Canadian Crime Fiction

J Kinsgston Pierce, the editor of the crime blog, The Rap Sheet, and a columnist for Kirkus, had a very interesting string of of posts about Canadian Crime Fiction this week.

I was first drawn to reading these posts because of the huge popularity of Louise Penny here in America, but I got more than I expected out of them.

Click here to read the Kirkus article in which Pierce interviews people who are scholars on Canadian crime fiction, lists resources and authors, and posits that Canadian crime fiction may be less popular in the US because it does not seem exotic enough to readers. But, as he considers in the article, there are very real differences between the crime fiction of our countries.

In the article, Pierce has a few quotes from Marilyn Rose, a professor in the Department of English at Ontario’s Brock University. With Jeannette Sloniowski, an associate professor in Brock’s Department of Communication, 

Popular Culture and Film, Pierce tells us, "Rose has created the online database CrimeFictionCanada, a scholarly resource dedicated to the study of detective fiction in English. Rose and Sloniowski are also co-editors of the book Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Detective Fiction, Film, and Television, which is due out in July from Wilfrid Laurier University Press." (see cover left)

Then, in this post on The Rap Sheet, Kingston shared the text of his entire interview with Rose.  I found this interview intriguing.  It is opening my eyes to more writers.

But where to start?  Well, that leads me to this post from last night on The Rap Sheet, a list of the Crime Writers of Canada's annual award nominees.  Click through to their website to learn even more.  In the meantime, I am getting my order for Detecting Canada in later today. 

And, I am going to add the Crime Writers of Canada's website to my go-to Crime Resources.  I have been exploring it all morning and am quite impressed.  I also love their punny tag line: "The write kind of crime." So they have a good sense of humor to boot.

I am embarrassed to admit I knew nothing of these resources.  But that is why I always caution my colleagues that you are never done learning and improving your skills.  People consider me an RA expert and here I am identifying an embarrassingly large hole in my knowledge. But I also know that this is par for the course.  I write this blog to educate myself as much as all of you readers.

Well, now we all can try a Canadian Crime novel beyond Louise Penny.