Fantasy/horror/detective cross-over

I'm not sure this is quite the right place... but searching for groups by authors I wanted to ask about Kim Harrison, Laurell K. Hamilton and Kelley Armstrong seemed to send me this way.

So, amongst my other reading I've got a fair amount that falls into this contemporary fantasy/horror cross over, and quite a lot of it falls into the detective genre too. Granted Ms. Armstrong's work isn't always conventional detective story stuff, but it's often in that sort of thriller area in a way that classic fantasy and classic horror rarely is - perhaps classic horror does more, because there are enough stories over there that are hunting down the monster so they have elements of hunting the criminal or similar.

However, I was wondering if anyone has any idea why this sort of big cross-over story is becoming almost a genre of it's own - it certainly seems to it into "won't fit neatly into the slots" because it's not just horror, not just fantasy, certainly not just detective. Or is there a genre for it that I'm missing?

Yep. They are calling this sort of stuff Dark Fantasy, or Paranormal Romance. It is becoming a genre because it is very popular, as far as I can see.

Bluetyson, Thanks for the new genre name.

Reading back over my original post I realise I've missed out the other part of the question I meant to ask:

Why the detective spin into the mix? Classsic horror still doesn't really cross into detective work in the way that Kim Harrison, Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris do (a bounty hunter, a (by the current end point) federal marshall and a PI finding a killer respectively). Classic fantasy has a few detective stories in fantasy settings - the Thraxas series is fantasy PI.

But this genre has investigative skills, mainly in a crime stopping setting pretty strongly core to the whole thing. Does anyone have any good theories about why?

It's an interesting phenomenon. I think we're seeing a lot of blurring of the boundaries between traditional genres, which is a good thing. Dark Fantasy is a big subgenre right now, and I also like the term Slipstream--which, to me, really just means the kind of weird fiction that falls between the cracks because it has elements of two (or more) genres.

I'm particularly drawn to books that mix detective and supernatural elements, and Harrison, Hamilton, Harris, Huff and others are recent success stories. F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series is a favorite of mine, although RJ is probably more of a vigilante than a detective. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files are pretty big right now, and I think they're a great blend of crime/noir and fantasy. And, one of my all-time favorites is William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel.

Why? I think a lot of it has to do with the authors combining their love of separate genres. I was a big fan of "The Night Stalker" when I was a kid, and more recently "The X-Files." I'm guessing those series have been touchstones for a fair number of authors.

What I know is that LKH who was one of the first, started her books as mysteries. She said she hated the fact that in traditional mysteries, when there was a woman PI, the men in the book always ended up rescuing them, or dealing with the violence, and the blood. So she wanted to write a mystery where the woman pulled her own weight.

She also said that she was an avid reader of horror as a kid, so that brought in the supernatural critters.

Then she said she was in a restaurant somewhere and overheard a bunch of 'ladies who lunch' talking about some event they were running. They all kept saying it was sad that so and so was dead. Wouldn't it be good if they could bring her back to run the event. Voilà the idea of an Animator was born.

All this is from various interviews, a few cons/signings, and being on the LKH list at the start with her former agent's husband. :)

The romance part came later, it was never the aim. The series was supposed to end at book 3, with AB staking JC and her and RZ going off into the sunset to get married. LKH disliked vamps, but AB was too hot for JC (though it took her another 3-4 books to admit it). LKH couldn't get her to kill him. And the rest is history.

The others just copied LKH and used mystery because that was the original winning formula. At the start LKH had a lot of problems because it was not in one genre, but several.

I also think that most of the books are set in the modern world, so there are a limited number of jobs the POV can do. They need to be sort-of-self-employed so they can deal with night vs day issues, as well as not having a routine. They need to be where they are in contact with new people and issues so that they have a plot, and they need to be doing something that can incorporate danger, tension, sex.

FYI there is a new fantasy mystery series by Tamara Siler Jones . The 3 books are:

Ghosts in the Snow
Threads of Malice
Valley of the Soul

One story that I can think of that isn't set in the modern world - though it's a short story, not a novel - is Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald", collected in Fragile Things and elsewhere. It's a rethinking of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet...

I recently read Threads of Malice and Valley of the Soul. Wasn't able to track down the first one. Has anyone else read these?

I am not sure, but I got the idea from the books that the stories are set in a way off future where somehow, humans have lost tech, but now have magic. Is that right, or am I way off base?

No I didn't get that impression that it was set in the far future. The Tamara Siler Jones books are set in a medieval fantasy land, and the POV character is the Castellon for the ruling lord in the area where he lives. It has been called closer to Brother Cadfael than Harry Potter.

Most of the people in the story don't have magic, and live low tech lives. It is the bad guys who have the magic, and for some reason their world allows evil magical beings seep in and harm the human inhabitants.

The only book that comes to mind is Others by James Herbert. The protagonist is a detective and a freak and he gets involved in solving a case that leads him into a truly horrific place. Nightmarish and twisted.

Actually another of his novels might fit as well Moon was pretty strange and kept me off balance the whole time I read it.

I'd also recommend a new book by Kit Whitfield, Benighted in US; Bareback in UK; ISBN 0345491637) -- a society somewhat like our own in which most people are lycanthropes, but a small minority work as a sort of police force.

I am soooo slow to the game. Just now getting to the Jan 2 posts. 20 years ago when I started sending out query letters, agents didn't want to ever see a cross-genre novel. Now they are all over the place. I just finished the latest in Simon Green's Nightside series. Here's another "detective" but he works in a part of London where it is always nighttime and the occupants aren't always human. Urban fantasy, alternate reality--whatever--it's always interesting to see if books are placed under mystery, sci-fi, or the horror section of the bookstore.

How about Robert E Howard's Conan tale "The God in the Bowl?" Pretty much a sword & sorcery murder mystery.

The Arcanum and Pulptime conscript HPL as a character in mysteries featuring Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, respectively. But that has more to do with the title of this thread than with the "paranormal romance" genre.

I think, on the good side, plenty of traditional authors learn that former fantasy - roleplayers, be it horror, fantasy, or sci-fi by genre, have become decently formidable authors themselves (myself an exception, still amateurish and occasionally trolling). That did result in a shift of the markets, and in some cool video games among all the copycat-poo we get dished at high prices... ;-)