Introduction

Like most struggling authors, I am addicted to the Amazon.com Book Bestsellers List. After a painful regime of withdrawal, I’ve stopped consulting the lists every waking hour, and I can now sometimes go a few days without surveying the Top 100, trying to see what’s really selling, what the latest reading trends are, trying to predict the next trends, all in the hopes of rising out of that ‘struggling author’ status.

For the last two years, there have been two major trends in these bestseller rosters, especially in the fiction field. One is the bondage-as-the-path-to-freedom novel epitomised by the Fifty Shades and Entwined series and their heavily panting imitators. The other is the continuing popularity, if not dominance, of crime fiction titles.

The vast popularity of these two forms should not be too surprising. Crime is as inevitable and as deeply rooted in the human experience as sex itself. Like sex, it’s a subject that touches a deep part of us, that fascinates us, that clicks buttons inside us and makes us want more. And even more than sex, the subject of crime gets us asking questions and seeking answers. Clearly, some of the most interesting (often troubling) questions and more compelling answers are found in the realm of crime fiction.

While some uninformed types may see crime fiction as an inferior literary genre, I would argue that it is, in fact, a serious and important genre because it often engages with what are literally life-and-death issues. In a world where the lines between the legal and illegal have grown distressingly thin, where more and more, we find ourselves stumbling about in moral grey zones, no serious reader can ignore the importance of crime fiction.

As crime remains an enduring presence in our world, crime fiction’s popularity seems assured for the near and medium future. As Asia is also a central focus of many all around the world these days, the conjunction of Asia and crime fiction seemed a very natural development. And thus this book.

For this first volume of Crime Scene Asia, I have selected nine stories by nine different authors that cover a wide multitude of crimes, as well as a broad range of literary styles, characters and milieus. Murder mystery fans will certainly get their fix here, as will as those who appreciate the why-dunit as much as the standard whodunit.

In these pages, we witness robberies of precious objects, smuggling of various commodities legal and not so legal. There are also stories about robbery for revenge, revenge killings, and extreme cruelty just for the fun of it – or to escape deep existential boredom.

A major reason behind my selection of the stories in this volume was to gather a diversity of styles and visions for this initial volume. For instance, I was immediately taken by the wry, dark humour infusing two of the pieces (Cat City Caper and You Get What You Pay For). But I was also seduced by the bitter innocence of the narrator and central protagonist in Jim Algie’s Wet Nightmares. And I will admit that I’m a sucker for crime stories where you not really sure who is the main criminal, who is the accomplice and who is the victim. (Sometimes you’re still not sure at the end of the story.) Which is why I was enthusiastic about fine pieces such as Hanoi Sword Swindle, Lord Tony’s Deal and On A Wet Day You Can Live Forever.

I think that most lovers of crime fiction will find much to please them in this collection. For those who are enamoured of the time-honoured detective stories, there are three solid pieces here, though Charlson’s Ong’s On A Wet Day is anything but the traditional detective story that we see in The Case of the Too Many Fingerprints or Road Kill. As editor, I was happy to include the conventional, well-constructed detective story as well as Ong’s creative deconstruction of that genre.

As a reader – and an editor – what particularly draws me to stories is not just good stories but compelling characters. In fact, my final selection of the nine stories in this volume was made because of the characters that enliven the plots and the settings. Whether criminal, victim, detective, or accomplice, the people we meet in these pages engage us right from the start and keep us interested in them and their predicaments, their fates until the last sentence of each story. Many of the leading characters presented here – especially those on the wrong side of the law – are probably not folks you would want to spend a lot of time with, but you don’t want to leave them until their tales have fully played out.

Of course, Aristotle told us over two millennia ago that a character is defined by the action he or she is either thrown into or pursues. And that’s why the characters in these stories are so compelling: they pursue criminal activities or they pursue those who commit crimes. And not a few of these characters are thrown into situations they would not have chosen themselves and try to work their way out the best they can.

As the plots are spun out, the characters are tested and so more sharply defined. We know them, or we realise they are mysteries no one can ever really know. By the end of each story, there is something like just desserts, even when the desserts are rather bitter.

Finally, I believe that this volume is a fine introduction to the state of crime, and pursuit of criminals, in six leading Asian countries. It is a good beginning to what promises to be an excellent series.

Richard Lord