Reccomend me...

Mes Amis

For those who don't know, my day job is in retail. Specifically, I work in a bookstore. For reasons of saying something out of turn by accident or intention, I won't mention which one.

Anyway, part of the fun of working with books is reccomending to people. Especially when it comes to crime books. People say, "I'm looking for something like..." and I can generally find something. But the past few days I've found myself challenged. Two very similar looking, slightly worried mothers coming in and saying, "My Johnny - aged thirteen - is interested in crime books. But I don't know what to get him. They aren't going to disturb him are they?"

And each time, little Johnny has shown more interest in adult crime than younger crime. That is, its pretty clear little Johnny is past the Three Investigators (actually, I don't think they're even published any more: a terrible shame) and wants to explore more. In both cases I've reccomended YA crime (Bateman's Reservoir Pups, it seems, may be worth getting in if we can find it and, of course, Horrowitz is a good bet both with Ryder's spy antics and the Diamond Brothers which are funny books) but I've also said that it depends how mature Johnny is whether he's going to be sated by that. Especially because Little Johnny sounded like he was showing interest in harder egded stuff (we discussed movies he had seen). Of course, Mum didn't want anything that was going to be a "bad influence" which really limited me in some ways, particularly when I discussed some thematic elements and specific scenes in certain books.

I vaugely remember being thirteen. You want to be an adult, but you're not quite there. And you're not really a kid either. Its a fucking horrific age. And, of course, your mum doesn't want you to grow up fast, so you're really caught in a bind.

I remember when I was in my teens, my Dad gave me my first Elmore Leonard (Mr Majestyk) although I didn't read it until years later (I discovered SF and thought crime would probably be boring in comparison - besides, its what my dad read and when you're thirteen its not so cool to emulate your dad). But when I did read it, I thought, this would have been a damn good choice. I did read Get Shorty first, however. And I was blown away. I wish I could remember the exact age I was when I did, however. It might help me more.

Of course, I told my worried mothers about this and even said, "these crime books here and here might be good places to start: not too graphic but still exciting stuff" while qualifying that there were, uh, adult themes involved. But I couldn't help much more than that. Because I don't know enough about what's appropriate, not just for the young teens themselves, but to keep the mothers happy.

Its interesting to me, because if we need to find new readers of crime, we need to get them started somewhere, and I'll be damned if I can figure out where that might be. Do we just throw copies of Mr Majestyk at teens?

Or is there a way to wean these guys up to discover the sheer fucking joy that can come with a well written crime novel? Is there a bridge?

Not that I expect answers, but it has been intriguing me the past week.

au revoir

Russel