Chick lit’s hip quotient

Another day, another article about the chick lit mystery trend. Hey, it’s hot, and certainly blogworthy, but I suppose it might have worked better if Amy Rosenberg didn’t have to rely so much on lists:

Actually, mystery chick-lit is just one of several subgenres, according to Rian Montgomery, a 27-year-old temp worker from New Hampshire who runs the Web site Chicklitbooks.com.

"There’s fantasy, time travel. There’s bigger-girl chick lit. Weight-loss chick lit. There’s single city-girl chick lit," Montgomery says. "There’s hen lit – I did not coin that phrase – a more mature chick lit. There’s also lad lit – chick lit written by guys. There’s Christian chick lit, which is getting more popular. It’s very clean."

There’s also bridesmaid lit, gossip lit, nanny lit, mom/pregnancy lit, marriage lit, paranormal lit (featuring vampires and the like; see Bras and Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski); and Sistah Lit, the African American version.

Then there’s the racier chick lit, typified by Sue Margolis’ aptly titled Neurotica (Delta), an overly analytical-yet-lusty woman’s search for erotic satisfaction. (Margolis is also trailblazing a sub-subgenre of chick-lit mysteries best described as Lipstick Lit, in which the heroine tracks down a mystery related to fraud in the cosmetics industry. Title: Apocalipstick, also from Delta.)

And so (says I, with a bit of a smirk), what distinguishes these happening, subgenre-heavy books from other female-centric mysteries?

[Sue] Grafton might not want to hear this answer.

Says Davis: "Chick-lit genre is hip genre. It’s very very contemporary. Sex and the City feeling." Sue Grafton, she says, has a character people can relate to, but "it lacks that feeling of youth and pop culture."

Sorry, Kinsey. Apparently you’re over the hill, at least in the land of chicks.

Meow.