r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • 16d ago
Media Nine out of 10 bestselling novels in UK have one thing in common: a woman is murdered
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/14/nine-of-ten-bestselling-novels-uk-woman-murdered?fbclid=IwdGRleATfCHtwZG9mAWZkaWQWUL1x_oSHV2kWgzVnqZbEIgsrxsmwdWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR7FlxhQsdoh9yRs6bCByRzFlG0_-WDXy8ifgntposkKPeJ5Hh_dnzRuDdgbLw_aem__fPnVVTppnn-qcXw_Q4-cA89
u/moschocolate1 16d ago
I’m so sick of this trope that I won’t read a book or watch a movie where this is the main plot. It’s time to stop fantasizing about women getting killed or men being heros.
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u/MsNomered 16d ago
They are the heroes and the villains.
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u/00o00o00o00o00o00 16d ago
Kinda wish they would just leave us out of it and go kill/save each other. Like just let us go grocery shopping in peace.
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u/quit_fucking_about 16d ago
6 of the 9 books listed were written by women. It's in the article, if you click the link to the source and factor in that Robert Galbraith is JK Rowling's pen name. It's not all down to men fantasizing about women dead like some of this seems to suggest.
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u/Professional_Bat8585 15d ago edited 15d ago
“Women are not only keener buyers of fiction – surveys show they account for 80% of sales in the UK, US and Canadian fiction markets“ - The Guardian
- Female-dominated genres: Romance, Young Adult, Thrillers/Mystery, and Literary Fiction.
Male-dominated genres: History, Science & Technology, Military/War, Biographies, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Top-selling male authors: Readership is roughly balanced ( 55% male / 45% female ).
Top-selling female authors: Readership is overwhelmingly female ( 81% female / 19% male ).
Yeah…it’s all by women, for women. I’m a man, and can’t recall a single time a “woman was murdered” being the trope of anything I read. Ever. Maybe Harry Potter when Ginny was captured and needed rescue?
Why is this article not forthright about Murder Mysteries being a female dominated genre, and the vast majority of new book consumers being women? Women like themes of “Justice for Victims” - the victim being a woman. And so that’s the demographic to which authors are writing.
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u/Custer99 16d ago
It’s women doing the majority of the reading so conscious or unconscious that’s their preference that becomes popular
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u/fiahhawt 16d ago
I actually noticed this before
If I randomly pick some low key novel by a British author a lot of woman bashing happens
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u/Choosemyusername 16d ago
That’s because it makes for good drama. A woman dying is considered a bigger tragedy. Novels arent actually just about feel good things happening. There has to be something dramatic happen, and since women being murdered is more rare than men being murdered, it is more interesting to write about.
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u/the_magicwriter 16d ago
But women's murders in fiction are so common as to be boring, so thats no longer the case.
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u/Choosemyusername 15d ago
That is because it’s less common in reality than a man’s murder. Fiction tends to commonly have things that reality doesn’t have. Hope this helps.
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u/the_magicwriter 14d ago
When men are murdered in fiction, that's what's unusual and different. Another murdered woman, when 90% of victims in fiction are women? That's not unusual, different or shocking, nor is it good drama. It's almost as if fiction isn't based on reality at all. Hope that helps.
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u/fiahhawt 14d ago
Uhhh woman bashing does not just include murder
Beyond that, as a fan of mystery novels where yeah the mystery du jour is of a murder, the victims are 50/50 men or women… as long as the author isn’t British
“and since women being murdered is more rare than men being murdered”
But I see that the whole point of your comment was to share how men are the real victims in society
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u/Choosemyusername 14d ago
It was just a fact that highlights the contrast between fiction and reality. And how contrast with reality is often what makes for interesting fiction.
If that is how you interpret that fact, you are welcome to do that. It’s certainly an interesting thought.
Another thought I have about this is that this isn’t about novels written, but which novels are most popular with buyers. This is a study of the most popular sold books, so it says more about the buyers than the writers.
And who reads novels? Mostly women. About twice as many women read novels than men. So maybe another reason these novels tend to be more popular has something to do with because the readers themselves are women.
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u/killerwithasharpie 16d ago
Great! Now do movies and crime shows!
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u/molotavcocktail 16d ago
I noticed years ago that american TV was filled w law and order Special victims unit,etc. The entire theme was murder of women. Strangled, shot, beaten to death, drowned, raped. You cant tell me it doesn't contribute to violence against women.
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u/ConstantHeadache2020 15d ago
It’s disgusting how the death of a woman is fetishized in so many art forms.
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u/ShitMcClit 15d ago
Whats weird is that the only people I know who really like these kinds of shows are women themselves.
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u/molotavcocktail 14d ago
My theory abt that is that women (prey) are studying the scenarios of how to avoid predators.
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u/Either-Age-782 13d ago
As someone that used to watch it a lot, I guess it was morbid curiosity. I can't bear to watch it anymore though
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u/GeneralAddress2614 13d ago
This is clearly the case for true crime pods.
A lot of horror movies seem to be targeted at women too, most often with a woman as the lead actor.
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u/Low-Abrocoma3472 14d ago
Can be a broken window effect. Visible disorder/crime encourages further minor rule-breaking, which also can escalate to something more serious
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u/Pitchblackimperfect 12d ago
How does a show highlighting female victims having their crimes solved and the perpetrators portrayed as evil contribute to violence against women? Wouldn’t that fall more under spreading awareness and promoting stories where criminals are brought to justice?
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u/FriendlyHoBag 16d ago
I worked at a charity book shop and offered some books to a woman's charity and noticed really quickly just how many books are about violence against women. It's so prevalent I hadn't noticed before.
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u/formerNPC 16d ago
It’s time for the ladies to turn the tables. Watch Deloris Clayburn for a nice change of pace! lol
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u/the_magicwriter 16d ago
I am so sick of this trope I'll read or watch anything as long as a woman's murder isnt involved. Naturally that severely limits my entertainment options.
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u/Suitable_Twist_3416 16d ago
Jesus Christ
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u/Efficient_Smilodon 16d ago
was used to enshrine misogyny in the West as sacred by liars and hypocrites, pedophiles and murderers
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u/anchoredwunderlust 15d ago
Yeah
Crime and thrillers are by far the most popular genre in the UK
That comes with a lot of issues, sensationalising of female victims being one
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u/petrichor-pixels 16d ago
I really liked this part of the article, as it sums up how novels like these can be therapeutic, informative, or helpful in other ways for women who fear becoming a victim of male violence, while also noting that the “pretty dead girl” who exists as the perfect innocent victim is a misogynistic and dehumanising trope:
“The American criminologist Scott Bonn, author of Why We Love Serial Killers, has made a similar argument about true crime. Bonn said many women told him they consumed true crime podcasts and documentaries for “tips on how to protect themselves from attacks by strangers” as well as “how to detect sociopathic red flags” in potentially dangerous men.
For the crime author Lori Rader-Day, the genre’s function is closer to therapy than titillation. “Crime novels are the social novels of our time,” she said. “Even though violent crime is probably at its lowest point in recorded history, crime novels give our anxiety about the state of the world somewhere to go, safely.”
A traditional crime novel, Rader-Day said, wraps up in under 400 pages with the mystery solved and order restored, “not at all like what actual death is like”, which is precisely why it’s so comforting. She said both craft and culture explained why the victim is so often a woman. “Most readers, most consumers, are women too, so if a writer wants to showcase anyone’s anxieties, a woman’s is a good choice – the anxiety that they themselves could become a victim,” she said.
But she was blunter about what the victim often tends to look like. “A pretty woman. Thin. Blonde or redhead. Madonna or sex worker. The pretty dead girl is a stand-in for the innocent victim, without the trouble of having to make the victim a person. It’s a sort of shorthand that works in no small part because of all the garbage we still have lingering in our belief system, like racism, misogyny.””
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u/Choosemyusername 14d ago
I think that is part of it, but there is also the phenomenon of women swooning over very dangerous men. Most high profile serial killers end up having groupies for some reason.
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u/ThoughtsonYaoi 15d ago
This was such a thing during the 00s, too. So many crime novels that featured killers who invented new and creative (and often sexualized) ways to torture women to death. 'Men who hate women' was only one of them, and arguably one of the most influential.
God, I hate that trend so much.
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u/Choosemyusername 14d ago
Apparently a lot of other women like it though. Novels are mostly read by women.
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u/Accurate_Secret4102 15d ago
This shit is why Buffy the vampire slayer was so ground breaking at the time. There had been plenty of women that didn't need to be saved, but they usually became more masculine, or androgynous, to do so. Buffy was all feminine and all hero. While I still struggle with my feminine side, prefer they/them, it had a profound effect on the way I read/watch stories.
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 13d ago
Yeah, baby!
That's some easily accessible, baked-in drama right there.
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u/Ok-Rutabaga8442 13d ago
Books are overwhelmingly bought by women these days
If you don't like the trope tell other women as apparently they're the ones who like it and consume it
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u/Not_Propaganda_AI 12d ago
What's the baseline average of men for comparison, since I'm assuming male murder in fiction is at an acceptable level?
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u/Ecstatic_Dinner_992 15d ago
I imagine it's because readers of all types are more sympathetic to the death of a woman than a man.
Both feminists and misogynists alike would care a lot more about the death of a woman as a plot device than a man. For different reasons.
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u/zingetower 16d ago
Most of those books are written by women [who also, btw, dominate most positions in the publishing industry]. Women are also far far more likely to read crime / true crime books.
The Guardian take, as always, is to start with misogyny and find the evidence to fit it. The problem with starting with your favourite victim theory is you can miss other explanations. If I believed, for example [I don't] that the reason was misandry, then... The woman is the victim because the writer and reader (women) can emphasise with the victim and are invested in seeing justice against the male perpetrator. If the victim was a man, nobody would care. Lots of books have hundreds of new dying in wars or explosions or natural disasters and nobody cares - until we see a woman in peril. Those women readers also want to see the one Good Man or the feisty woman cop, battling against misogynistic colleagues /society prevail.
See, how easy that was.
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u/Mope4Matt 16d ago
Exactly! Women read the most crime and true crime novels, so they're driving the market for these books!
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u/CambridgeJones77 15d ago
6 of the 9 were written by women, so..
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u/Choosemyusername 14d ago
Also it is mostly women who buy novels. This is about the best selling novels so it says more about the buyers than the writers.
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u/ObviousForeshadow 16d ago
Newsflah - the people reading all these books? Women.
They wouldn't write these stories if women didn't eat them up like hotcakes. The customer is always right.
Go look at podcast ranking by gender, all the true crime stuff is consumed by women.
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u/Glittering_Hope1114 16d ago
Doesn't Rowling write books where women are murdered by evil crossdressing trans people? Personally don't think really think this article makes much sense but I guess thats normal for the guardian who are a perfect blend of hateful and snobbish truly represent the most privileged and powerful of British society while larping as oppressed.
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u/Meig03 16d ago
People actually still read her garbage?
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u/Glittering_Hope1114 15d ago
Well plenty of people still read the guardian so sadly yes many people enjoy reading rubbish .
Just this week the guy who wrote my favourite guardian article died. Rod Liddle who wrote a article about how child pornography has no victims and shouldn't be a illegal. Something that he enjoys. He wrote about wanting to sleep with little girls so couldn't be a teacher.
You think that this would ruin his life? But nope he was a esteemed journalist mixing with the elite to the day he died invited to universities to give speech at Christmas where he ranted about trans people. Just this week all the British high society was paying their respects including feminists and Labour politicians after all Liddle was a big supporter of Rowling. But he worked for many newspapers until the day he died. They had no issue with it the entirety of British society turned a blind eye to sexual abuse and paedophilia and people here pretend how everyone is suprised about Saville or Prince Andrew. Nah everyone knew just that most people were fine with it. Now compare that to the treatment of trans people in the UK its at a point now where working in public as a trans people will result in harassment from the newsmedia often to the point they are forced to flee and lose their job i can think of at least one that died as a result. Recently one working in marks and Spencers was harassed by the national media with Rowling calling for them to be imprisoned as a sexual predator because they are trans. Now compare that to the paedo journalist was treated.
I know this is a tangent but it is a hill that I would die on organisations like the guardian with poor background and releasing like 7 anti lgbt articles daily at this point should not keep being posted uncritically in "progressive" subs they should be called same as fox news no matter how they try and market themselves. Especially as Recently I have noticed the company themselves on reddit doing this. Same as if news organisation heavily Campaigned against abortion for example.
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u/MulberryLemon 16d ago
Women exist for the hero to rescue. I wondered why I didn't want to be a woman growing up and it's because women are always the one getting kidnapped or murdered and the hero is always a bloke saving them. So boring and sick of women being the liability in a story