Val McDermid has her say in The Guardian here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/29/misogynist-crime-fiction-val-mcdermid

The F-Word grabs hold of it and runs into predictable territory:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2009/10/crime_fiction_r

There’s a huuuge discussion over at CrimeSpace:
http://crimespace.ning.com/forum/topics/book-reviewer-quits-over

But best of all is this essay, which isn’t connected to the Jessica Mann thing, but has lots and lots of intelligent things to say about monsters and their roles and uses in fiction:
http://chronicle.com/article/Monstersthe-Moral/48886/

“And the author looks so sweet!” Exactly. I hate that, and it’s what I was getting at in my original post. So many interviews with female crime writers include a variation on that, and it’s so sexist. It’s why it annoys me a little when they don’t say “Hey – fuck you!” and instead tacitly endorse the premise by talking about why women might want to write such dreadful things.

Brian – ha ha! I had to think about that for a moment. But you are, of course, quite right. The fate of one woman in 50/50 Killer, at least below the surface, is debatable…

Interesting how, in this discussion of violence against women in fiction, no one’s thought to bring up Chelsea Cain’s books, where utterly horrifying violence is done to men. By a woman.

Characters that randomly turn on each other simply because the created world is so hostile that any act becomes the source for action is at best a cheaply manufactured confrontation. If all women are reduced to shrews, bitches, femme-fatales, conquests, molls and dames, and all men are reduced to Neanderthals, protectors, assholes and bruised romantics then the author barely has to do anything to create a conflict. The dramatic bar is set so low at times that one can step over it by barely lifting a foot.

God forbid the emotional third rail get grabbed.

But stories that create a sense of internal opposition and can handle more then one idea and facet are the ones working at the highest possible level, the ones that we remember and the ones that we love.

Imagine how different the genre would be if readers told writers that every time they were going to kill a character, they should have a dramatically and intellectually convincing reason to do so.

And by now I’m all rambly and not making any sense so I’ll shut up.

Except to say that, Steve, I think we both know that I dispute the validity of the following statement that you made:

The “women as victims” thing. Sandra – I’m claiming one better with 50/50 Killer, in that (spoiler) no women at all die in the timeframe of the book. There are dead women in the case file, but every victim over the “live” course of the book is male. I digress.

You mention that “female as victim” is a powerful, enduring theme. That’s true not just among misogynists, but also among women themselves. I mentioned over on Sarah Weinman’s blog that my female readers told me they only want to read books in which women are the potential victims. And children love books in which children are threatened. We all seem to identify with the victims, and that’s what makes these books scary and exciting for us.

I invite any crime author who’s outraged about the misogynism of fictional female victims to disavow any plans to write such novels. I challenge you to write books with only male victims.

I suspect you’ll have a hard time rounding up female readers.

You’ll already be familiar with all the links I mention in my post, but I hope you like the other stuff, stick around and have fun.

First off, Sandra, I didn’t recognise Jessica Mann’s name either. But she reviews crime fiction for the Literary Review, so she’s not trying to make a name for herself with this.

I think Laura’s comment is on the money: “The issue isn’t whether victims in crime fiction are male or female. The issue is whether they are human.”

That’s certainly the way I feel about things … but the contrarian inside me (no obscene jokes, please, John) wants to argue the point. I’m actually massively critical of the formulaic, cliched, character-less serial killer novels I think Mann has in mind, yet I still want to defend them a little. Because all a writer has to do is justify the entrance fee. Personally, I prefer it if it’s the entrance fee to a smart, between-the-lines discussion – but other people are perfectly happy with a rollercoaster ride, and so long as they leave happy the book has done its job. A violent but artistically-vapid book might sell well, so who am I to say that’s wrong, even if I think it? It’s certainly happened before. It happens all the time.

The “women as victims” thing. Sandra – I’m claiming one better with 50/50 Killer, in that (spoiler) no women at all die in the timeframe of the book. There are dead women in the case file, but every victim over the “live” course of the book is male. I digress.

The women as victims thing interests me because it is true, and goes back a long way. It’s a familiar trope in literature, as far as I know: that for as long as we can go back, men can be found fighting either for or over women, while those women wait, submissively, to have their fates determined. Our legends are full of heroes who have to perform tasks or answer riddles to win the King’s daughter – and I see remnants of that in a lot of modern crime, especially the serial killer genre. And however much we might care about a man in jeopardy in real life, in fiction that doesn’t seem to carry the same weight, because: a) we kind of expect a man to defend himself; and b) a man’s sexuality isn’t seen as the same sort of “prize”. I do get a sense – both in fiction, and in newspapers – that a woman’s ‘purity’ is still seen as something that can be fought over, sullied or saved.

And that is a sexist framework, both for society and fiction. Of course, I might be exaggerating or misreading things, and I’m always willing to be corrected. But we all know that guys are more likely to be assaulted than women – yet it doesn’t seem to make as compelling fiction. And sexual violence against men (“Don’t drop the soap!”; kicks to the balls in comedy films; Lorena Bobbitt etc) is normalised in a way it’s not against women. Sexual violence against women seems to flick a wire inside us and set something humming. I guess, whatever you’re aiming for with your fiction, that’s going to resonate.