What’s left?

[supergee]

The inaugural Staunch Book Prize will be awarded to the author of a novel in the thriller genre in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered.

Thanx to File 770

Comments

[johnpalmer]

I don't know... for "beaten", I think context matters. "Stalking" is "being followed" with a particular intent. Similarly, a non-fridging murder seems acceptable to me, given what I think they're trying to accomplish.

That is, I think, a woman, being followed, because she's believed to be (or *is*) someone else (herself) who is slugged a few times when she confronts her pursuer, who finds her pursuer is a murderer because a man and woman, or two women, who tried to help her were killed because they crossed the wrong person's path, seems that it could be stripped of the icky-chaff that the prize might be trying to focus on. But I could be wrong about the prize, the intent, and my own thoughts on how such a story might splash in today's world. (I say "a man and woman, or two women" because I'm thinking "married couple who are her friends" and because if just one woman is killed, it's closer to fridging, and I'm not sure there's a way to create any meaningful distance. But "they were my friends, they weren't involved, other than in ways a decent person tries to help a friend, and now they're dead" is a standard plot thickener, apart from the fridging possibilities.)