One of the things authors were discussing at this years Bouchercon, held ten days ago in St. Louis, was the horrific violence against women we're seeing in crime novels. Crime novels, particularly contemporary ones, have become more violent in general. As I've commented earlier, I think that is to be lamented--for lots of reasons.
That doesn't mean these authors, who are mostly women, are wrong. The graphic depiction of the murder of a child turned many people off to THE MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH. The placing of women and children into danger and/or killing them falls into a particular category of thriller. It's got a disgusting name--"fem jep" or "child jep"--short for "female or child jeopardy".
I hate the term. I hate the idea. I hate the thought of ever writing this nonsense. Objectification via violence. No, thank you.
All right, I concede there's a certain thrill factor in mystery. It's part of the suspense. In a well-done mystery, the reader gets the evidence with the protagonist and is expected to draw conclusions in the same manner as the protagonist. A sharp reader might be ahead of the protag. At the very least, the reader's right there with the protagonist. There will be mistakes, there will be danger, there will be the hero's skin in the game. That's the thrills and chills part.
In a pure thriller, there may be a mystery element, and it is important. It's just not the most important. Here, it's the suspense. It's the thrill; it's the sense of being scared witless. In a thriller, the reader is behind the protagonist. The reader is following the protagonist, and by the end, the reader is screaming for the hero to NOT open that door. It's all about the scare on the roller coaster of emotion.
Fair enough if you like them. I don't. Chalk it up to being a professional historian. I'm not interested in appeals to emotion. That's a thriller. I prefer appeals to logic. That's a mystery.
The thriller is also a relentless form. It never lets up on the gas pedal. There's no time for deep character development. Relationships are sketchy at best. It's all about the plot, the action. Thrillers can wear a reader out, and they can do so in the cheapest, most manipulative fashion. And too many thrillers today depend too much on violence or the threat of violence for the sense of fear.
The lowest in this department is "fem or child jep". Putting a woman or child in extreme jeopardy--or killing them outright--for a roller coaster ride of entertainment is bogus.
The "fem" part bothers me because it assumes women are weak, helpless creatures who need rescuing. At one level, this cheap entertainment should've gone bye-bye years ago. It ignores the reality that women are quite capable of rescuing themselves. At another level, the extreme violence used against women in these stories suggests a sadistic sexual fantasy that needs a shrink, not a book or a movie audience. It's worrisome at all levels.
Now, can we gender-bend a "fem jep" story? Sure we can. Woman rescues man then they fall madly in love. No? Not buying this idea? We shouldn't be buying the standard version, either.
The worst piece of emotional manipulation is child jeopardy. It takes little or no talent to set up and threaten violence or show actual violence toward children for the purpose of setting people off. It spins people up, and I see little entertainment or dramatic value in enraging the audience. Brutal violence toward children suggests psychological pathology. It's not entertainment.
As far as I am concerned, children are off limits for brutal murder scenes. It happens too often in real life. I don't need to read or write about it in fiction.
With history and historical fiction, life gets a little more complicated. Who's a child? Childhood could be said to stop with apprenticeship, roughly at age 13. Children younger than that did do very dangerous jobs--powder monkeys, coal miners, chimney sweeps, tweenies, industrial machine operators, just to name a few. Treatment could be brutal, and in the case of Elizabeth Brownrigg, a master could resort to murder. This was real, historical life, and class didn't always matter. Middling or even gentry boys could go to sea as young as eight. The Army tried to make them wait until sixteen, but younger did get in. There were many dangers in Navy and Army life, and getting shot wasn't first among them.
That said, I see no need to write yards of description about it. The danger would have to be germaine to the story for me to write about it, and even then I'm not going to wallow in threats to children. If I have to kill an adolescent, I'm not going to make my readers sit through every last detail. There will be reaction to it.
How a child can motivate an adult interests me more than violence or threats of it toward children. Having or not having an heir can drive a man to all kinds of behavior--prudent, devil-may-care, criminous, or even murderous. Likewise, behavior between spouses or between men and women in general can call forth all sorts of character flaws and intemperate responses. If there is violence, there will be reaction to it.
The reaction to threats or brutality toward people--men, women, and children--will show character far more effectively than showing the actual brutality.