into the minds of both the criminal and the detective. For instance, the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle offers a captivating exploration of intelligence and cunning, providing audiences with the thrill of deduction and problem-solving. This intellectual engagement keeps the genre appealing and addictive, as audiences eagerly dissect clues and attempt to solve the mysteries alongside the protagonists.

Secondly, these narratives often culminate in the triumph of good over evil, reinforcing the moral order and offering cathartic satisfaction. Crime dramas like "Broadchurch" or novels such as Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" typically conclude with the resolution of the crime and the restoration of social harmony. This outcome not only gratifies the audience's desire for justice but also provides a reassuring escape from the complexities and injustices of real life. The clear demarcation between good and bad, and the eventual victory of the former, imparts a comforting simplicity to the audience, in stark contrast to the often ambiguous moral landscape of the real world.

In summary, the widespread appeal of crime fiction and TV dramas lies in their blend of mental intrigue and moral fulfillment. They satisfy a deep-rooted yearning for comprehension and justice, offering a refuge from the chaos of reality. Through their definitive resolutions, these narratives underscore the genre's enduring charm and relevance.

Model Essay 2

The escalating popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas across the globe is a testament to their profound impact on contemporary audiences. These genres, thriving on their ability to captivate through suspense and resolution, mirror society's complex fascination with the mechanisms of justice. This essay argues that the allure of these narratives is primarily due to their exploration of human psychology and the universal quest for justice, elements that will be elaborated upon.

First, the psychological underpinnings presented in crime fiction and dramas offer a compelling window into the human psyche, appealing to our inherent curiosity about the unknown and the forbidden. The psychological thriller "Mindhunter" delves deeply into the minds of serial killers, providing nuanced insight into their motivations and methods. This exploration into the depths of human behavior not only satiates our curiosity but also stimulates our cognitive faculties, challenging us to engage more critically and predict the outcomes of complex scenarios. It encourages an intellectual engagement that transcends mere entertainment, fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities of human nature and its darker recesses.

Moreover, the portrayal of justice within these narratives resonates deeply with our innate sense of right and wrong, bridging the gap between entertainment and ethical reflection. Series like "Breaking Bad" masterfully navigate the blurred lines between legality and morality, prompting viewers to reflect on their own ethical standings in the face of moral dilemmas. The resolution of conflict through the lens of justice, often culminating in the apprehension of the perpetrator, serves as a cathartic experience for the audience. It reassures them of the triumph of good over evil, a concept deeply ingrained in human consciousness, and reaffirms our collective desire for a moral universe where justice prevails, providing not just a narrative resolution but a moral one that speaks to our deepest values.

In conclusion, the enduring appeal of crime novels and TV dramas is rooted in their intricate exploration of the human psyche and justice. These stories satisfy our intellectual curiosity and moral values, affirming their role as pivotal in popular culture. They reflect our ongoing quest for understanding and justice, encapsulating the genre's universal and timeless charm.

Model Essay 3

The number of avid readers and passionate viewers for crime or thriller genre books and TV series, is rising exponentially in different countries. Goosebumps providing surprising twists and turns in the stories and incredibly eye dazzling audio-visual effects in the movies are playing the key roles behind their recent unprecedented popularity. However, in my opinion, this development can benefit both individuals and society by raising the required awareness and boosting up the creativity.

Criminal story books and detective TV series can effectively stimulate the audience’s curiosity. In fact, the way these productions proceed with the unexpected events and unpredicted results is amazingly engaging and skin drying. The criminal plots, for example, are set in such a captive style that can easily catch the audience attention as they trigger their desire of solving the problems or unmasking the murderers. Additionally, by using extravagant special effects, TV thrillers are constantly mobilizing a sizable portion of the audience. This is how these platforms are giving users a completely different experience.

However, in my opinion, crime fictions and films can also be rewarding for the individuals, and beneficial for the society. One upside is to raise awareness among the mass people regarding criminal activities. For instance, many government authorities produce criminal movies or documentaries to educate the public how to identify frauds, tricks and other new types of complicated crimes. Another merit is that crime fictions contain multiple innovative story lines which in turn boost the readers’ creativity. Many great artists and inventors shared that their masterpieces were actually the brainchildren of multiple thriller series and criminal fictions.

In conclusion, crime novels and TV dramas are extremely popular as they attract the viewers’ attention through intriguing plots, problem-solving desires and special movie effects. Apart from the captivating characteristics, in terms of raising awareness and giving food for thought, crime fictions also have an incredible educational function for both individuals and societies.

Task 2 Essays

How to Write a Mystery or Crime Novel: 8 Tips for Writing Crime Fiction

By Krystal N. Craiker

Crime fiction is a leading genre, and readers love the intrigue and suspense of a good mystery.

But writing crime fiction can be daunting. You must leave clues, create captivating characters, build tension, and have a believable villain and crime.

Today, we're giving you our top eight tips on how to write a crime novel.

What Is Crime Writing?

What is mystery writing, 8 tips for writing mystery or crime fiction.

Crime writing is a genre of fiction in which the main plot conflict revolves around a crime.

Crime fiction encompasses many subgenres, including police procedurals, psychological thrillers, and cozy mysteries.

The difference between subgenres depends on the level of violence described, setting, and types of characters, but they all have crime as the driving force.

There are three types of mysteries within the crime genre:

Whodunits are traditional mysteries in which the perpetrator is hidden until the end. Think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
Howdunits focus on the "how" of the crime. These are police procedurals and detective stories where the protagonist tracks down the perpetrator. Famous writers in this subgenre are Joseph Wambaugh and Michael Connelly.
Whydunits focus on the motivation of the perpetrator. This genre shifts the focus from law enforcement to the criminal, who functions as the protagonist. Examples are Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and many of Elmore Leonard’s criminal novel depictions.

The mystery genre is, for all intents and purposes, synonymous with crime fiction. Mystery is a major component of any crime story.

It is possible to have a mystery novel that does not involve a crime, such as uncovering a secret identity, but these are very rare.

Other genres may include a mystery as a secondary plot, but that doesn't make them part of the crime genre. The mystery must be the main plotline in order to be classified as a mystery or crime novel.

There are many elements to consider when writing crime fiction, so we've broken down the most important steps into eight easy tips.

1. Choose Your Crime

Crime novels feature a variety of crimes, which keeps the genre fresh and exciting.

You could go with a classic murder mystery or serial-killer story. There are heists, organized crime, kidnappings, blackmail, extortion, trafficking, and more.

First, choose your crime. As this is the primary source of conflict in your book, it's important to have the crime first and foremost in your planning.

Once you decide what type of crime your novel is about, plan more of the details. Where did the crime take place? Who was the victim?

You should consider whether it's a locked-room mystery, where the crime seemed impossible to commit, or whether there are multiple leads for your protagonist to follow.

2. Profile Your Villain

Police and other agencies often have criminal profilers. They create a profile for likely demographics, upbringings, and motivations. For your novel, you must become the profiler.

It's important to plan your villain(s) in a crime novel well. The mystery is only as interesting as the character committing the crime. But you must do so in a way that makes sense.

If your villain is pure evil, it can be hard to "humanize" them and make them feel real. If you go down the route of the twisted psychopath, they must have intriguing features to draw readers in.

Maybe there's an extra disturbing element to the crime scene, or maybe they play mind games with the detective.

But most criminals aren't evil, they are human. In fiction, this makes them just as interesting because readers like to see relatable elements, even in a villain.

Start with your villain's motives, then work backward. Ask yourself, why did they commit this particular crime? Give them a solid backstory and plenty of character flaws and character strengths.

3. Know Your Characters Inside and Out

Crime stories must have interesting characters besides the villain, too. In a mystery, the protagonist is the main character in the investigation.

They might be in law enforcement, a private investigator, or even an amateur detective.

The protagonist must have a strong motivation for wanting to solve the case. They will also need some internal conflict that holds them back or causes them to slip up during the story. Overcoming this internal conflict is important for a good character arc .

There should also be a cast of compelling characters who support the protagonist. Understanding how each of them connects to the mystery will help guide you as you plan conflicts and subplots.

Some subgenres have expected character archetypes. For example, cozy mysteries feature amateur sleuths and quirky side characters.

Most hard-boiled mysteries with a law enforcement protagonist feature a demanding superior officer and a nerdy scientist.

4. Research for a Realistic Crime

The details of criminal activity fascinate readers who love crime novels. They expect a crime novel to feel realistic. Researching the type of crime in the story is especially important for mystery writers.

The internet is a great starting point, but there are many other ways to find answers to those hard-to-search questions. Here are some other places you can find research material:

Detective memoirs
Specialty social media groups or accounts, like "Trauma Fiction" on Facebook
News stories of similar crimes
Interviews with experts
True-crime documentaries

You can also find a research librarian at your local library to help you find great sources.

The more details you know about the crime in your novel, the more realistic your writing will be, even if they don't all make it into the final draft.

5. Decide on Your Sub-Plots

Mysteries are exciting, but they are just one external conflict in a story. A crime novel should have subplots that help drive the story along.

Romance is a common subplot in crime fiction. Family issues, career turning points, or a nemesis colleague can also form smaller conflicts and subplots.

Get creative and find subplots that match your genre but also feel fresh and exciting.

You'll also need a strong internal conflict , as we mentioned previously. Your protagonist needs to undergo character growth in the story so readers feel connected.

Your external conflicts do not necessarily need to be tied to the crime, but the mystery should drive your protagonist's character arc .

The case should teach them something or force them to overcome something.

6. Plan Your Clues

No mystery is complete without really great clues. But throwing in random clues as you write can feel inauthentic and trite.

It's a good idea to spend some time planning your clues before you start writing—even if you aren't much of a plotter .

Once you have researched the crime and know everything about how it happens in your book, you will have plenty of fodder for clues.

Start at the beginning. What clues will be immediately revealed to the detective or sleuth?

These are clues that are present at the scene of the crime, like suspects, blood splatter, broken locks, and dropped belongings.

Then plan the clues your protagonist will discover as the story goes on. They might come from forensic analysis or lab information.

Clues will also appear as your protagonist interviews witnesses and suspects, or as they dig into the victim's back story.

You should also plan a final clue that makes everything "click" for the protagonist. This is the last piece of the puzzle to discover the who/why/how of the crime.

7. Build Tension with Plot Twists

One of the best parts of crime fiction is the plot twist. Plot twists keep readers guessing. It can feel disappointing if the story unfolds in a way that is too easy to figure out.

Plot twists also build tension. Sometimes this tension will come in the form of your protagonist being certain of a lead, only to have it result in a dead end.

Other times, the usual suspects are ruled out, only to be brought back in as suspects at the end.

Red herrings are a common but exciting way to add tension to a mystery.

A red herring is a clue that is placed in a story to mislead or distract the readers. Adding multiple red herrings will make readers even more surprised when the truth comes out.

Avoid the deus ex machina , however.

This is an easy solution to the crime that appears out of nowhere. It does the opposite of building tension and feels clichéd.

8. Outline Your Story

It's a good idea to have a basic outline before you start writing because there are so many important details in a crime novel.

One outline method you can use is to modify the Hero's Journey . Here are what the stages of your story would look like:

Establish the detective and crime.
Set up the story.
Show reluctance of the protagonist.
First attempt to solve the case.
Establish facts and create urgency.
Broaden the scope of the crime and investigation.
Deepen the detective’s backstory.
Establish the big change where the detective realizes they're on the wrong track.
Reveal the criminal’s motive.
Find the mistake or missing piece of the investigation.
Solve the crime.

You can also use other plotting methods like a Save the Cat! beat sheet, a Story Circle, or the snowflake method.

Be sure to include the clues that you planned in your outline. This will help them feel logical to the story and serve the overall mystery.

Writing crime fiction doesn't have to be overwhelming. With solid research and deliberate planning, you can write the next great mystery novel.

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Krystal N. Craiker

Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Task 2 essay. In many countries today,crime novels and TV dramas are becoming more and more popular. Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular. What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas

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In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.Why do you think this books and TV shows are popular?What's your opinion of crime fiction and t v crime dramas?

Some people say that it possible to tell a lot about a person's culture and character from their choice of clothes.do you agree or disagree, in the past, knowledge was stored in books. today, people stored knowledge on the internet. do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages, you recently attended a training course for your work. your employer has asked you for your feedback on the training course. write a letter to your employer. in your letter remind your employer what the course was about explain why the course was useful to you in your work suggest why the course may not be suitable for some of your other colleagues, you and your family have just come back from a holiday staying in a rented accommodation overlooking the sea. the apartment was very unsatisfactory. write a letter of complaint to the manager of the agency from which you rented the apartment. in your letter: give details of the things that were unsatisfactory explain the reactions of the members of your family ask the manager what he/she is going to do about the situation. you do not need to write any addresses. begin your letter as follows: dear sir / madam, write at least 150 words. you should spend about 20 minutes on this task..

Women Are Writing the Best Crime Novels

They don’t seem to believe in heroes as much as their male counterparts, which in some ways makes their storytelling a better fit for the times.

Once upon a time , in the smoky, violent neverland of crime fiction, there were seductive creatures we called femmes fatales, hard women who lured sad men to their doom. Now there are girls. It started, of course, with Gillian Flynn, whose 2012 suburban thriller, Gone Girl , told a cruel tale of marriage and murder and sold a zillion copies. The most striking thing about Flynn’s cool, clever mystery is the childishness of its main characters, Nick and Amy Dunne, the sheer pettiness of the deadly games they play with each other. And the prize for winning is something like a gold star from the teacher: Gone Girl takes place in a world in which grown-up girls—and boys—will kill for no better reason than self-validation. This is not a world Raymond Chandler would have recognized. On the streets his people walked, motives were more basic—money, sex—and means were more direct. “When in doubt,” he once told his genre brethren, “have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” When today’s crime writers are in doubt, they have a woman come through the door with a passive-aggressive zinger on her lips.

For those of us who choose to entertain ourselves, from time to time, with made-up stories of murder, mayhem, and deceit, this is actually a welcome development, because the men with guns don’t do their job nearly as well as they used to. They’re old, they’re getting tired of walking through those doors, and the heroes they used to threaten—lone-wolf private eyes like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe—have practically disappeared from the genre. Like the cowboy, the private eye once embodied male fantasies of rugged individualism. As individualism itself became a less sustainable concept, the popular imagination began to relocate its mythic figures to places farther and farther away from the real-world settings of the old West and the modern city (to, say, the Marvel universe).

I miss those tough guys, with their cigarettes and their hats, but I’ve learned to do without them. I’ve read crime fiction all my life, and like most mystery lovers, I don’t really have a type. As a young reader, I favored Sherlock Holmes stories and intricate puzzles of the Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr sort, then moved on to the grittier, bloodier private-eye stuff of Dashiell Hammett and Chandler and Ross Macdonald. In my baffled adulthood, I have found myself drawn, more and more, to the kind of dark, fatalistic psychological thriller that noir writers such as Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, and especially Patricia Highsmith brought into the world in the 1940s and ’50s—tales of people in impossible situations making catastrophically poor choices.

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I do still go back every now and then to the eccentric sleuths inspecting corpses in locked rooms, or to the hard-boiled dicks walking down their mean streets, but only as an exercise in nostalgia. These days, just about all the exciting work in the murder-for-entertainment business descends not from Arthur Conan Doyle or Hammett but from Highsmith, who has had many more daughters than sons. A number of years ago—well before Gone Girl —I realized that most of the new crime fiction I was enjoying had been written by women. The guys had been all but run off the field by a bunch of very crafty girls, coming at them from everywhere: America (Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman), England (Alex Marwood, Paula Hawkins, Sophie Hannah), Scotland (Val McDermid, Denise Mina), Ireland (Tana French), Norway (Karin Fossum), Japan (Natsuo Kirino).

That’s not to say the guys are gone, or even going away anytime soon. Elmore Leonard has now left the building, but the lowlifes and criminal idiots who peopled his stories haven’t altogether vanished; George Pelecanos keeps an eye on them for us. And the aging police detectives of Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, and Michael Connelly are still, at their stately pace, finding ways to make their grim investigations pretty interesting. It’s a struggle, though. Male crime writers seem never to have fully recovered from the loss of the private eye as a viable protagonist, and men, for whatever reason (sports?), appear to need a hero of some kind to organize their stories around. Cops and lawyers and the odd freelance avenger (Lee Child’s Jack Reacher) are about all that’s left.

The female writers, for whatever reason (men?), don’t much believe in heroes, which makes their kind of storytelling perhaps a better fit for these cynical times. Their books are light on gunplay, heavy on emotional violence. Murder is de rigueur in the genre, so people die at the hands of others—lovers, neighbors, obsessive strangers—but the body counts tend to be on the low side. “I write about murder,” Tana French once said, “because it’s one of the great mysteries of the human heart: How can one human being deliberately take another one’s life away?” Sometimes, in the work of French and others, the lethal blow comes so quietly that it seems almost inadvertent, a thing that in the course of daily life just happens . Death, in these women’s books, is often chillingly casual, and unnervingly intimate. As a character in Alex Marwood’s brilliant new novel, The Darkest Secret , muses: “They’re not always creeping around with knives in dark alleyways. Most of them kill you from the inside out.”

The awareness of that inside-out sort of violence sets the women writers apart, these days, from even the best of the men. Women’s murder tales have always been at least a little more psychologically acute than the guys’. Even in the so-called golden age of detective stories, the 1920s and ’30s, when the emphasis was on elaborate puzzles, the motivations of the culprits in Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers were usually more plausible—and nastier—than they were in Carr or Rex Stout or Ellery Queen (a low bar, but still). Later, while male pulp writers were playing with guns and fighting off those wily femmes fatales, women like Highsmith and Dorothy B. Hughes and Margaret Millar were burrowing into the enigmas of identity and the killing stresses of everyday life.

For beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence, see the Library of America’s two-volume Women Crime Writers (2015), which collects eight terrific thrillers from the ’40s and ’50s, including the novels that inspired the classic film noirs Laura , The Reckless Moment , and In a Lonely Place . Women have been writing books like those ever since, but until Gone Girl , publishers tended to look askance at stand-alone crime novels and instead encourage their writers to develop series characters, which could be marketed more easily. So the next wave of women—those who began to write between the mid-’60s and the early ’90s—turned out stories about private eyes (Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone) and medical examiners (Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta) and humane police inspectors (Ruth Rendell’s Reg Wexford). For a while, putting a feminist spin on the old, fading male-empowerment fantasies seemed reason enough for them to write crime stories.

Some of those novelists did solid work in the traditional forms, and many still do. Karin Slaughter, for example, specializes in muscular, action-packed police procedurals; Alafair Burke does expertly plotted legal mysteries; Val McDermid has invented more than her rightful share of homicidal sociopaths for her psychologist-cop team, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, to run to ground. Donna Leon and Karin Fossum have made significant contributions to the humane-inspector bloodline, and Alison Gaylin and Laura Lippman have managed to create plausible contemporary private eyes.

But they chafe at the limitations; all of those writers have produced books outside their main series. For half a century, the prolific Rendell (who died last year) took frequent breaks from her melancholy, low-key Wexford mysteries to write seriously twisted one-off psychological thrillers, in which the profoundly disturbed and the blithely clueless cross paths fatefully: ignorant armies clashing by night, with no victors. The outcomes are comically, almost surreally, awful. In her most powerful works— A Judgment in Stone (1977), say, or The Bridesmaid (1989)—fate is inexorable, an onrushing train with no one at the controls. There’s nothing for a reader to do but settle in for the ride and watch the darkness speeding past the windows.

In the Gone Girl era, that sort of novel is having its moment. Traditional mysteries are still with us, but tortuous, doomy domestic thrillers are what readers seem to want now, and dozens of women are ready, willing, and able to oblige. Last year, the publishing industry found, in Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train , its long-sought “next Gone Girl ,” which is to say another blockbuster bourgeois nightmare about terrible relationships, told in the voices of more than one profoundly unreliable narrator. Unlike Highsmith and Rendell, who preferred to ply their sinister craft in a dry, deadpan third person, writers of the current school tend to favor a volatile mixture of higher-pitched first-person tones: hectoring, accusatory, self-justifying, a little desperate. Reading these tricky 21st-century thrillers can be like scrolling through an especially heated comments thread on a Web site, or wandering unawares into a Twitter feud. Down these mean tweets a woman must go …

Compared with their male counterparts, today’s female crime writers seem more familiar with (or less wary of) the primordial ooze of ego and id that is social media, the swampy no-man’s-land where millions of self-created personal brands battle for supremacy. It’s dangerous territory, as the journalist Nancy Jo Sales shows in a harrowing new book, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers . Sales speaks with dozens of teenage girls—who are, she asserts, “in fact the number one users of social media”—about the peculiar mores of their online world. These kids are stressed , looking down at their phones as they navigate from locker to classroom to mall to home, leaning into a blizzard of words and images as they try to fight their way to something like adulthood.

The words are frequently unkind, the images can be downright rude, and not everything, by a long stretch, is true: It’s a fun-house universe, a hall of mirrors like the one where bullets fly in the climax of Orson Welles’s great noir The Lady From Shanghai . Women writers seem to know this place even if they didn’t grow up in it. (An awful lot of them—Abbott, Flynn, Hannah, Burke, Slaughter, French, Hawkins, Sara Gran, Attica Locke—are in their 40s, and many of the rest are at least a little older than that.) Jessica Knoll, who’s in her early 30s, is the only one almost young enough to have actually lived there, and what the narrator of her remarkable debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive (2015), says of her teenage self is this: “We were all young and cruel.”

For the older writers, it’s a matter of memory, of recognizing in the unlit alleyways of social media the labyrinthine geography of their own not-yet-forgotten adolescent psyches. The teenage mind is a strange and lonely place, and these women know a crime scene when they see one. In Megan Abbott’s superb new book, You Will Know Me , a young woman in her 20s reflects aloud: “The girl you were at fifteen, sixteen. Angry and nasty. Hungry for love … You’re always that girl. She never goes away. She’s inside you all the time. That girl is forever.” A male detective in French’s The Secret Place (2014), after spending a few hours questioning the 16-year-old boarders at a school outside Dublin about a murder, blurts out, “If I’ve learned one thing today, it’s that teenage girls make Moriarty look like a babe in the woods.” (For mystery-story innocents, and non-initiates in the cult of Cumberbatch: That’s Professor Moriarty, the evil genius who is the arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.) The exasperated cop later admits that he can’t quite get a handle on how these girls think. “She was written in a code I couldn’t begin to read,” he says to himself about one of them. “They all were.” But in her amazing, sorrowful book, French manages to crack the code because she was a girl once herself, and like the school’s headmistress, she remembers the key: “Girls like to reveal their secrets, and they like to be secretive.” Men who don’t read these books are missing some crucial information.

The eponymous secret place of French’s novel is a bulletin board that’s an explicit substitute for social media for the students of St. Kilda’s. The boarders are not allowed unsupervised access to the Internet, because, the headmistress believes, “young girls slip between worlds very easily.” She fears they could “lose their grasp on reality.” So the girls, anonymously and nonvirtually, do more or less what they’d do on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat. They post photos and clippings and drawings, small confessions and small aggressions, all these traces of their secret selves—jumbled, overlapping, out there for everyone to see. This physical site is of course no more fundamentally “real” than the social media it’s meant to replace, but its finiteness makes it appear more graspable. That’s an illusion: The girls are in an in-between world anyway, because that’s where teenagers live. And in The Secret Place , as in real life, that state can be perilous.

People revealing their secrets and being secretive (often simultaneously) is a fair working definition of social-media culture, and of the post– Gone Girl crime novel, too. In book after book, characters share , compulsively but selectively, until revelation and artful concealment become nearly indistinguishable. Unreliable narrators—Gillian Flynn’s, and Paula Hawkins’s in The Girl on the Train , and Sophie Hannah’s in her recent Woman With a Secret (2015), and many others—induce a sort of vertigo in readers’ minds, an effect good crime writers strive for.

In the golden age, they’d achieve it by furnishing their cozy murder scenes with too many suspects and too many physical clues—the bickering relatives, the shady servants, the cigar ashes, the restaurant matchbooks, the stopped clocks. Now the effect is managed with language alone. In the dizzying verbal performances of the new-style thrillers, every sentence can be a clue or a red herring. (It may be worth noting that Agatha Christie, who knew how to multiply potential killers and suggestive objects, also created one of the most fiendish unreliable narrators in English-language fiction; to name the book would be a spoiler, I’m afraid.) To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, who was a lifelong mystery fan, this new wave of women writers do the police—and the murderers and the victims and the innocent bystanders—in different voices. The line between high modernism and 21st-century entertainment is getting blurry.

Crime fiction isn’t the worst way of dealing with the too-much-information, too-many-voices overload of the present day. At least it holds out the possibility of a solution, of something approximating truth; that’s written into the form’s tacit agreement with its audience. In general, readers of mysteries and thrillers have an impressive tolerance for complication. We enjoy the feeling of being overwhelmed by masses of contradictory-seeming data, because the promised resolution, the daylight when the fog lifts, is so pleasurable. It’s like the moment of sweet clarity a poet experiences when he or she sees at last the right, the inevitable, word—the one that makes sense of everything. No wonder Eliot and W. H. Auden loved detective stories.

At our bewildering moment in history, the Internet-generated fog is thick, practically impenetrable: a pea-souper (as the Brits say) whose main component is talk, too much of it viscous with ulterior motive. Every voice in the new crime novels by women raises suspicions instantly. We can never be sure what any speaker’s agenda is. What’s not being said, and why? The verbal gamesmanship can be enjoyable, particularly when practiced by a wit like Sophie Hannah, who specializes in the apologias of middle-class women with incurable cases of the existential jitters.

Her chief narrator in Woman With a Secret (published in the U.K. as The Telling Error ) is Nicki Clements, an apparently ordinary suburban wife and mother, who is one of the funniest pathological liars in recent fiction. Although she seems to be reasonably happy, she lives a clandestine life online (“[email protected]”), which, to her alarm, begins to bleed into her everyday life. There’s a grisly murder and a series of mysterious posts on a hookup site called Intimate Links. Naughty Nicki is clearly involved, somehow; the precise nature of her connection takes a while to emerge, though, because in her panicky monologues she doles out actual truth as grudgingly as a Watergate conspirator. She takes that approach (the modified limited hangout, Nixon’s men called it) in all her interactions, online and off; this naturally has the effect of making just about everybody—family, police, readers—wonder whether she is, or is not, a crook.

Hannah (who’s also a poet) obviously has a taste for the language of evasion and deceit. She loves liars, especially ones who, like Nicki, aren’t terribly good at lying. Watching them thrash about in the tangled webs they’ve woven seems excellent sport to her. In a way, Woman With a Secret is the portrait of someone stuck in a sort of permanent adolescence, lying for the pointless thrill of it, for the drama it brings into her insufficiently awesome life. Mostly it’s about the writer’s delight in linguistic flimflam.

On the whole, though, today’s crime-writing dames deploy the deceptions and evasions of their shifty monologuists less gleefully, and more purposefully. The dubiousness of their narrators’ reliability is for mystification alone—which is a perfectly sound justification in, you know, a mystery. The only problem is that this technique is already, a mere four years after Gone Girl , beginning to harden into a convention. The time is coming, and it might not be far off, when dodgy first-person accounts of dire events won’t trick anyone but the most gullible readers. The audience for crime stories has been conditioned to anticipate startling, unguessable reversals—what an iBooks promotion that recently popped up in my inbox called “ gotcha! plot twists.” If the verbal pyrotechnics that these women writers have been so effectively using get predictable, if their narrators become reliably unreliable, the power to mystify dissipates like the smoke from a fired gun.

Fortunately, the best of the women now writing in the genre have more on their minds than bamboozling credulous readers. Thanks perhaps to the current cultural emphasis on youth—on girls in particular—many of these writers have turned their attention to the mysteries of growing up. Frequently their books are as much about old crimes, imperfectly understood, that date from childhood or adolescence as they are about new ones. In Laura Lippman’s non-series novels, like What the Dead Know (2007) and the new Wilde Lake , she likes to shuttle between the present and the past; mysteries are solved, elegantly, but the dominant mood is elegiac.

Brenna Spector, the private-eye heroine of Alison Gaylin’s And She Was (2012), Into the Dark (2013), and Stay With Me (2014), has a rare condition called hyperthymesia, which renders her, like Borges’s Ireneo Funes, incapable of forgetting anything she’s seen, read, heard, smelled, or touched since the disappearance of her older sister, when Brenna was 11. Brenna is a living metaphor for the persistence of memory. Random recollections flicker through her brain as she tries to find missing persons in the present and track her vanished sister down the dark passages of time.

Burnt-out Cassandra Neary, the “last punk standing” who narrates Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss (2007), Available Dark (2012), and this year’s Hard Light , is a variation on that theme. As a photographer, she, too, is a sort of metaphor for the recovery of memories. Her way of apprehending the world is to fix images and look at them as closely as she can, to find what she didn’t see clearly enough while it was happening. She needs that kind of aide-mémoire, because both her present-day experiences and her natural memories tend to be blurred by drink and/or drugs. Despite her various impairments, Cass is perhaps the only entirely reliable narrator in women’s crime fiction today. Like the camera, she doesn’t lie (not to the reader, anyway). She is also, in her rootless middle age, a cautionary tale about the folly of hanging on to youth too long: She’s still on the run, a girl gone for good.

All of these women seem to know that feeling. In so many of the crime stories they’ve been writing, the sense of loss is overpowering. People die or go missing, of course, because that’s the genre, but it’s more than that. The crimes in novels like French’s The Secret Place and Abbott’s You Will Know Me and Marwood’s The Darkest Secret come to represent some larger absence, a hole in the coherence of the world. In Sunset City , a striking first novel by Melissa Ginsburg (another poet), the murder of a high-school friend sends the young heroine into a self-destructive spin. In emotional free fall, she says to herself, “There were no boundaries anywhere”—which could be the motto of all the lost girls in today’s crime fiction.

The title of Gaylin’s latest book, a mournful Hollywood mystery, is What Remains of Me . Its main character, who was convicted of murder at 17 and spent the next 25 years in prison, knows that not enough does. Devon, the teenage gymnast whose prowess is the focus of an entire suburban community in You Will Know Me , is herself a vacancy; there’s a murder in the novel, but she’s the real mystery. The sisters in The Darkest Secret , one a teenager and the other in her aimless 20s, suspect throughout that there are important things they’re not being told, and they’re right: They’re drowning in other people’s lies.

These are terribly sad books, about the confusions of youth and the nagging emptiness beyond, and what enables these novelists to address these subjects excitingly is the crime genre itself—a form that can turn inchoate disaffections into bodies, into dire acts to be investigated. For these writers, it’s as if girlhood were a cold case, tantalizingly unsolved.

Although the Chandler-style femme fatale appears to have been laid to rest, maybe she’s just been internalized by a generation of crime writers who use their wiles for the different(ish) purpose of literary seduction. Genre aficionados—inquisitive women and melancholy guys like me—fall for it every time. Of course, there’s another agenda, and it is (final twist) surprisingly like Chandler’s, at least as Auden defined it in his provocative late-1940s essay “The Guilty Vicarage”:

I think Mr. Chandler is interested in writing, not detective stories, but serious studies of a criminal milieu, the Great Wrong Place, and his powerful but extremely depressing books should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art.

In the books I’ve been reading, the Great Wrong Place is sometimes suburbia, sometimes social media, sometimes high school, sometimes the marriage bed—everywhere something feels missing in contemporary life. The best of these novels are pure noir, velvety and pitiless. Writers like French and Abbott seem to have looked at the history of crime fiction the way Gloria Grahame looked at Humphrey Bogart in the 1950 film of In a Lonely Place : attracted but wary. They see the darkness in there, and in themselves. They’ve come a long way from the golden age, from Christie and Sayers, from the least-likely-suspect sort of mystery in which, proverbially, the butler did it. They know better. The girl did it, and she had her reasons.

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About the Author

How the #MeToo movement has shaped how women write crime fiction

Course Director of Creative Writing, Leeds Beckett University

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Alison Taft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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It’s seven years since #MeToo became a viral phenomenon. The social media campaign against sexual harassment and assault encouraged survivors to share their stories. But has anything changed in the way crime fiction is written as a result?

There are now novels that specifically reference the #MeToo movement, such as Complicit by Winnie M Li, The List by Yomi Adegoke and This Is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill. Between them, they deal with the consequences of sex crimes for a set of main characters that include: a female film producer wondering if she could have done more to prevent the actions of the male predator (Complicit), a falsely accused man (The List) and the female friend of a man seemingly unaware his behaviour could be experienced as offensive (This is Pleasure).

These novels, all written by women, invite readers to consider differing perspectives in the aftermath of what appeared as a tsunami of offences. But by shifting the focus away from the perpetrators of the crimes they do little to challenge what some women activists identify as a rape culture .

In 2018, in response to the #MeToo movement, screenwriter Bridget Lawless launched the Staunch Prize . It was to be “awarded to the author of a novel in the thriller genre in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered”. She argued that the majority of crime thrillers focus on the least common forms of violence against women (the stalker, the serial killer, the unknown assailant) giving readers a false idea of what a rapist looks like and so making it more difficult to convict real offenders. “Well over 90% of rapes and murders of women are by men known to them,” she explained , “often a former or current partner”.

However, the Staunch Prize met with criticism. Novelist Sophie Hannah argued that rather than pretend these crimes don’t exist, writers should challenge the prejudices that exist within the way they are written about. Val McDermid meanwhile (widely credited as one of few female crime writers who attracts male readers) said she’d stop writing stories about violence against women when men stop committing the crimes.

It is important to tell these stories, and to do so in ways that challenge the fetishisation of sex crimes. However, creating realistic yet empowering stories can be something of a challenge.

#MeToo and crime tropes

When Sarah Bailey published her novel Into The Night (2019), which features a female character who experiences sexual harassment, she claims her US editors argued “that because of #MeToo and #TimesUp, readers would desire a more empowering narrative, a ‘happy ending’ so to speak, where justice was served and the bad guy got his comeuppance”. Bailey wasn’t convinced. She argued that manufacturing happy endings for fictional women might not offer much support to real women on the receiving end of these crimes.

Gail Simone, creator of the website Women in Refrigerators , has been working to highlight some of the more damaging tropes found within crime fiction. She brought attention to the concept of “fridging” – a plot device where violence against women is used to motivate the (usually male) protagonist into action. In these stories, women appear with no other purpose than to be a victim.

These tropes, Simone argues , “both reflect and perpetuate the idea that women don’t have any agency over their own lives in the real world”.

The Change by Kirsten Miller (2022) challenges this lack of agency. The novel features three peri-menopausal characters intent on exposing a Jeffrey Epstein-inspired network of abusers.

The feminist thriller is unflinching in laying the blame squarely where it belongs. It does also, perhaps to avoid the accusation of bias, include a female antagonist who may, or may not, be based upon Ghislaine Maxwell (currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offences connected to Epstein). The Change serves as a call to action to women, particularly older women, to play their part in bringing perpetrators to justice.

The ongoing mass rape trial of Dominique Pelicot in France has perhaps provided the world with a shock dose of reality. Pelicot admitted repeatedly drugging his wife, Gisèle and inviting strangers to rape her. The court has heard statements, such as “there is rape, and then there’s rape” (a lawyer for six of the accused); “she did not deserve this” (Pelicot); and “women do not belong to men, I hope that future generations will learn that” (one of the accused).

It’s clear that writers are working to explore the issues the #MeToo movement raised. But statements like this show that, despite these efforts, the social narrative around sex-crime remains depressingly unchanged.

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5 Books to Read About Policing Before You Vote

Memoirists and scholars explore the issue at every level, from the origins of the war on crime to what comes after “broken windows.”

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By Sam Adler-Bell

Sam Adler-Bell is a co-host of the podcast “Know Your Enemy.”

Oct. 24, 2024

When did we stop talking about the cops? For several years, the problem of racialized policing was at the center of American life. Incidents of police brutality were covered in major newspapers. Celebrities , brands and sports franchises mourned its victims. Advocates demanded indictments for killer cops. Black Lives Matter protests erupted in cities across the country. Many Americans memorized a list of names — a litany of pointlessly snuffed-out lives — that we could recite by heart, as if naming our own children.

This era of somber hope and bitter scrutiny reached its peak in the summer of 2020, with the George Floyd uprisings . Then, unceremoniously, it ended. Social bonds and safety nets frayed by lockdown were tested when Americans returned to city life; crime ticked up and conservatives mobilized a backlash. Voters took aim at reform-minded prosecutors , and cities that had toyed with reimagining public safety re-embraced their police departments instead .

Today, the B.L.M. era feels far away, like another country. Police reform is nowhere on either party’s agenda. Both candidates claim the mantle of law and order. Kamala Harris, whose record as a tough-on-crime prosecutor was scrutinized by progressives in the 2020 primary, is running unapologetically as a “ top cop .” Donald Trump, a convicted felon who signed legislation to reduce the length of federal prison sentences in 2018, has depicted Harris as soft on crime . “President Trump wants to ‘overfund’ the police,” his campaign announced in August.

Talking about the police has become politically inconvenient. But that doesn’t mean policing has ceased to be interesting or important. Policing points to the irrationalities and hypocrisies that undergird our social contract. For those of you who haven’t ceased to be interested in that , here are some books that get to the crux of the matter.

An Inconvenient Cop

By edwin raymond with jon sternfeld.

Policing is inevitably associated not just with violence, but with shame: the shame of being coerced and dehumanized. But there’s also the shame associated with being a victim of crime, the feeling of vulnerability that comes with being violated and the sense of helplessness that follows calling upon the police for assistance.

For Edwin Raymond, a Black Brooklynite, shame also follows the experience of being a cop. “I was a pawn on the front lines of a systemic attack on my own people,” he writes in this memoir of his time in the ranks of the New York Police Department. Growing up in East Flatbush, Raymond is subject to the indignities of over-policing, the feeling of being suspect and regularly harassed for the color of his skin. He also observes the attraction to petty criminality, drug use and gang life among his peers.

“An Inconvenient Cop,” written with Jon Sternfeld, is taut and richly textured. Raymond is a profoundly likable, if occasionally self-aggrandizing, narrator. Believing that his life experience will be valued by the Police Department, he enlists with the aim of helping to transform the institution from one perceived — by his friends in East Flatbush — as an occupying force into a source of security, neighborliness, mentorship and even inspiration.

That dream is quickly deferred by his earliest experiences on the job. The requirement to meet arrest quotas, Raymond writes, perverts the aim of public safety, encourages racial profiling and undermines any semblance of trust. As a transit cop, he is taught to hide in a service closet, watch until someone evades a fare, then emerge from behind, detain the straphanger and run him for warrants. “If a cop stood in plain sight, at the turnstile, he’d deter the behavior, which is supposed to be a good thing,” Raymond protests. “Isn’t that what the community wants? Isn’t that what we as cops should want? But deterrence is not valued. Problem-solving is not valued. What’s valued is the number.” (For what it’s worth, when the city sent an additional 1,000 officers to patrol the subway earlier this year, deterring fare evasion was one of the stated goals. The police stand out in the open, but their presence has attracted criticism too .)

Raymond’s superiors are almost uniformly hostile to his suggestions, and the N.Y.P.D. repeatedly denies the quotas exist. Over the course of his career, Raymond alleges, he was threatened, passed over for promotion and even investigated by internal affairs. He resorts to whistle-blowing and joins a class-action lawsuit. Eventually, he is promoted, but the lawsuit is dismissed and Raymond retires. “The institution has a violent, visceral reaction, like a gag reflex, to anyone who resists the program,” Raymond writes. “These ‘problem cops’ often get chewed up and spit out.”

The End of Policing

By alex s. vitale.

For readers seeking an overview of the problems with American policing, Alex S. Vitale’s compact 2017 volume is bracing and thorough. The police, Vitale contends, might believe they are in the “public safety” business, but their principal purpose — their “end” — has always been “managing the poor and nonwhite.” In morally grave but never overheated prose, Vitale details the destructive effects of our national addiction to policing on vulnerable groups, those with whom the police have the most contact: poor people, teenagers, drug users, sex workers, the homeless, the mentally ill, gang members, dissidents and migrants.

Still, despite the double meaning in his title, Vitale does not call for eliminating law enforcement altogether. Nor is he blasé about the devastating effects of violent crime, especially in poor communities of color. (“It is their children who are shot and robbed.”) But, he insists, we must stop treating all social problems as police problems.

American policing, Vitale contends, is premised on the assumption that “crime and disorder are the results of personal moral failing and can only be reduced by harsh punitive sanctions.” Vitale risks another hypothesis: that our economic system produces poverty and then criminalizes the impoverished.

Uneasy Peace

By patrick sharkey.

The sociologist Patrick Sharkey is in favor of rigorous policing. Look at the data, he says . Violent crime has indeed declined precipitously from its peak in the 1990s, and this decline has been massively beneficial to the most disadvantaged communities, young Black men most of all, who have seen a significant increase in life expectancy as the homicide rate has fallen. And this didn’t happen by itself. A more aggressive and punitive approach to policing and incarceration in poor neighborhoods, he argues, has had at least something to do with the decline in criminal violence.

Sharkey doesn’t paper over the uncomfortable trade-offs. He acknowledges the costs of “broken windows,” stop-and-frisk and mass incarceration. In the second half of the 20th century, he writes, the police became a “constant, sometimes menacing presence in low-income communities of color.” He is also careful to attribute the decline in violence not only to beat cops, but also to community leaders and organizations who mobilized to “confront violence” at its peak.

Now that crime is at a 50-year low, Sharkey welcomes the turn toward “justice” in reform circles, the calls for decarceration and less punitive policing. But he also fears that, without an “equally strong” material investment in the poorest communities, crime may rise again. If, for example, policymakers require poor communities to absorb “a stream of returning prisoners” without “providing massive resources for reintegration,” they may “destabilize communities that are already fragile.”

Sharkey helps us see something essential. The fact that poor and Black Americans are more likely than their wealthier and whiter counterparts to be victimized by criminal violence — and therefore to rely on the police for safety — is not an argument against reform. Rather, it underscores the inadequacy of policing as a solution to social dysfunction. It’s ultimately an argument against poverty.

Badges Without Borders

By stuart schrader.

Stuart Schrader, a scholar of race and policing at Johns Hopkins, supplies another piece of the puzzle. The tools and techniques of American policing in the latter half of the 20th century, he writes in this erudite survey, were first conceived and implemented to suppress Communist subversives in other nations. Schrader reveals a vibrant export-import trade in technology, expertise and personnel — continuing today in the interest of fighting “terrorism” — which expands the frame of the American police apparatus beyond our borders.

In countries across the Global South, American-trained police units engaged in systemic violence against dissidents, union organizers and workers. Meanwhile, techniques innovated abroad (like a newly standardized form of tear gas that was used by U.S. forces in Vietnam) were brought home and used against American protest movements.

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime

By elizabeth hinton.

How did we get here? Why are the police simultaneously serving as social workers, mental health providers, guidance counselors and violent enforcers of the law?

The Yale historian Elizabeth Hinton’s surprising chronicle of the well-intentioned but misguided U.S. social programs that facilitated mass incarceration provides an answer. Hinton rejects the common notion that law-and-order politics were a Nixonian invention, a backlash to liberal overreach in the 1960s. Mobilizing a dizzying array of historical data, she shows that the “war on crime” and the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson’s landmark effort to address American poverty, were deeply entwined. Antipoverty programs expanded the influence of the federal government in the everyday lives of the urban poor, making it easier for the state to surveil and punish them when the Johnson administration shifted its focus to policing riots and fighting crime.

This response to urban inequality was a thoroughly bipartisan enterprise, Hinton writes, built on social scientific assumptions about Black criminality. Hinton’s book is a potent reminder that when social policy is premised on paternalism — combining economic redistribution with corrective moral engineering — it can quickly morph into pure punishment.

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IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Popularity of Crime Novels
Step 1: Understand Task. First I need to make sure I understand the task fully. So my task is to discuss why crime novels and TV crime dramas are popular, and what my opinion is of them. It's NOT asking me to discuss documentaries about crime, or news stories about crime. Only novels and TV dramas.
Band 7: In many countries today, crime novels and TV dramas are
Currently, crime novels and TV crime dramas are witnessing a surge in popularity across various nations. This essay will elucidate the factors contributing to their widespread appeal. Furthermore, in my view, the majority of these productions are overvalued unless viewers approach them with a critical mindset.
Band 6: In many countries today, crime novels and TV dramas are
The essay addresses the prompt by discussing the reasons for the popularity of crime novels and TV dramas, as well as providing the writer's opinion on crime fiction and TV crime dramas. The position is clear and well-developed, with relevant ideas that are supported throughout.
In Many Countries Today, Crime Novels And TV Crime ...
One of the key reasons for the increasing popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas is the human fascination with mystery and suspense. These genres often provide an escape from the mundane realities of everyday life and offer a thrilling and captivating experience for the audience.
IELTS Essay # 1247
Write at least 250 words. Model Answer 1: In recent times, crime novels and TV crime dramas have witnessed a surge in popularity in many countries. This essay will explore the reasons for this trend. As far as my opinion goes, the works of crime fiction and non-fiction are important and should be embraced and celebrated for their significance.
Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular
The IELTS Writing Task 2 evaluates your ability to write a coherent essay on a specified subject. So, you must familiarize yourself with the aim of the question and the structure of the answer because Task 2 includes Direct Question Essays, such as 'Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular' from Cambridge IELTS 15 General Training Test 1.
Crime Essays
Crime in Literature. Crime has been a popular topic of literature for centuries, inspiring countless authors to explore the psychological and moral complexities of criminal behavior. From classic novels such as Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) to modern works like Don Winslow's The Cartel (2015), crime fiction offers readers an ...
IELTS Essay Topic: In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime
Ans-In recent years, crime novels and TV crime dramas have gained immense popularity in many countries. This essay aims to delve into the reasons behind the increasing popularity of these books and shows. Additionally, it will provide a personal opinion that crime fiction and TV crime dramas can be captivating and enjoyable forms of entertainment.
In Many Countries Today Crime Novels
This essay question is from Cambridge IELTS 15 General Training Test 1 Writing Task 2. Sample Essay. In many countries, there is a rise in the popularity of novels and TV dramas about crime. I believe this is because they do a good job keeping the audience engaged. In general, they are good because they can act as a warning of potential danger.
Crime Novels and TV Crime Dramas are Becoming Popular
Model Essay 1. In contemporary societies globally, the allure of crime fiction and television dramas is markedly on the rise, a phenomenon driven by the genre's capacity to engage and entertain. This essay posits that the popularity of crime novels and TV crime dramas stems from their ability to provide psychological thrills and a sense of ...
In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas ...
Linking words are very important in your essay. To score effectively on your IELTS exam, you should make an effort to implement short concise sentences coupled with linking words. Almost every sentence in your essay should have a linking word of some sort. In fact, the only sentences that can omit linking words are your background sentence and ...
In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas ...
In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular. ... Writing9 was developed to check essays from the IELTS Writing Task 2 and Letters/Charts from Task 1. The service helps students practice writing for IELTS and improve their writing skills. By using this site, you agree to read and accept our terms ...
In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas ...
Novels and TV shows based upon crime are becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the world, nowadays. There is a myriad of reasons behind this trend and in my opinion, it has both ups and downs | Band: 9 ... Writing9 was developed to check essays from the IELTS Writing Task 2 and Letters/Charts from Task 1. The service helps students ...
25 essential tips for writing gripping crime fiction
This comprehensive list of 25 crime writing tips will help you craft great crime fiction, using genre best practices as well as specific advice from National Centre for Writing course tutors. Find out more about our Introduction to Crime Writing course here →. 1. Read crime. If you think this is obvious, then you're probably already doing this.
How to Write a Detective Story: The 5 Elements of Crime Novels
How to Write a Detective Story: The 5 Elements of Crime Novels. Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Sep 9, 2021 • 5 min read. Full of cliffhangers and puzzles, crime stories are an exciting genre of fiction writing that can capture readers' imaginations and keep them turning pages.
How to Write a Mystery or Crime Novel: 8 Tips for
8 Tips for Writing Mystery or Crime Fiction. There are many elements to consider when writing crime fiction, so we've broken down the most important steps into eight easy tips. 1. Choose Your Crime. Crime novels feature a variety of crimes, which keeps the genre fresh and exciting. You could go with a classic murder mystery or serial-killer ...
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Essays The Birth of Miss Marple—the Perpetual Spinster Detective at the Heart of Agatha Christie's Works ... Stephanie Vasquez on using her novel "as a way to highlight the United States' role and the politics involved with drug trafficking" October 22, 2024 By Stephanie Vasquez. 0. ... Quiz: Can You Identify These Last Lines of Classic ...
Task 2 essay
In previous edges, individuals save their data in books, while currently, they do this on the internet. In this essay, I will outline the pros and cons of this issue as well as elaborate on whether this issue is beneficial or detrimental. 5.5. band. You recently attended a training course for your work.
Women Are Writing the Best Crime Novels
Once upon a time, in the smoky, violent neverland of crime fiction, there were seductive creatures we called femmes fatales, hard women who lured sad men to their doom. Now there are girls. It ...
The crime novels dividing opinion
A book I'd love to read, but couldn't find. I'd never heard the term 'cosy crime'." Alamy. With its amateur sleuth in a rural setting, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series is quintessential cosy ...
How the #MeToo movement has shaped how women write crime fiction
When Sarah Bailey published her novel Into The Night (2019), which features a female character who experiences sexual harassment, she claims her US editors argued "that because of #MeToo and # ...
The Best Books About Policing to Read Before the 2024 Election
The End of Policing By Alex S. Vitale. For readers seeking an overview of the problems with American policing, Alex S. Vitale's compact 2017 volume is bracing and thorough.

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Task 2 essay. In many countries today,crime novels and TV dramas are becoming more and more popular. Why do you think these books and TV shows are popular. What is your opinion of crime fiction and TV crime dramas

In many countries today, crime novels and TV crime dramas are becoming more and more popular.Why do you think this books and TV shows are popular?What's your opinion of crime fiction and t v crime dramas?

Women Are Writing the Best Crime Novels

Explore the July/August 2016 Issue

About the Author

How the #MeToo movement has shaped how women write crime fiction

Disclosure statement

#MeToo and crime tropes

Editorial Internship

Research Fellow in Dark Matter Particle Phenomenology

Integrated Management of Invasive Pampas Grass for Enhanced Land Rehabilitation

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy and Services)

5 Books to Read About Policing Before You Vote

An Inconvenient Cop