Comments on: China Miéville on Crime Novels

By: bob

bob — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:44:51 +0000

How does Priestley’s An Inspector Calls – complete with time loops, retroactive/pre-emptive guilt of all concerned , and the crime recurring for real after the deduction has been staged and found everyone guilty/complicit for something yet to happen?

But in some ways it isn’t really a detective story at all, since the conclusion one draws is the guilt of the suspects insofar as members of an indifferent society.

By: c

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:59:06 +0000

by Mieville’s own reckoning (i.e., based on what he says here), The City & the City doesn’t subvert the crime genre at all–not structurally, at least. there’s the same structure of collapsing superpositions; the disappointing collapse of possibilities at the end remains disappointing after the final reveal. or maybe you mean to say that C&C is thematically subversive, in that the book isn’t really ‘about’ the crime at its heart but about the mystery of the cities themselves? (in that sense i’d argue that writers like Ellroy and Peace make more interesting ‘thematic subversions’ with their books.) at any rate, it seems to me that with his (admittedly brilliant) deconstruction, he’s also given us an excuse for his book’s failings–like, he didn’t even try…(don’t get me wrong, i enjoyed C&C–it’s definitely Mieville’s best work to date. i just think that, in spite of being a great read, it’s still vastly overrated and didn’t quite achieve its ambitions.)

meanwhile, following Mieville’s thinking, then i’d say Roberto Bolaño hit the nail on the head with his approach to ’subverting the genre’ in The Skating Rink.

By: Mad Professah

Mad Professah — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:52:07 +0000

I think Perdido Street Station and The Scar are brilliant but I could not get through Iron Council. I do love mystery/crime procedurals (Ian Rankin's Inspector John Rebus anyone?) so I will give The City & The City a try...

By: Charanpal

Charanpal — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:43:37 +0000

So, what with its multiple endings, does this mean Clue is a successful whodunnit?

By: ajay

ajay — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:12:56 +0000

I think I’ve worked out why none of China Mieville’s characters talk like actual human beings. It’s because he doesn’t either. His editor calls him in and says “Look, you have to rewrite this bit, the conversation sounds incredibly stilted and the vocabulary’s really weird” and he just looks at her and goes “Really? You think so? As the idiolect’s inspiration led, torrent of uncertain nuance, so I related this cromulent interphrasis” and then she sighs to herself and wonders if it’s too late for a nice job in children’s publishing or something.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:54:54 +0000

Have anyone tried Julius Falconer? He is developing the whodunnit as an intellectual challenge in which the reader is given exactly the same information as the detective and can therefore solve the mystery before him – if he or she is clever enough, of course!

By: MM

MM — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:32:05 +0000

after reading china m’s post, i promise NOT to read this book…quotidian gazzette…blech

By: Luisa Perkins

Luisa Perkins — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:33:23 +0000

He’s so brilliant.

By: mythago

mythago — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:46:37 +0000

I tried to read Mieville’s “Perdido Street Station” and found that not only was the city a character, but it was one that would not shut up

Just like a major metropolis. (Which is not to say that you “should have” liked it, btw.)

I’d be interested to see Mieville’s take on Terry Pratchett’s crime novels – and yes, they’re Discworld novels so genre’d as fantasy, but don’t tell me Night Watch or Feet of Clay aren’t really crime novels.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:29:14 +0000

Mr Mieville has quite a way with sentence structure. I’m about half way through and am finding it quite enjoyable, but it takes a few paragraphs to get back into the story (after a break) due to the weird cadence he uses. I really struggle to explain the book to my wife. That’s how I know its good :)