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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   2221 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 11, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Hmm, let's see.

  • Searching "bestselling mystery novels of all time" brought me to this list of the hundred best crime novels of all time. By my count 68 entries on the list are solely credited to a male novelist.
  • Time has a similar list of the hundred best mystery/thriller novels ever, with the caveat that they only include one novel per author (so Christie only appears once). Of these, 46% are male, bearing out your hypothesis.
  • This article lists the seven best-selling mystery books in history, of which four were written by men.
  • Wikipedia has a list of the best-selling books of any genre. Searching "crime", "mystery" and "detective" returns ten entries, 7 of which were written by male authors.
  • Penguin polled their readers on the hundred best crime books, of which 47 were written exclusively by male authors.

I think you have a point, books in the crime/mystery genre have a more even gender split than I thought.

That penguin one looks super sketchy with none of the top ten being super popular. https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/mystery

I'm not going to do a bunch but of the top 25 on goodreads (it goes by shelved as mystery popularity not total readership) its 9/25 male authors. Dan brown and stieg larsson each double dipping and agatha christie sweeping 4.

Goodreads has the disadvantage of recency bias and possibly could skew more female than readership in general. But the science fiction stuff skews heavily male. https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science-fiction Suzanne Collins and Martha Wells are the only women that crack the top 20.

What the fuck kind of push poll did penguin do for that.

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