I’ve been thinking a lot about this hot button issue, particularly the complaints about gory serial killer books both written and read by women. With everything else going on, my chances of actually finding the time to really tear into this interesting and thorny topic are currently slim to none, so, while I’m gone, here’s a question for the virtual hivemind.

Do you think that seeing a female byline on a serial killer book gives female readers “permission” to be titillated by extreme violence against women in a way that would be uncomfortable for them if the same book were written by a man?

Discuss.

edited to add - I'm not talking about well written books here, I'm talking more about bestselling junkfood books. And I'm not talking about smart readers either, I'm talking about average, airport/beach readers.

and here's that Jessica Mann quote, context for the click-phobic.

"When a female corpse appeared on the jacket of a crime-writing colleague's new book, she pointed out to her publisher that the victim in the story was actually a man. Never mind that, came the reply, dead, brutalised women sell books, dead men don't. Nor do dead children or geriatrics. Which explains why an increasing proportion of the crime fiction I am sent to review features male perpetrators and almost invariably female victims — series of them. Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive. "