Paranormal Mystery… What are we talking about, exactly?
Paranormal Mystery… What are we talking about, exactly?
What is a Paranormal Mystery? According to GoodReads “A paranormal mystery is a mystery that contains paranormal elements, either in the protagonist or the society. This includes anything from witches, angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, psychics, mediums, and ghosts.”
Pretty straight forward, I’d say… except it’s not, because the definition uses the words it is defining to explain them!
We’ll assume everyone knows what Paranormal means, and we’ll then focus on Mystery. Mystery as a literary genre is probably one of the most overused and abused term there is. A Mystery Fiction can be Suspense, Police Procedural, Thriller (Legal or other), Hardboiled or Detective, which may or may not be of the ‘Whodunnit?’ type.
One would expect to find the same disarray of distinct genres in the world of Paranormal Fiction, but surprisingly enough, it is hardly the case. I don’t claim to have read everything there is in the genre, not by a long shot, but in my admittedly limited experience all the Paranormal Mystery novels (Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, or Richard Kadrey to only name a few) could be placed in the “suspense” category.
One could, of course, argue they belong to the Detective section, but there is a problem with that: a Detective is supposed to find the guilty party through investigation, and logical deduction, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes arguably being the most famous example of this. It is true that Mercy Thompson, Harry Dresden and Sandman Slim all do some investigating but one can hardly argue the riddle is solved through reasoning. All of them stumble upon the bad guy more often than not, and they would be hardly pressed to explain how they were planning to find out who he was otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy these books a lot, but they are not true Detective Fiction, the way I see it. The only true differentiator between the various Paranormal Mystery I have read so far is the amount of Romance involved in the book. And I would say that the majority of them have a lot of it. The list of authors who put Paranormal Romance ahead of the mystery aspect in their Paranormal Mysteries is too long to list, but I don’t believe anyone would challenge this statement.
The overwhelming amount of Paranormal Mystery-Romance clearly indicates a demand for it, but if there is a market for Romance of the Paranormal type, and for Paranormal Suspense in general, odds are there is a thirst for all the other Mystery subgenres out there. A thirst which today remains mostly unquenched.
What is a Paranormal Mystery? According to GoodReads “A paranormal mystery is a mystery that contains paranormal elements, either in the protagonist or the society. This includes anything from witches, angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, psychics, mediums, and ghosts.”
Pretty straight forward, I’d say… except it’s not, because the definition uses the words it is defining to explain them!
We’ll assume everyone knows what Paranormal means, and we’ll then focus on Mystery. Mystery as a literary genre is probably one of the most overused and abused term there is. A Mystery Fiction can be Suspense, Police Procedural, Thriller (Legal or other), Hardboiled or Detective, which may or may not be of the ‘Whodunnit?’ type.
One would expect to find the same disarray of distinct genres in the world of Paranormal Fiction, but surprisingly enough, it is hardly the case. I don’t claim to have read everything there is in the genre, not by a long shot, but in my admittedly limited experience all the Paranormal Mystery novels (Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, or Richard Kadrey to only name a few) could be placed in the “suspense” category.
One could, of course, argue they belong to the Detective section, but there is a problem with that: a Detective is supposed to find the guilty party through investigation, and logical deduction, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes arguably being the most famous example of this. It is true that Mercy Thompson, Harry Dresden and Sandman Slim all do some investigating but one can hardly argue the riddle is solved through reasoning. All of them stumble upon the bad guy more often than not, and they would be hardly pressed to explain how they were planning to find out who he was otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy these books a lot, but they are not true Detective Fiction, the way I see it. The only true differentiator between the various Paranormal Mystery I have read so far is the amount of Romance involved in the book. And I would say that the majority of them have a lot of it. The list of authors who put Paranormal Romance ahead of the mystery aspect in their Paranormal Mysteries is too long to list, but I don’t believe anyone would challenge this statement.
The overwhelming amount of Paranormal Mystery-Romance clearly indicates a demand for it, but if there is a market for Romance of the Paranormal type, and for Paranormal Suspense in general, odds are there is a thirst for all the other Mystery subgenres out there. A thirst which today remains mostly unquenched.
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