Thursday, November 11, 2010

Genre Lines: Harry Potter, Mystery??

Mysteries are my bread-and-butter, my meat and potatoes, my chocolate cake with raspberry ganache. Every now and then, I detour into other areas though, and somehow I always excuse the sidetracks as being related to mysteries -- through plotting, character development, tension maintained, you name it.

At the moment, in between all other tasks, I'm taking a swift flight through the Harry Potter books, in anticipation of the movie release on Nov. 19 (one of two movies that will cover book 7; the second film waits until 2011). Intrigued by the parallels of "good but flawed person with supportive friends seeks route to disarming the criminal," I'm wondering: Has anyone labeled the Harry Potter books as mysteries? Or are they so typical of the magic-quest-fantasy genre that they can't be cross-linked?

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