This paper will consider the phenomenon noted by booksellers and event organisers of writing festivals in the western world, of the preference that middle-aged women show in reading and writing crime fiction.
The paper will reflect on why this might be so, despite those women belonging to or coming from respectable and “ethical” professions such as teaching, medicine and law.
An audience review will be presented, with the use of focus groups, surveys and blogs. As well, selected contemporary writers of crime in New Zealand and abroad will be asked about their expectations of their readership and about any ethical principles that underpin their own values as people. Finally, the literature of Ngaio Marsh as New Zealand’s most successful crime writer will be examined as a reference point for ethical crime writing.