Reader’s Corner: There’s a Fine Line Between Romantic Suspense and Mystery

Today’s post was inspired by a forum dis­cus­sion at AAR where read­ers are yet still defin­ing what con­sti­tutes a romance but that’s not what I’m going to expound on here today.

The dis­cus­sion started around a roman­tic sus­pense novel, FADE TO BLACK by Leslie Parish where one reader thought the vio­lence was too graphic and the story not roman­tic at all. This made me think just what dif­fer­en­ti­ates roman­tic sus­pense from mystery?

Well, let’s see, in roman­tic sus­pense, you have, well, the two ele­ments of romance and sus­pense. If done right, they are sup­posed to bal­ance each other out but that rarely if ever is achieved. In roman­tic sus­pense, the heavy empha­sis is sup­pose to be on the romance. The sus­pense is more or less a side arc that is sup­posed to be the main con­flict that is uti­lized to draw the two pro­tag­o­nists together.

Often the vio­lence in roman­tic sus­pense nov­els can go from mild to graphic vio­lence. But the level of vio­lence isn’t what defines roman­tic sus­pense is it? No.

Now, there are mys­ter­ies that I’ve read that would eas­ily fall under the umbrella of roman­tic sus­pense as these sto­ries tend to have a very strong roman­tic sub­plot. But what stops them from being labeled as roman­tic sus­pense is the use of over the top vio­lence and the lack of a HEA. Even in some of these roman­tic sus­pense nov­els, the vio­lence can get grue­some, too, thereby fur­ther blur­ring the lines between the two sub-genres.

Then in that case we’re back to what dif­fer­en­ti­ates roman­tic sus­pense from mys­tery? Well, let’s start with the obvi­ous, roman­tic sus­pense must have a HEA whereas mys­ter­ies do not. Easy enough to fig­ure out, yes? In fact, that is about it for me when defin­ing the dif­fer­ence between them.

I’ve read my share of mys­tery and roman­tic sus­pense nov­els and hey, they seem to share a lot of the same ele­ments like ser­ial killers and in some cases the romance is either a blip in the story or a big sub­plot. For exam­ple, Julia Spencer-Fleming’s mys­ter­ies are labeled as “cozy” and are shelved in mys­tery but they have a strong roman­tic sub­plot in them. A lot of romance read­ers, I think, would enjoy that series.

Where roman­tic sus­pense gets to be a big turn off for romance read­ers is when the vio­lence gets to be too graphic and even gra­tu­itous. The romance is often given the shaft. No one likes read­ing from the perps POV. Often I have to ask why is it even nec­es­sary to have a victim/perp scene? Any­way, the author almost writes like he/she for­got they were sup­pose to write a roman­tic sus­pense novel not sus­pense novel with roman­tic ele­ments in them. But half of them more or less read like the lat­ter these days.

I did some under­cover, non-scientific study with a very small sam­ple size, ask­ing read­ers on Twit­ter if they enjoyed read­ing roman­tic sus­pense. I wasn’t sur­prised by the results as it turned out to be not very many. Why is that? Who wants to read about two peo­ple falling in love and run­ning for their lives? Eh?

When one thinks of roman­tic sus­pense, for me it brings to mind authors like Linda Howard (After the Night) or Kather­ine Sut­cliffe (Bad Moon Ris­ing) or even Karen Rose (Kill For Me). The vio­lence in those books tend to be non-existent to tame. Now San­dra Brown’s work is hard to clas­sify. Some­times her books have a strong roman­tic sub­plot in them (Play Dirty) and in that case I would call them “roman­tic sus­pense” but she’s writ­ten other books like Cha­rade and Wit­ness which are straight up sus­pense with sex.

Also, how many read Karen Robards? How well does she do? I find her stuff hit or miss. The last good Karen Robards book I read was One Sum­mer and it had a weak sus­pense plot, an after­thought really and no it wasn’t labeled as roman­tic sus­pense. How about Iris Johansen? She went from his­tor­i­cal romance writer to straight sus­pense writer. Last good book by her that I read was Long After Mid­night. Even though read­ers want the romance to be nicely done, the sus­pense part of the novel has to be on par or else, it’s a FAIL.

Wrap­ping this up, mys­tery and roman­tic sus­pense do share a lot of the same ele­ments but where the dif­fer­ence stops is in the focus (romance ver­sus the mys­tery) and the end­ing (happy ver­sus not). I know I try to men­tion vio­lence when it is heavy handed in any book I read as I think it’s significant.

There’s vio­lence that I find in Karin Slaughter’s work or even Chelsea Cain’s work that seem grati­ti­tu­ous. But that goes beyond the scope of this topic and it has yet to stop me from read­ing their work. Vio­lence in books just doesn’t bother me but again, that goes beyond the scope of this topic. Maybe another time.

In the end, roman­tic sus­pense is about the romance and the HEA. You can add in what­ever you like, I guess, as far as vio­lence, vil­lain POV, skanky sex, etc as far as that goes but the focus must always be on the romance and the end­ing must be a good one and a happy one if one is to label it “roman­tic suspense.”

As an aside, Fade To Black by Leslie Parish looks good and AAR gave the book a decent grade. I just might check it out for myself. Yes, you are wit­ness­ing word of mouth, in action.

Photo Credit: alice­jamieson