MODERN READERS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 955, 27 December 1933, Page 8

MODERN READERS.

Upsetting and Tiresome to Authors. LONDON, December 17. In an address to the National Liberal Club Mrs M. G. Cole, who since her brilliant scholastic career at Cambridge University has collaborated with her equally brilliant husband in writing abstruse works on economics, as well as detective novels, was outspoken in her defence of the latter. She described readers of detective novels as “ a peculiar tribe, extremely faithful,- but upsetting and tiresome, as they were apt to communicate with authors who annoy them.” A tiresome characteristic of readers to-day, she explained, is that they want the villain to be a murderer. Publishers say that, whereas Conan Doyle could get away with burglaries, nowadays murder must be included. “ As a career for women, the writing of detective stories has this advantage: it is one of the few occupations which can be entered on equal terms with men,” she added. Professor D. G. H. Cole, who, like his wife, sandwiches “ thrillers ” with economics, said reviewers of detective stories resembled readers, inasmuch as authors never knew what they preferred. There was, he added, no reason to regard the ordinary detective story as belonging to an inferior genus to the ordinary novel.