When I was growing up I didn't know crime fiction existed. I read the usual classics that were assigned to me in school, and because reading was always presented as a task rather than as entertainment, I didn't really enjoy reading fiction all that much. A teacher would say, "You have to read two chapters of this book by Monday," so reading reading always felt like a dreadful homework assignment, something I had to get through so I could go watch TV and play with my friends.
Meanwhile, I was reading a lot, but mainly the stuff that I was really interested in and that I discovered on my own. I read a lot of sports books and in my sixth grade yearbook I even listed "The Baseball Life of Willie Mays" as my favorite book of all time. I also read a lot of comic books so I guess, in a way, The Amazing Spider Man was my first exposure to crime fiction.
In high school, I finally read my first crime novel. It was a Mickey Spillane novel -- Kiss Me Deadly -- that I discovered on my parents' bookshelf. Admittedly it was the lurid cover that attracted me to the book and I was mainly interested in the very suggestive sex scenes. Still, I loved the witty dialogue and fast-paced style. I didn't know that I'd read a crime novel, though, because I didn't know anything about crime fiction. I just knew that the book was unlike anything I'd read before. There was a lot of action and it was fast paced and the writing was simple and unpretentious.
During my freshman year of college, I got seriously into reading and writing. I read a lot of literary fiction and short stores by writers such as John Cheever, J.D. Salinger, and Raymond Carver. At the same time, I was getting into film noir, seeing movies such as Double Indemnity and The Killing for the first time, but it didn't occur to me to seek out the books these films are based on.
Meanwhile, my early short stories were leaning toward crime fiction. I wrote one story that was set a bookie joint in Brooklyn. It wasn't my greatest work, but my writing professor, John Vernon, read the story and suggested I check out The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins. In my mind, this is when I got hooked on crime fiction. I was blown away by the real-life characters and sharp dialogue and lightening pace. Higgins opened the crime fiction floodgates for me. I moved on to Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford and Elmore Leonard and I never looked back.
How did you discover Crime Fiction?
Editor's Note: Jason Starr is the multi-award-winning author The Follower and Panic Attack.
