Richard L. Schur Suits A Cultural History Bloomsbury Academic, November 2026
Thank you, NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic, for this uncorrected proof for review.
As a lover of legal dramas such as Picket Fences, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal and The Practice, I was immediately drawn to this history of a legal drama that, on my limited viewing, I saw as different. I had picked up on Rachel’s aspirations and her work to achieve status in the firm and liked this theme. I had also noted the relationship between mentor and mentee, Harvey and Mike. A theme that raised ethical issues but also provided a quirky element to the drama. I was aware that the legal cases conducted by this firm portrayed less commitment to social justice than the legal dramas with which I was familiar. Richard L. Schur led me into appreciation of a different genre of legal drama, and for that I am grateful. Expansion of my cultural landscape through his close examination of Suits was a thoroughly energising experience.
Important in this examination was the broad approach that included information about a wide range of legal dramas. Schur’s examination of Law and Order, with its myriad of offshoots, attention to current issues and stories and consideration of many aspects of the legal process was an excellent introduction to understanding the American legal landscape as depicted in television programming. The programs with which I was familiar also had their place in drawing the cultural and legal landscape in which the examination of Suits took precedence. See Book Reviews 2026 for the complete review.
Australian Politics
Kos Samaras from RedBridge’s latest Insights & Intel <redbridgeintel@substack.com> Unsubscribe
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Frustration is Not Loyalty The number is not the story
A poll is a photograph. It captures a moment. It tells you nothing about what created that picture and what may change in the weeks and months.
Yet much of the reporting on Australian polling treats the photograph as the film. A party sits on 30 per cent, so 30 per cent becomes its destiny. Headlines are written and seat counts are extrapolated.
One Nation’s current position is the best example of why this is false economy.
Averaged across published polls, One Nation sits at roughly 30 per cent of the national primary vote. Reported on its own, that number reads as super strength. A party that spent two decades on the fringe now polling ahead of the Coalition. A historic realignment, locked in.
Some of it is real. But a large share of that 30 per cent is not a rock solid vote or conviction. It is a mood.This is the part polling cannot measure well. Survey instruments are good at recording a choice. They are poor at recording why the choice was made, and how firmly it is held. And what our qualitative work keeps telling us is that a significant portion of One Nation’s vote is not a vote for One Nation at all. It is a vote against the entire political system. Frustration, parked somewhere, against the established order.
However, frustration is not loyalty, and it is certainly prone to shifts. Hence, the critical question for anyone reading these numbers is a simple one: does that support hold as an election gets closer, when the choice stops being an expression and starts being a decision?
Victoria is about to give us an answer.The state goes to the polls in November. In our latest poll for the Australian Financial Review, One Nation’s Victorian support has fallen five points, down to 22 per cent. Most of that movement has gone to the Coalition.
The change agent opportunity
Here sits a hypothesis worth testing. As election day approaches, the frustrated voters who abandoned the Coalition begin to drift back, because they conclude the Coalition is the real change agent.
Understand the psychology of these voters and the logic becomes obvious. They did not park their vote with One Nation because they read its policy platform. Most could not name three of its policies. They parked it there because it was the loudest available signal of rejection. The protest was the message they wanted everyone to hear. It was aimed at both major parties, but in Victoria it carries a specific target: a government they believe has stopped listening to people like them, one that has been riddled with some many scandals that you could be forgiven for mistaking it for the Jefferey Archer and Jonathan Aitken show.
That is the crucial detail the topline hides. For a large share of these voters, the underlying objective was never to elect One Nation. It was to remove a government. One Nation was simply the sharpest instrument lying around at the time.
Which means the Coalition does not need to win an argument with One Nation. It needs to win an argument about arithmetic. In a lower house contest, a protest vote that cannot form government is a protest that changes nothing. The government survives it. As election day approaches and the contest turns from expression to decision, this logic starts doing the Coalition’s work for it. If you want them gone, you vote for the party that can actually replace them.
Our Victorian polling suggests the conditions for this are already forming. The Coalition leads the primary vote. Brad Battin’s predecessor problem does not exist for Jess Wilson, who enters the contest with a net favourability of plus 13, unusually strong for an opposition leader, and majority hard name recognition. Meanwhile Pauline Hanson sits at net minus 17 with Victorians, with four in ten holding a very unfavourable view. A protest vehicle whose national figurehead is deeply unpopular in the state is a vehicle voters will exit without much grief. This revelation also suggests that we may see more decline as we get closer to the election.
But the Coalition’s opportunity comes with a trap, and it is one they keep walking into at a national level. The temptation is to chase these voters on One Nation’s terms. To mimic the anger, borrow the rhetoric, fight on the terrain of grievance. That approach fails, because on the terrain of grievance One Nation is the authentic product and the Coalition is the imitation. Voters can tell.The change agent play is different. It does not ask these voters to stop being angry. It validates the anger and then redirects it toward something usable: a government that can be removed, services that can be fixed, a state that can be run properly. It says, in effect, your frustration is legitimate, and here is the one lever that actually pulls. The Coalition wins these voters back not by out-shouting One Nation but by being the credible instrument of the change One Nation can only gesture at.
That word, credible, is doing all the work. The change agent position is not claimed through advertising. It is conceded by voters, and only when the alternative government looks like a government. Discipline, a small number of concrete commitments, a leader who reads as competent rather than furious. If the Coalition holds that shape through to November, the drift back becomes a flow.
Labor’s harder road
Labor faces the same task from the other direction, and a much harder version of it.
A sizeable chunk of Labor’s former vote is also sitting on One Nation. These are outer suburban and regional voters, many of them from families that voted Labor for generations. They did not leave over ideology. They left over cost of living, over services, over the accumulating sense that the party stopped seeing them. Labor needs a large share of them back to survive.But look at the asymmetry. The Coalition can offer its defectors hope. Come back and you get the change you wanted. Labor cannot make that offer. It is the government. Change is the thing being demanded of it, not the thing it can promise. So the motivation Labor must build is not hope. It is fear.
Fear of what a vote parked on One Nation actually produces. Fear that a protest in the wrong seat elects the other side. Fear of what happens to wages, to services, to the things these voters still associate with Labor, under a government they did not intend to install. Fear campaigns have worked for Labor before. Medicare has won it elections.
The problem is that fear only works when the messenger is trusted, and these voters left precisely because the trust broke. A warning from a party you feel abandoned by does not land as protection. It lands as another demand. There is a version of this campaign where every Labor ad about the dangers of a protest vote simply confirms what the defector already believes: that the party talks at them, not to them.
Fear also asks for discipline that governments under pressure rarely have. It requires a single, sustained, concrete story about consequence. A government fighting internal fires, carrying an unpopular record and a new leader still introducing himself to the electorate will struggle to hold that story for twelve weeks. Hope forgives a messy campaign. Fear does not.
So Labor’s task is not impossible, but it is second order. The Coalition is pulling on an open door, whilst Labor is pushing on a closed one.
What 15 per cent looks like
Now consider what happens if both parties succeed, even partially.One Nation could easily finish on 15 per cent. And at 15 per cent, spread thinly across the state, it wins hardly anything in the lower house. The party that spent a year dominating the published polls ends election night with a pile of votes and almost no seats to show for it.
That outcome is entirely possible because of something the topline number hides. A large chunk of One Nation’s vote is rented, not owned. A point we at redBridge have made many times. The true base, the voters who are with the party out of belief rather than grievance, sits at around 15 per cent. Everything above that line is on loan from the major parties, and loans get called in when the contest gets real.
None of this means One Nation is finished, or that the anger driving its rise has gone anywhere. The conditions that produced this vote are structural and they are not improving. If the major parties win these voters back in November and then fail them again, the loan gets extended, and next time on worse terms.
But it does mean the 30 per cent should never have been reported as a fixed asset in the first place.This is the risk in reporting polling on its own. The number is accurate. The story attached to it is often wrong. Without the human context, without understanding who these voters are and what their vote is actually doing for them, a soft protest reads as a hard realignment, and a photograph gets mistaken for the future.
American Politics
Bob McMullan
US mid-terms: report number 3
SUS mid-terms: report number 3
Some interesting and some concerning developments over the last fortnight in the Democratic Party’s uphill struggle to win control of the Senate at the US mid-term elections in November.
Some states continue to look strong
Polling in Georgia and North Carolina continues to look very strong.
Jon Ossoff, the candidate with an Australian connection, leads his Republican opponent, Mike Collins, by more than 7% on average in Georgia.
Similarly, Roy Cooper continues to lead Michael Whatley by a large margin in every poll in North Carolina.
It is too early to declare victory, of course, but these two states look very strong for Democrats in 2026.
These two states if successful would take the Democrats to 46 seats.
Best of the rest
The Democrats need 5 more states to gain 51 seats and therefore a Senate majority.
New Hampshire continues to look the best of the rest. Chris Pappas leads John Sununu by about 3%. The primaries are not decided yet but these two look the most likely candidates. A probable Democrat win but far from certain.
In Maine, the Democrats have chosen a replacement candidate after their initial disastrous choice eventually withdrew. In the only poll I have seen Troy Jackson, the new candidate, leads Susan Collins by 3%, but it is very early days against a tough opponent.
Democrat candidates are leading narrowly in two very difficult states, Texas and Ohio in recent polling. These will both be very hard to win.
The Texas Republicans have chosen a very unattractive candidate in Ken Paxton and so far, he has continued to fall further behind. However, the margin so far is very tight and Texas is very strongly Republican.
In Ohio, it is a case of a strong Democrat candidate, Sherrod Brown, rather than a particularly weak Republican incumbent. The polling averages show Brown leading Jon Husted by less than 1%.
If both these Democrats were to win, and that remains a very big task, the Democrats would reach 50 seats.
Michigan!
That raises the question of Michigan. This is a state in which an incumbent Democrat Senator is retiring and the Democrat Governor has high levels of support, so in this electoral climate it should be a strong possibility for the Democrats to win.
The Democrats have chosen a controversial candidate, Abdul El-Sayad to compete with Republican Mike Rogers. Before the primary it looked likely that either El Sayad or his primary opponent would win this state and with the victory have a real chance of the necessary 51 seats in the Senate.
Recent polling has taken a very negative turn for El-Sayad. On current polling he would lose, but he seems to be a strong campaigner and he has raised a lot of money so there is still a strong chance for him.
It would be a tragedy if an unwise choice costs the Democrats a majority, but it is early days.
Should any of these states fail to fall to the Democrats they would need to win one of a couple of long shots or pick up one or more Independents in strong Republican states where the Democrat candidate has withdrawn.
Long shots
The other states which the Democrat Senate candidate has a chance of winning are Iowa and Alaska.
On present indications it is likely the Republicans will hold on to both these strong Republican states, but the Democrats have an outside chance.
In Iowa, the Republican candidate, Ashley Hinson, has a narrow lead over the strong Democrat candidate, Josh Turek. This is close enough to be of continuing interest.
In Alaska, the incumbent Senator, Dan Sullivan, has a narrow lead oner Mary Peltola, the Democrat who previously held the contiguous House seat. Once again, one to watch but not one to count on.
An even longer shot is Kansas. The Democrats have chosen Adam Hamilton who they believe will be a strong candidate against incumbent Senator, Roger Marshall. It is true that Democrats have won occasional state-wide races in Kansas but it is difficult to see it happening here.
Independent hopefuls
It appears the Democrats have adopted a new strategy of withdrawing their candidates and giving a strong independent candidate a chance to win a seat which would not be winnable for any Democrat candidate.
The two-party system is fraying at the edges in the USA, but nothing like the drastic changes now occurring in the UK and Australia and which happened previously in many European democracies.
History does not suggest that this Democrat tactic is likely to succeed this time, but it will be worth watching both for its potential consequences this election and as a possible harbinger of future possible developments.
The states in question, in what appears to be descending order of probability are: Nebraska, Montana, Idaho and South Dakota. (The Democrat candidate in Montana has just refused to withdraw, so a Republican win is likely).
Heather Cox Richardson
August 6, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>
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August 6, 2026Heather Cox Richardson Aug 7 
Sixty-one years ago, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The need for the law was explained in its full title: “An Act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, and for other purposes.”
In the wake of the Civil War, Americans tried to create a new nation in which the law treated Black men and white men as equals. In 1865 they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment for crimes. In 1868 they adjusted the Constitution again, guaranteeing that anyone born or naturalized in the United States—except certain Indigenous Americans—was a citizen, opening up suffrage to Black men. In 1870, after Georgia legislators expelled their newly seated Black colleagues, Americans defended the right of Black men to vote by adding that right to the Constitution.
All three of those amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth—gave Congress the power to enforce them. In 1870, Congress established the Department of Justice to do just that. Reactionary white southerners had been using state laws, and the unwillingness of state judges and juries to protect Black Americans from white gangs and cheating employers, to keep Black people subservient. White men organized as the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Black men and to keep them and their white allies from voting to change that system. In 1870 the federal government stepped in to protect Black rights and prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan.
With federal power now behind the Constitutional protection of equality, threatening jail for those who violated the law, white opponents of Black voting changed their argument against it.In 1871 they began to say that they had no problem with Black men voting on racial grounds; their objection to Black voting was that Black men, just out of enslavement, were poor and uneducated. They were voting for lawmakers who promised them public services, like roads and schools, that could only be paid for with tax levies.The idea that Black voters were socialists—they actually used that term in 1871—meant that white northerners who had fought to replace the hierarchical society of the Old South with a society based on equality began to change their tune. They looked the other way as white men kept Black men from voting, first with terrorism and then with grandfather clauses that cut out Black men without mentioning race by permitting a man to vote if his grandfather had voted, literacy tests in which white registrars got to decide who passed, poll taxes, and so on. States also cut up districts unevenly to favor the Democrats, who ran an all-white, segregationist party. By 1880 the South was solidly Democratic, and it would remain so until 1964.
Southern states always held elections. It was just foreordained that Democrats would win them.Black Americans never accepted this state of affairs, but their opposition did not gain powerful national traction until after World War II. During that war, Americans from all walks of life had turned out to defeat fascism, a government system based on the idea that some people are better than others. Americans defended democracy and, for all that Black Americans fought in segregated units, and that race riots broke out in cities across the country during the war years, and that the government interned Japanese Americans, lawmakers began to recognize that the nation could not effectively define itself as a democracy if Black and Brown people lived in substandard housing, received substandard educations, could not advance from menial jobs, and could not vote to change any of those circumstances.
Meanwhile, Black Americans and people of color who had fought for the nation overseas brought home their determination to be treated equally, especially as the financial collapse of European nations loosened their grip on their former African and Asian colonies and launched new nations.Those interested in advancing Black rights turned, once again, to the federal government to overrule discriminatory state laws. Spurred by lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, judges used the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to argue that the protections in the Bill of Rights applied to the states, that is, the states could not deprive any American of equality. In 1954 the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Republican former governor of California, used this doctrine when it handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional.White reactionaries responded with violence, but Black Americans continued to stand up for their rights. In 1957 and 1960, under pressure from Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, Congress passed civil rights acts designed to empower the federal government to enforce the laws protecting Black voting.
In 1961 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) began intensive efforts to register voters and to organize communities to support political change. Because only 6.7% of Black Mississippians were registered, Mississippi became a focal point, and in the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, organized under Bob Moses, volunteers set out to register voters. On June 21, Ku Klux Klan members, at least one of whom was a law enforcement officer, murdered organizers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner near Philadelphia, Mississippi, and, when discovered, laughed at the idea they would be punished for the murders.
That year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which strengthened voting rights. When Black Americans still couldn’t register to vote, on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, marchers set out for Montgomery to demonstrate that they were being kept from registering. Law enforcement officers on horseback met them with clubs on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The officers beat the marchers, fracturing the skull of young John Lewis (who would go on to serve 17 terms in Congress).
On March 15, President Johnson called for Congress to pass legislation defending Americans’ right to vote. It did. And on this day in 1965, the Voting Rights Act became law. It became such a fundamental part of our legal system that Congress repeatedly reauthorized it, by large margins, as recently as 2006.But in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts struck down the provision of the law requiring that states with histories of voter discrimination get approval from the Department of Justice before they changed their voting laws. Immediately, the legislatures of those states, now dominated by Republicans, began to pass measures to suppress voting by Democrats and, by extension, people of color. In the wake of the 2020 election, Republican-dominated states increased the rate of voter suppression, and on July 1, 2021, the Supreme Court permitted such suppression with the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee decision.
On April 29 of this year, the Supreme Court continued the assault on the Voting Rights Act. In Louisiana v. Callais it rejected the longstanding interpretation that sometimes, in order to guarantee Black representation in government, states have had to create districts that are made up primarily of Black Americans. By a vote of 6–3, with the right-wing justices in the majority, the Supreme Court in April declared Louisiana’s construction of a majority-minority district unconstitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment. It was, they said, an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
A 2024 study by the Brennan Center of nearly a billion vote records over 14 years showed that the racial voting gap is growing almost twice as fast in places that used to be covered by the preclearance requirement. Another recent study showed that in Alabama, the gap between white and Black voter turnout in the 2024 election was the highest since at least 2008. If nonwhite voters in Alabama had voted at the same rate as white voters, more than 200,000 additional ballots would have been cast.In 1957, when he was Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson called for the protection of Black voting, saying: “This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.”Upon signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he said to the American people: “I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”—
Notes:https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/people-color-are-being-deterred-votinghttps://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/growing-racial-disparities-voter-turnout-2008-2022https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/alabamas-racial-turnout-gap-hit-16-year-high-2024https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1965-remarks-signing-voting-rights-act
Robert Reich
Residents of Canberra will warm to the theme of the following article!
Robert Reich <robertreich@substack.comThu 6 Aug, 18:17
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Who’s Responsible for This Mess?
The media must name names
Friends, The New York Times says the “Justice Department struggles” with Trump’s demands that it prosecute his enemies.
But who exactly is struggling? Career lawyers whose professional ethics are being compromised? Trump-loyalist appointees who presumably knew what they were getting into before they joined the regime? Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who desperately wants to be the real thing?The same ambiguity crops up when the media reports that the “White House” wants this or that, that the “Department of Homeland Security” is taking some action, that the “Department of the Interior” is undertaking or undoing something, and so on through the squalid chaos atop this regime.These are buildings and departments, not people. We need to know who.
In normal times, the White House and federal departments are also institutions containing professionals with expertise hewed over decades of experience, guided by institutional norms for making decisions and the insights and perspectives that come with their unique roles in the federal government. (I should know. I headed one.)
But we’re no longer in normal times. Trump and his sycophants are actively destroying the professional integrity, expertise, norms, and unique insights and perspectives of all these institutions.
That’s why the public needs to know who is doing what when important decisions are made inside these buildings and departments. It’s the only way anyone can ever be held accountable.
For example, news reports continue to characterize the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund at the center of the storm over whether to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general as “the Justice Department’s” fund.This characterization hides a crucial reality: The fund doesn’t belong to the Justice Department. It wasn’t even an official offspring of the Justice Department. Instead, it emerged from meetings between Trump’s personal lawyers and acting attorney general Todd Blanche (who was once also a personal lawyer for Trump) over how to dispose of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
It was never the “Justice Department’s” fund. It was Trump’s fund, right from the start. The same with his deal to immunize himself from IRS audits.
Similarly, when the media reports that the “Justice Department” is “formally rescinding the order that created the fund,” it obscures the most important fact: The order wasn’t rescinded by the Justice Department. It was rescinded by Blanche himself. In fact, Trump now says he “wasn’t involved” in the revised plan.
So why should we suppose that any future Trump attorney general will be bound by Blanche’s order?
Similarly, when we hear that “the White House claims” that vandals caused damage to the bottom of the reflecting pool, we don’t know who in the White House made that deceitful claim. Did it originate with the vicious nativist, Stephen Miller; the fanatical Russell Vought; Trump’s zombie chief of staff Susie Wiles; or with Trump himself?
And when it’s reported that District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “blamed the Department of Interior” for her failed criminal case against David Hearn, a former Olympian whom she accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool, we don’t learn the most important thing: Who’s responsible for this fiasco?
Did Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, mislead Pirro about Hearn’s alleged behavior? Or did Trump instruct Burgum to blame the former Olympian for damaging the pool, rather than own up to the botched job?
Trump had insisted for months that vandals were responsible for the damage, which gained national attention when the pool bottom began to peel and algae blooms turned the pool from blue to green.
Pirro’s office charged Hearn with “a violent effort to rip up the sealant from the bottom of the pool” and secured an indictment against him for felony destruction of government property — carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
But in Friday’s court filing, Pirro conceded that problems plaguing the newly renovated pool were caused by a “botched installation not vandalism” and that, had the Department of the Interior “been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”
This is a serious matter. A U.S. attorney charged an American citizen with a crime that could have resulted in his serving 10 years in prison but then dropped the charges when it turned out that Trump — or was it Burgum? or someone else? — was just trying to save face. But we still don’t know who’s responsible.In the midst of the authoritarian chaos of the Trump regime, the public needs to know who’s doing what. When is Trump giving orders to his lackeys? When are they making decisions on their own? What’s legally binding, and on whom? Who’s responsible for what?My friends, there will be a reckoning.
And when that reckoning occurs, the individuals who have enabled this dictator, or who have conspired and collaborated with him, will be identified and held to account for what they did or failed to do.That’s why the current record of responsibility is so important. Rather than report that “the White House” or the “Justice Department” or the “Interior Department” or some other building or agency did something, we need to know exactly who did what.Buildings and departments are not destroying the rule of law and undermining American democracy. Individuals are.
The media must tell us whom to hold responsible.
Cindy Lou at Trev’s
The meals were of a mixed quality, and service was friendly, but more training is needed. The lamb shoulder was as usual, a pleasant meal. The chips were very good, and the fettuccini and fungi pizza were reasonable. However, the chicken was a poor replacement for the barramundi I had ordered. I regretted accepting the mistake! The company made up for the restaurant’s short comings. We had a lovely time, and I also appreciated the guest photographer’s work – his photos appear below. Unfortunately, his own meal, a nice pizza, was not photographed.
The New Feminist
Violence against women dominates best seller lists, but why?
The most popular novels predominantly focus on violence against women, why is this so popular and what does it say about us?
Violence against women has become one of crime fiction’s most familiar storylines. Through conversations with authors, readers and a psychologist, this investigation explores why these narratives remain so popular – and where the line between representation and exploitation lies.
Browse the crime and thriller shelves of almost any bookshop and a familiar pattern emerges missing women, murdered wives, stalked girlfriends, and female victims whose suffering drives the story forward. Despite growing conversations about misogyny, representation, and gender-based violence, stories centred on violence against women are still one of contemporary fiction’s most reliable formulas.
Recent UK bestseller lists continue to feature psychological thrillers and crime novels centred on missing or murdered women, prompting renewed debate about why this narrative is still so commercially successful. The question is why.
Are readers drawn to these novels because they reflect fears women already live with? Do publishers continue to commission them because they sell? Or has violence against women become such a familiar literary trope that the genre continues to rely on it?
As someone who enjoys crime fiction, I found myself asking these same questions. Repeatedly, I noticed stories about missing women, murdered wives and female victims dominating the shelves. It made me wonder why violence against women had become such a familiar fixture of a genre read by millions, and whether readers were searching for stories about violence itself or for something else entirely. Those questions became the starting point for this investigation.
The answers are far more complicated than a simple appetite for violence.
Why these stories continue to resonate
Crime novelist Charlotte Dolman believes the prevalence of these narratives reflects a reality many women still face.
“Violence against women is sadly still a reality for many women,” she says. “Crime fiction often explores our deepest fears, and for many readers those fears feel very real.”
Dolman’s perspective suggests that crime fiction is not creating women’s fears but responding to them. Rather than inventing dangers, many novels mirror experiences that women already recognise in everyday life and in the news.
Mary Picken, a member of the UK Crime Book Club, expressed an interest in books that investigated violence against women without abusing it.
“They dominate crime fiction because violence against women is very real and all too prevalent,” she said. “I’m not a fan of fiction that exploits this for misogynistic or voyeuristic reasons, but I am interested in why this kind of violence takes place and the terrible consequences of it.”
For Picken, the appeal lies not in violence itself but in understanding its causes and consequences. Her comments highlight an important distinction between stories that encourage reflection and those that use women’s suffering to create suspense.
Reading fear
According to Chartered Psychologist Kerry Daynes, many readers approach these novels as more than entertainment. Instead, they can become a way of understanding danger and imagining how they might respond to threatening situations.
“The stories are seen as educational,” she says. “Women feel they are training themselves to ‘spot the signs,’ which is reassuring.”
Daynes’ comments suggest that crime fiction can offer a sense of preparation. While readers cannot eliminate risk, these stories may provide a feeling of control in situations where women often feel vulnerable.
She also points to the role of justice. While many real-world cases leave victims and families without answers, crime fiction usually provides resolution.
“There tends to be a clean resolution in the end – the bad guy gets caught, or revenge is taken,” says Daynes. “That allows for a closure that women certainly don’t get in real life, so it can feel cathartic for some.”
For some readers, then, crime fiction may offer something reality often cannot: accountability.
Is it always about gender?
Not all readers see gender as the defining feature of crime fiction.
Crime reader and author Sam Dounis says the identity of the victim is rarely what attracts him to a novel.
“I read books that sound as though they’ll have a good story and characters; I don’t think about the sex of the victims. It’s more about who the victim is, rather than what sex they are.”
His perspective reflects another side of the debate. While some readers interpret these stories through the lens of gender, others approach them primarily as mysteries, focusing on plot and character rather than the victim’s identity.
When does representation become exploitation?
Crime writer David Mark argues that violence against women carries a particular emotional weight because society continues to view it differently from violence between men.
“Violence between men is routinely accepted as a tragic norm of the background landscape,” he says. “Consequently, the narrative choice to depict a female is frequently employed because it instantly taps into a far more potent, raw sense of collective injustice and moral outrage.”
For Mark, the issue is not whether violence against women appears in fiction, but how writers choose to portray it.
“The critical distinction lies between exploiting a trauma and exploring it with narrative integrity. Using violence as a mere plot device treats a female life as a transactional prop.”
His comments echo wider feminist debates about representation. Stories can raise awareness of gendered violence, but they can also risk reducing women to victims whose suffering exists only to move a plot forward.
Mark believes readers are increasingly aware of that distinction.
“Contemporary audiences increasingly call out exploitative tropes, demanding that stories confront real-world vulnerabilities with genuine empathy rather than cheap shock value,” he says.
Daynes believes some narratives cross that line.
“Where it gets darker and more concerning is the titillation that sometimes comes with these narratives,” she says. “The sexualisation of violence against women and girls has been escalating for decades in mainstream material.”
She warns that some stories risk encouraging audiences to consume violence rather than confront its consequences.
“These stories may then act as a ‘safe’ way to enjoy the turn on of violence, without having to truly empathise or consider what it means.”
A complicated relationship
Speaking with readers, authors, and a psychologist, one thing became clear: there is no one explanation for why violence against women continues to dominate crime fiction.
Some readers see these stories as a way of understanding fear, processing real-world anxieties and finding justice where reality often does not provide it. Others are simply looking for compelling characters and engaging mysteries. Writers argue these narratives can shine a light on social issues, while critics warn they can become exploitative if women’s suffering is used.
The genre’s success implies that readers are not necessarily looking for violence. Instead, many people are looking for justice, understanding, and emotional closure. However, the ongoing dependence on female victims presents a troubling point.
If violence against women is still one of fiction’s most reliable plots, are these works helping readers in confront misogyny – or has women’s suffering become one of publishing’s most durable narrative tools?
Robin's Room 