THE CAREER NOVELIST
times they are a'changin', and authors who hope to prosper writing
American historical fiction would be wise to change with them.
What unites all the new western forms is a concern with a realis-
tic depiction of the times. Goodbye to black hats and stereotypical
sheriffs: today's western is built of accurate detail, true events, and
characters whose experience is taken from history.
To be truthful, that same accuracy was the secret of Louis
L'Amour's success.
MYSTERY MEGATRENDS
No fiction category has been more successful in western culture
than the mystery. In 1986 a Gallup survey found that 62 percent of
all adults had read a mystery book. The percentage was even high-
er among the college educated (74 percent), and among women (69
percent).
Popular belief holds that mysteries sell mostly to an older seg-
ment of the population. That is not true. While 54 percent of people
aged 50 and older had read a mystery, according to the Gallup sur-
vey, that figure rose to 65 percent for the 35-49 age bracket, to 68
percent for adults 25-34 years old, and to a truly astonishing 70 per-
cent for people in the 18-24 age group. Mysteries are reaching a
wider cross section of the population all the time.
What accounts for the broad popularity of mysteries? Certainly the
form has had plenty of time to refine itself. Many trace the mystery to
Edgar Allan Poe's three Dupin stories of the 1840s; in fact, the form
may go as far back as William Godwin's Caleb Williams in 1794.
Regardless of its birthdate, the mystery form has clearly been blessed
with a family of great storytellers: Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle,
G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery
Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, Ellery Queen, Dashiell
Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald
... the closer we draw to our own decade, the longer the list grows.
On top of that, the two best-selling American authors of the twen-
tieth century (measured according to cumulative lifetime sales) were
mystery writers, Mickey Spillane and Erie Stanley Gardner. With pow-
erhouse sales like theirs at the top of the field, it is perhaps no won-
der that mysteries have attracted so many readers.