In his article in The Guardian this week “Crime fiction: the new punk?”  Adrian McKinty states ‘it’s pretty obvious that British fiction has been moribund for decades’ and, he claims, this is because of a clique of public school toffs with no ear for the demotic trying to write about the working classes (that’s enough about Martin Amis).

Adrian argues that the ‘whole literary fiction cadre’ should be ‘re-invigorated’ by  crime fiction in the way that the boring old farts of 1970s prog rock were pushed aside (for a short while) by punk. But Adrian’s claim that ‘Crime fiction, especially noir and hard boiled, are the fiction of the proletariat’ is a dodgy premise. This is surprising, perhaps, for someone so keen on crime fiction, where having a good premise is seen as critical. If  Adrian  made the same argument about the ‘Clogs and Shawls’ books that used to sell in shed-loads  he’d be on to something. But clogs and shawls aren’t very punk, are they?

Before I start my rant, I agree with some of Adrian’s points. Who can disagree with the view it is time to dump the ‘literary fiction’ label (which is only another genre after all)? But I don’t think that means writers should turn to writing books that fit neatly into a genre or sub-genre. Surely, rigid market segmentation is as likely to stop new voices being heard as to facilitate it. I do agree though that we should be able to hear the authentic voices of characters who aren’t middle class. Banning the ‘campus novel’ would be a good start. Sorry about that, Zadie.

But after from that I fundamentally disagree with Adrian so… Hey ho, let’s go. I challenge the assumptions behind the article that:

• Crime fiction is working class.
• Crime fiction is edgy and rebellious, like punk. 
• Crime fiction is the solution to re-invigorating the allegedly moribund state of English literature (not Scottish or Irish literature because they’re dead edgy and there’s lots of social mobility over there, apparently). 

On the class issue, the knee-jerk association of working class people with crime and violence is not authentic. Working class people are not a homogeneous lump. This is a stereotype, in complete contradiction to Adrian’s laudable desire to hear the demotic and surely falling into the same trap as Lionel Asbo/Keith Talent? Far from being fun-loving criminals, most working class people are obsessed with respectability because they’ve got no money to back them up if they lose their reputation. Seen the employment rates of ex-offenders lately?

Quoting Morrissey saying “it says nothing to me about my life” as an example of a working class hero alienated by bourgeois culture tells you how Morrissey feels but not a lot else. Morrissey may be genuinely alienated but the hero of the (not particularly working class) 1980s Indie audience (white boys to a man) is so peculiar and unique he can only represent a demographic of one. I’m not sure what they’d make of Morrissey down a traditional  working man’s club.

Writers should give working class characters the same uniqueness they give to middle class characters (difficult, because the only working class people most writers know are the ones they talk to in call centres). It’s time writers stopped using stock working class types out of central casting as representative ciphers, vehicles for making social comments or addressing the big issues. ‘Shameless’ style caricatures aren’t the way to give the working class,  under class, a voice. If middle class characters are allowed to be complex and unique in fiction then so should everybody else.

I agree that punk was in part a working class grass roots movement (I come from Harlow in Essex and am so old I was there when punk happened, watching local bands like the Neurotics, The Sods and The Gangsters  – yes, these were real bands). But we were a small sub-culture, not representatives of ‘blue collar’ people in general. While we were getting our heads kicked in by skin heads the soul boys were down at the disco kicking shit out of each other to the dulcet tones of the Stylistics. And as Adrian says, punk changed little and what followed was the Thatcher years.

As for crime fiction being edgy and rebellious, right now what could be more safe, market friendly, conformist and tried and tested? It’s an unadventurous  publisher’s dream genre.The only real connection between punk rock is that both crime fiction and punk fans tend to be male and in their forties and fifties. Crime fiction is the Dad Rock of genres,  about as dangerous and cutting edge as what Rebus listens to in his car. (Yes, I know some young people like punk too).

Crime fiction isn’t especially focused on working class people anyway (even allowing for the, admittedly very good, examples Adrian gives in his article) and nor is its audience especially proletarian. The last word  in North London middle class (Guardian reading?) chic is a bookshelf full of Ian Rankin, Elmore Leonard and the Scandinavian noir writers.

What we need isn’t more stock characters or variations on a worn out theme, or murders for that matter, but real stories with real characters. By which I mean authentic and unique characters.

By the way, what is the ‘working class’ these days?