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>I do have to disagree with JHMcmullen's
>characterization of "lifting" the genre
>from cozy to hard-boiled. Hammett expanded
>the genre. There is nothing inferior about
>the cozy.

I have to agree with you on this. Cozy, hard-boiled, police procedural, or the various sub flavours of fantasy and SF, none of them are inherently superior or inferior. On the other hand, whenever any genre (and that most certainly includes hard-boiled detective stories, as I noted in another post) becomes popular, a lot of mediocre writers will start churning it out, and the result will not be pretty. Popularity may not destroy a genre, but it certainly floods it with a lot of examples that can scare off the uninitiated.

I prefer well told stories in genres I'm not as inclined to read to drivel in genres I'm naturally well disposed toward. I do think there are readers whose tastes reflect other factors, but I suspect that at least some reader preferences are driven more by the quality of what they picked up first.

As someone who reads fast and sometimes runs out of reading material, and has thus spent time reading whatever I could get my hands on, I've proven the truth of this to my own satisfaction. Romance is not a genre I typically seek out, but I have a small collection of books in that genre I've not only read and enjoyed, but keep on my shelves. On the other hand, when I've been rushed in a bookstore, and grabbed the first book I haven't read in various genres I do seek out, I've found myself stuck with books I couldn't finish. Not to mention others I barely got through that got tossed out five seconds later to make room for something decent.

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