Something about crime fiction....

"I can’t do thrillers and I can’t do spy novels. I can’t do any genre-fiction books, really, none of them. I just get bored with the prose. I don’t find any rhythm in it. It’s blank, it’s nothing; it’s like watching TV. " - Colm Toibin
My thanks to Ian Rankin  and Susan Hill for the above quote. Yes, I happen to like crime fiction - good crime fiction. 
There are a great many books in our local library I have not read. I am never likely to read them.There are others that, given time, I might read again. It's not likely but that will simply be because there are other things I do want to read.
What I do not want to read is what I call "navel-gazing, introspective fiction" where the author is trying to be clever  but really has nothing to say. I don't have time for that sort of thing. I don't want to read books where the story line is disjointed rather than developed, where the characters are flat rather than firm. No, the characters don't need to be finished - a really good character will have me thinking, "I wonder what they think about X...". 
The Senior Cat, who also enjoys crime fiction, has a very high regard for Ian Rankin. His only complaint is that he can read faster than the author writes. 
"It's the characters and the sense of place," the Senior Cat tells me. Yes, I know. I retweeted the "tweet" saying I would recognise Rebus if I met him. I would recognise Susan Hill's Serraillier too. They are quite, quite different but they are both "real".  You don't actually know, unless it is mentioned in the writing, what they had for breakfast - but you can take a fair guess.
Last night I skimmed a book called "Blood on the wall" by Jim Eldridge. A friend of mine had enjoyed it and passed it on. I know he will expect to talk about it but I found it flat and improbable. The characters won't remain with me the way Rebus and Serraillier and others do.
When Ms W was much younger she kept asking me to write her a book, another book about someone else's characters. It also had to have her in it or, to be more exact, "someone who is a little bit me and a little bit you." I eventually did it - and learned a great deal more about the other characters in the process. (She still has the book, indeed her father got it properly bound for her.) I would know those characters if I met them too - not because of what I wrote but because of what the original author wrote. 
And that is the way it surely ought to be? In a good book the writing should be such that you come to know the major character or characters so well that you know, without being told, what they might like to eat for breakfast, whether or not they clean their shoes and much more. It might not matter in the least to the plot but it does matter to how you understand the character.
And the idea that this sort of genre is "blank" is surely wrong? Of course it isn't blank. It is seething with humanity, some of which we know better than the rest.
And, for the record - Rebus doesn't clean his shoes but Serraillier does.