The Romance Novel Leading Man

Traditionally, the romance novel hero is the Byronic type--dark and brooding, writhing inside with all the residual anguish of his shadowed past. He's world-weary, cynical, quick-tempered and prone to fits of guilt and depression. He is strong, virile, powerful, and lost. Adept at many things that carry with them the respect and admiration of the world (particularly the world of other males), he is not fully competent in the arena where women excel--the arena of his emotions, which are violently out of control.

Linda Barlow in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women edited by Jayne Ann Krentz, 1992 

Justice in Romance and Mystery Novels

The romance novel is based on the idea of an innate emotional justice in the universe, that the way the world works is that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. The mystery genre is based on the same assumption, only there is a moral justice, a sense of fair play in human and legal interaction: because the good guys take risks and struggle, the murderers get punished and good triumphs in a safe world. So in romance, the lovers who take risks and struggle for each other and their relationships are rewarded with emotional justice, unconditional love in a emotionally safe world.

Jennifer Crusie, Romance Writer's Report, March 2000

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction

The Golden Age of detective fiction occurred between the two world wars, when several crucial developments changed the genre forever. The stories became more literate and the detectives more believable--no longer were they persons of super human intellect who could look at someone's shoes and determine where they had just been by the type of dirt collected there. Also, much more emphasis was put on period and character as opposed to merely constructing a clever puzzle.

Jay Pearsal, Mystery & Crime, 1995