Why are there no romance novels set in Belfast?
Claire McGowan on the potential for genres other than crime to take off in Northern Ireland
Tue, May 11, 2021, 05:54
Claire McGowan
Claire McGowan: “I’m part of the problem, I’ll admit, as it wouldn’t have occurred to me to set a women’s fiction novel in Belfast, had my editor not suggested it.” Photograph: Jamie Drew
Writing in 2003, in an essay entitled Why Crime Fiction is Good For You, Ian Rankin commented that there were almost no thrillers coming out of Northern Ireland, perhaps because violence was still too real there to be entertainment.