Too much gore?

 Crime writing is now my thing.

I got to the point where I couldn't find any new historicals that really held my attention and sampled one or two L J Ross books. I lost interest in them around number six, I think, but I wouldn't swear to that. Then I tried Joy Ellis. Still reading them now and waiting for the next to hit the shelves. 

 I moved on to Val McDermid. The Carol Jordan, Tony Hill series caught my attention, though the other VM titles I've tried did not hold my interest. Bogged down in 1979 twice and I won't try again. Life's to short. 

Went back to the Kate Daniels series by Mari Hannah, and enjoyed them, which is strange because I tried the first years ago and gave up because I found it bitty and disjointed. Strange how we change; this time around I found it smooth and flowing and went on to read the others in the series. I haven't tried any of her other heroines/heroes series yet.

After that came Helen Fielding, whose storylines are so horrific they almost put me off. It seems the public has a taste for gruesome, and its almost as if authors try to outdo each other in gruesomeness. Or perhaps its the real life villains who do more and more gruesome things. Apart from the LJRoss series, the protagonist is a female detective inspector. Now that is not a deliberate choice on my part and to be fair some of the JE titles have a male DI. 

My latest venture is J Cartwright and his first half dozen books, which came out astonishingly quickly, were bright, new and chatty with a good storyline. The one that came out the beginning of this month I have not managed to finish yet. The storyline is wavering and Freya seems at war with everyone.

Concurrently I am watching re-runs of the Wire in the Blood series and enjoying it. I remember this when it first came out and I did not continue to watch all the way through because it was too horrible - man dying on spike - ugh! But now I watch and wonder if that means I have changed and become more bloodthirsty, more acclimatized to gore. There is certainly a lot of it about in TV. It is hard to avoid. This makes me wonder about watching something making a person more prone to doing something...