Heather Mac Archer is bang on when she says suggests some of the finest literature in the world contains the elements of mystery fiction: from Brontë to Dickens to A. S. Byatt authors give us flawed characters and hide crucial plot elements until the appropriate moment that reveals things we need to know to understand the story and if we are lucky something of ourselves.
Closer to home, we have The Bishops Man by Lyndon McIntyre from last year. As our sisters in crime colleague Rosemary McCracken points out the question of who is the real criminal, the sex offender who has left a trail of broken hearts and suicide in his wake that is at the heart of the novel is only resolved at the very end. So literary fiction and mystery fiction partake of a common heritage and vocabulary. The important thing now is to up our game, do something different as Heather says with living breathing characters acting from a sense of justice.
