Guilty Displeasures

Teal Deer (TL; DR)

Guilty Displeasures: The Thriller Killers Who Do the Crime But No Time

I am steadily developing a new reader pet peeve, and it involves the killer getting away at the end of a thriller/suspense/crime novel. It’s like when a book purports to be a romance but there’s no happily-ever-after. What do you mean this serial murderer is kicking it on the beach with a Mai-tai? Ooh, aren’t you SO edgy for that ending?

That these characters are frequently white women, written by white women, doesn’t escape my notice. The same demographic that fears getting sex-trafficked from the grocery store parking lot and devours true crime revels in concurrent power fantasies of committing heinous acts and getting away with them. That is not a thing I can wrap my brain around as a person of color. Particularly when real people are getting plucked off the street and shipped off to Central American concentration camps for the sin of existing while brown. I want these fictional criminals to go to jail or into a grave. To pay for what they’ve done. Especially after 300+ pages of following their bloody trail or crawling around inside their twisted mind. That is the satisfying ending for me. Because the reality is that evil white people frequently do evil without any consequences whatsoever. Just look at the U.S., and at the larger world, right now.

But Suleikha, you’re judging suspense readers and writers the same way people judge and generalize romance readers and writers. Somewhat yes and somewhat no. I am speaking only for myself. The rest of you can read and write whatever you want. Whatever floats your boat. If you’re not reveling in power fantasies of getting away with murder, good on you. My pet peeve doesn’t apply to you. #NotAllWhiteWomen. Plus, there are absolutely books where I’m fine with the killer getting away. Victoria Helen Stone’s Jane Doe books come to mind, as does S.T. Abby’s MindF*ck series and Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age. Why? Because Jane, Lana, and the intrepid crew of former Museum curators only go after people who have done wrong. It’s wish fulfillment of the “I want justice that the law will not afford me or someone else” variety. Not “I am above and beyond the law and can do whatever I want.” (The distinction between vigilantes in fiction and murderers is a whole separate post in the making.) Additionally, in romance, the question of who has historically and unequivocally been allowed the HEA has been discussed for years. No surprise, it’s white, cis, straight people. I don’t have a full foot in the thriller and suspense community so I don’t know if similar discussions are going on, but I get that same vibe from a lot of what I read. Who gets away with it? White, cis, straight people.

Sure, Annalise Keating led a show called How to Get Away With Murder but that entire series had Viola Davis’s brilliant Black law professor cleaning up the messes of her mostly white ducklings. Suspense by and about women of color—like Rachel Howzell Hall, Ausma Zehanat Khan, and Alyssa Cole—has to reckon with how, even in fiction, we don’t get to walk away and disappear. That is not a fantasy we can entertain. We are presumed guilty even when innocent, under suspicion even if we’re law enforcement officers or lawyers. And we have to take into account cops, feds, immigration and travel restrictions, etc. It’s never as simple as dyeing our hair, changing a name, and fucking off to parts unknown.

So yeah. If I have to read another book where a white woman who has killed a bunch of innocents is chilling on a yacht somewhere after hoodwinking the police, I’m not going to be thrilled. Pun fully intended.