I had an interview with The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman published in the Evening Herald during the week. Currently promoting THE PRISONER OF BRENDA, which blends classic crime / mystery tropes with blackly comic scenarios, Bateman is a former winner of the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ prize awarded at Crimefest. But is comic crime fiction taken seriously by readers? To wit:
Despite his runaway success, however, Bateman still encounters purists who object to the combination of crime fiction and humour.
Do readers take comedy crime seriously? “I think the very few readers who buy it do,” he says. “You would guess from sales in general that readers prefer their crime fiction deadly serious and quite bloody, and that may just be the fact of it, or because that is what’s put in front of them.
“I think that if crime that is quite serious, but happens to be funny as well -- I mean, Raymond Chandler was funny, wasn’t he? -- was promoted with a bit of muscle then it could sell extremely well.”
For the rest,
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