"If there is a trend," says Bantam Dell Publishing VP and executive editor Kate Miciak, "it's that mysteries have become novels." Mystery's adherents have always believed them to be true novels in every sense of the word and bristle at the snobbery in the expression "transcends the genre." Still, the literary elite has long condemned crime fiction to obscurity in the genre ghetto. That tide may be turning. On mystery's role, Miciak notes, "We were raised on stories of the 'loner' facing terrible odds, and we were taught to believe that you can somehow change things. This is what mystery fiction continues to offer." And this is what critics are beginning to recognize. Just recently, the august New York Times Book Review devoted a full-page review to Ian Rankin's latest Inspector Rebus procedural, A Question of Blood (Little, Brown), instead of pitching it to the converted in Marilyn Sta-sio's Crime column.
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