José Latour

I appre­ci­ate this oppor­tu­nity to share with you my views about real­ity in crime fic­tion. I look for­ward to learn­ing your opin­ions on this topic and answer­ing your ques­tions after a brief introduction.

Although I strive to cre­ate, and pre­fer to read, real­is­tic and believ­able nov­els, I am not against good unre­al­is­tic fic­tion, the key word being “good.” From Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to Rowling’s Harry Pot­ter series, many cel­e­brated works of lit­er­a­ture are about fan­tas­tic and/or unreal sto­ries and characters.

Writ­ers whose only goal is to enter­tain read­ers don’t fret about how unreal their char­ac­ters and plots are, and lit­tle, if any, about social con­text. I don’t pass judg­ment on them. Nei­ther do I dis­ap­prove of those read­ers who pre­fer unreal fic­tion. They read those books to amuse them­selves, and maybe to escape from daily grind.

Crime has been the cen­tral theme of many nov­els. Some frown when I argue that Dostoyevsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov is a crime novel. For them, great lit­er­a­ture and crime are irrec­on­cil­able. Admit­tedly, crime fic­tion has not been a well­spring of lit­er­ary excel­lence, but from among the many thou­sand of titles pub­lished, I guess it wouldn’t be dif­fi­cult to find a cer­tain amount of admirable books, none of which writ­ten by me, I regret to say.

At present the bulk of crime fic­tion con­sists of mys­ter­ies, thrillers, sus­pense nov­els, espi­onage nov­els, and police pro­ce­du­rals. They are also sub-classified as hard­boiled and softboiled.

I believe that all con­tem­po­rary writ­ers of fic­tion share the same aspi­ra­tion: To pen enter­tain­ing nov­els. But in my for­ma­tive years I read many authors who had two other objec­tives: To be real­is­tic, and to make read­ers reflect about human nature and cer­tain social prob­lems as old as mankind.

Per­haps it is bet­ter, to define what I con­sider unreal crime fic­tion, to pro­vide a dread­ful example.

In cer­tain nov­els the pro­tag­o­nist is gen­er­ally in his or her mid-thirties. With dif­fer­ent degrees of sub­tle­ness the author lets us know that he or she is bright, good look­ing, sexy, and funny. This admirable spec­i­men is a crack shot, a kung fu expert, dri­ves a sport car, and drinks but never gets drunk. All the gor­geous women or hand­some men fall for him or her. A few never age; in the first novel, pub­lished, for instance, in the 1980s, they were thirty; fif­teen books later they were thirty-two.

Their antag­o­nists are bril­liant, well-funded, and ter­ri­bly resource­ful crim­i­nals who along three quar­ters of the novel out­wit the main char­ac­ter and escape using all sorts of fast vehi­cles and top-of-the-line com­mu­ni­ca­tions and weapons. In the end, the pro­tag­o­nist triumphs.

Thank­fully, it seems that this kind of extremely unreal crime novel is less pop­u­lar than decades ear­lier, when it sold count­less copies. Nowa­days unre­al­ity in crime fic­tion books is less bizarre, but equally implau­si­ble. It is more com­mon in motion pic­tures and tele­vi­sion serials.

Where I come from, nei­ther life nor crime and crim­i­nals are like that.

Hav­ing read a fair num­ber of crime nov­els in my life time, I find that Latin Amer­i­can and Anglo Saxon authors hold oppos­ing views con­cern­ing real­ism. I hope that those of you who study Latin Amer­ica find a short his­tor­i­cal digres­sion interesting.

In the 19th and 20th cen­tury the bulk of crim­i­nals in South Amer­ica, Cen­tral Amer­ica and the Caribbean were elected pres­i­dents that over the years became cor­rupt, gen­er­als that seized power by force, or rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies that turned into dic­ta­tors. Their hench­men were Army offi­cers, chiefs of police and espi­onage corps, con­gress­men, min­is­ters, and crooked judges. The wealthy courted the favour or bought the sup­port of politi­cians and gov­ern­ment offi­cials to get away with break­ing the law.

Depic­tions of such state of affairs abound in Latin Amer­i­can crime fic­tion. Our mur­der­ers, tor­tur­ers, embez­zlers, and kid­nap­pers are nearly always peo­ple in power, or the rich they shield; main char­ac­ters want to change such real­ity, although in the end they merely man­age to defeat a sin­gle bad guy, not the system.

Rarely pro­tag­o­nists are a hand­some man or a beau­ti­ful woman. They may smoke mar­i­juana or drink hard liquor, but are not proud of it. To escape the oppres­sion and cor­rup­tion they are immersed in for a few hours, they make love, lis­ten to music, read, and watch sports and movies.

In Latin Amer­ica, crime fic­tion became a rel­a­tively safe way (we could always say it was fic­tion) for denounc­ing the ills of our soci­eties. Read­ers enjoy see­ing our real prob­lems in print and many authors try to be realistic.

The major­ity of the Latin Amer­i­can nov­els that I have read are pretty life­like and strive to reflect our cul­tures and soci­eties, and also how we see and judge other cul­tures and societies.

Even in the most real­is­tic nov­els there is a mea­sure of unre­al­ity. Some­times a char­ac­ter with no street smart­ness or mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence shoots with amaz­ing pre­ci­sion, or lies too con­vinc­ingly, or plans some­thing per­fectly. Never a punc­tured tire, a flight delay, a bout of flu, or lack of money pre­vents the main char­ac­ter from doing some­thing cen­tral to the plot just in time. Every so often the pro­tag­o­nist detects an astute crim­i­nal by serendip­ity. But serendip­ity is part of reality.

As a sto­ry­teller, I choose plots based on sit­u­a­tions that I know hap­pened or might hap­pen within cer­tain social frame­work. I cre­ate char­ac­ters with all the con­tra­dic­tions inher­ent in human nature, and try to make the nar­ra­tive entertaining.

I fancy my read­ers as edu­cated and intel­li­gent adults. I sup­pose they read my nov­els because they want to enter­tain them­selves but don’t find demons, vam­pires, and super­nat­ural humans enter­tain­ing. Pro­tag­o­nists that are mod­els of per­fec­tion or paragons of virtue are not to their lik­ing. They don’t want to be deceived or taken for fools either. I respect those read­ers that I see in my mind’s eye. I write for those readers.

Nearly all my char­ac­ters and plots are fic­tional, but con­cern­ing polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, and legal issues, and also the descrip­tions of places, fauna, and flora, I stand by all you find in my nov­els. To achieve that, I add con­sid­er­able research to my per­sonal experiences.

The best I can define real­ity in crime fic­tion to an aspir­ing writer is this: Strive to see the world as objec­tively and real­is­ti­cally as pos­si­ble and then write about it in an enter­tain­ing and reflec­tive way.

Deliv­ered at the Fac­ulty of Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, Octo­ber 15, 2008.