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Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
Wow! What an interesting conversation. If you want to know what the general public thinks on these subjects, I always find it interesting to look at the top shelf labels in Goodreads on the book details page.
I’m completely surprised that multiple people don’t think that the book that actually has the word Mystery in its title is actually a mystery!
Scarlet Pimpernel isn’t a mystery. It’s a thriller (espionage) that happens to be a classic. 
Time travel, characters who aren’t humans, worlds that aren’t ours equals Science Fiction/Fantasy for me.
Dazrin compiles states on publish date and countries, but I’m not sure where to find them. |
My definition of a genre mystery is a story in which a protagonist solves a dilemma, usually a crime of some sort, and reestablishes the social order. That doesn't happen in
Drood. It doesn't happen in
Daughter of Time, either, but it's closer. Sure, you can broaden the definition of mystery, but in a sense every story is a mystery--just as every story is a fantasy.
I'd call
Scarlet Pimpernel an adventure before I'd call it an espionage thriller.
I don't think that one otherworldly element automatically turns something in SF or fantasy. That would put every vampire/monster/ghost story in the category, along with most dystopian novels and fairy tales. (You specifically mentioned time travel--I'd say it was hallucinations in
The House on the Strand.)
Such broad definitions don't seem to paint a realistic picture of the selections; we might as well just say fiction/nonfiction, and leave it at that.