Saturday, 3 July 2021

Bedside Books - yes another one




This is the one I read Red Shift as a holiday from and its Genesis by Karin Slaughter. It was one of two  passed on to me by a friend. I read the first one and this one is supposed to be a follow on so I thought I would read that too, despite some  strong reservations about KS books in general. 

Here's the conundrum. These books have strong plots, interesting characters. good writing, plausible twists and turns. But they are about nasty people doing unspeakable things to other people, and the other people are generally women and/or children. 

That's problematic for me in two ways. One is that it makes it a hard, sometimes barely possible, read. The other is that I don't think extreme violence against women is suitable subject matter for  books written to entertain - and that's before you consider how some twisted minds might take inspiration from them. 

I won't be reading any more and as a small and probably useless contribution to holding back the tide of prurient misogynist violence masquerading as 'good books'  this copy is destined for my recycling bin rather than the charity shop. 

1 comment:

  1. I read her first one - well, part of it. I’ve never read her since. I don’t know whether crime fiction is changing, or whether I’m just reading different authors, but the murder porn stories seem to be getting less ubiquitous….

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