Crime

Crime publishers put out the books where a death, a theft or a lie has to be answered for. The shelf runs from the police procedural to the legal drama, from the private eye to the domestic suspense novel where the threat sits at the dinner table. Kensington, Other Press, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Publishers all publish into it.

Readers come here for motive, evidence and the slow tightening of a case. For those after publishers of criminal fiction, this is the tag where the culprit is human and the ending is a verdict.

Crime sits between its closest siblings without belonging to any of them. Literary fiction can carry a killing and still care most about the sentence; here the investigation, the motive and the consequence drive the book. Thriller runs on speed and a clock; crime is willing to slow down for a courtroom, a confession, a body on the first page. Espionage turns on states and handlers, while crime stays with the detective, the family, the neighbourhood. Horror wants the supernatural; crime wants a culprit who can be named and charged. Kensington, Other Press, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Publishers all publish into this space, and what they share is a reader who wants the puzzle solved by human means. Action & Adventure can end in a chase; crime has to end in an answer.