I had a penchant (craving/addiction?) for dark chocolate Bounty bars at university; I had one almost every day. But I lost it along the way and by the time I started work, even the memory of that squidgey, pressed, ever so sweet coconut, in an envelope of bitter-sweet chocolate was gone - regardless of the TV advertisements. Likewise, when I started reading crime fiction, with a vengeance akin to addiction in 1992, the serial killer novel was a unique thrill. I simply could not get enough of it.
Roll on to the birth of the next millennium and I started to realise I had become a tad tired of this. Roll on to 2003, or thereabouts and I started to acknowledge that I really was tired of this sub-genre. By 2004/5, I was happy to say that I was all "serial-killered out".
Originally, I put this down to culture. I'd embarked on that reading "fix" when based in North America for eighteen months in the early nineties. There, they have serial killers aplenty, or so it seems. The UK did not/does not still.
Returning to the UK, I was slow, initially, to take up the British authors, as they didn't have the pace I was used to. One exception was Minette Walters, where I picked up a copy of "The Scold's Bridle" in a local bookshop and found something I considered unique. I'd no idea what a "scold's bridle" was until I read that novel. Also, I'd had no idea that people lived that kind of life until I read that novel. I was hooked and went back to the bookshop and bought the (small at the time) backlist. I still didn't have a replication of the "serial killer chase pace", but I was intrigued enough to keep turning the pages.
So what made the long term change for me, and why? And why do I seek your thoughts on this?
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