A Counter History Of Crime Fiction

This book takes a look at the evolution of crime fiction. Considering 'criminography' as a system of inter-related sub-genres, it explores the connections between modes of literature such as revenge tragedies, the gothic and anarchist fiction, while taking into account the influence of pseudo-sciences such as mesmerism and criminal anthropology.

The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction is a comprehensive introduction to crime fiction and crime fiction scholarship today. Across 45 original chapters, specialists in the field offer innovative approaches to the classics of the genre as well as ground-breaking mappings of emerging themes and trends. The volume is divided into three parts. Part I, Approaches, rearticulates the key theoretical questions posed by the crime genre. Part II, Devices, examines the textual characteristics of crime fiction. Part III, Interfaces investigates the complex ways in which crime fiction engages with the defining issues of its context – from policing and forensic science through war, migration and narcotics to digital media and the environment. Rigorously argued and engagingly written, the volume is indispensable both to students and scholars of crime fiction.

This book represents the first extended consideration of contemporary crime fiction as a European phenomenon. Understanding crime fiction in its broadest sense, as a transmedia practice, and offering unique insights into this practice in specific European countries and as a genuinely transcontinental endeavour, this book argues that the distinctiveness of the form can be found in its related historical and political inquiries. It asks how the genre’s excavation of Europe’s history of violence and protest in the twentieth century is informed by contemporary political questions. It also considers how the genre’s progressive reimagining of new identities forged at the crossroads of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality is offset by its bleaker assessment of the corrosive effects of entrenched social inequalities, political corruption, and state violence. The result is a rich, vibrant collection that shows how crime fiction can help us better understand the complex relationship between Europe’s past, present, and future. Seven chapters are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Combining elements of medievalism, the historical novel and the detective narrative, medieval crime fiction capitalizes upon the appeal of all three--the most famous examples being Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (one of the best-selling books ever published) and Ellis Peters' endearing Brother Cadfael series. Hundreds of other novels and series fill out the genre, in settings ranging from the so-called Celtic Enlightenment in seventh-century Ireland to the ruthless Inquisition in fourteenth-century France to the mean streets of medieval London. The detectives are an eclectic group, including weary ex-crusaders, former Knights Templar, enterprising monks and nuns, and historical poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer. This book investigates the enduring popularity of the largely unexamined genre and explores its social, cultural and political contexts.

Witchcraft and paganism exert an insistent pressure from the margins of midcentury British detective fiction. This Element investigates the appearance of witchcraft and paganism in the novels of four of the most popular female detective authors of the era: Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Gladys Mitchell. The author approaches the theme of witchcraft and paganism not simply as a matter of content but as an influence which shapes the narrative and its possibilities. The 'witchy' detective novel, as the author calls it, brings together the conventions of Golden Age fiction with the images and enchantments of witchcraft and paganism to produce a hitherto unstudied mode of detective fiction in the midcentury.

Detective Fiction and the Ghost Story is a lively series of case studies celebrating the close relationship between detective fiction and the ghost story. It features many of the most famous authors from both genres including Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, M. R. James and Tony Hillerman.

In the first major study of representations of World War II in French crime fiction, Margaret-Anne Hutton draws on a corpus of over a hundred and fifty texts spanning more than sixty years. Included are well-known writers (male and female) such as Aubert, Simenon, Boileau-Narcejak, Vargas, Daeninckx, and Jonquet, as well as a broad range of lesser-known authors. Hutton's introduction situates her study within the larger framework of literary representations of World War II, setting the stage for her discussions of genre; the problem of defining crimes and criminals in the context of the war; the epistemological issues that arise in the relationship between World War II historiography and the crime novel; and the temporal textures linking past crimes to the present. Filling a gap in the fields of crime fiction and fictional representations of the War, Hutton's book calls into question the way both crime fiction and the French theatre of World War II have been conceptualized and codified.