Author Wendy Jones sparked a debate after posting on Instagram that nine of the top 10 books on the Sunday Times bestseller list feature a woman's murder. The only outlier was The Correspondent, a book about letter writing. According to Jones, of the 98,000 books sold that week, 81,000 — or 84% — had women being murdered as central to their plot. Social media users called it 'an acute observation of a shocking norm' and questioned what kind of society consumes such content.
Industry response and the Staunch Book Prize
In 2018, writer Bridget Lawless established the Staunch Book Prize to address similar concerns, offering an award for thrillers that avoid gendered violence. However, crime and thriller novels remain the most popular genre in the UK, according to Amazon sales figures. Kaye Mitchell, senior lecturer at Manchester University's Centre for New Writing, told Metro that the representation of violence against women is not new, but it reflects public consciousness.
Feminist crime writers grapple with the issue
Dr. Alison Taft, crime writer and course director at Leeds Beckett University, admitted she initially wanted to enter the Staunch Book Prize but realized none of her work excludes crimes against women. 'I describe myself as a feminist crime writer, but it's almost impossible to be a crime writer and not write about crimes against women,' she said. However, she distinguishes between necessary storytelling and fetishizing violence, citing the Hart brothers who advocated against normalizing such narratives after their father murdered their mother and sister.
How violence is depicted matters
Both Mitchell and Taft agree that the issue is not the topic itself but how it is written. Mitchell advocates for fiction that 'investigates but doesn't sensationalise the type of violence women actually experience,' noting that real-life murders are often by partners, not strangers. Taft adds that modern narratives increasingly feature the victim's voice, moving away from the traditional male detective restoring order. Psychotherapist Hannah Jackson-McCamley warns that reducing a woman's role to her suffering for a male character's development is problematic, as is focusing on graphic details without exploring emotional or social consequences.
Women writing about women's murders
Five of the nine books on the bestseller list were written by women, and crime audiences are overwhelmingly female. Mitchell suggests readers seek fear and danger in literature as a way to navigate anxieties. Taft believes readers want to understand what drives such crimes. However, Jackson-McCamley cautions that repeated exposure to graphic violence can reinforce a sense of vulnerability and anxiety. She notes that stories can encourage empathy when they focus on the victim as a whole person and explore social attitudes that enable abuse.
