Crime fiction

Review of: 'Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature' by Emelyne Godfrey

by John Partington

From: 'Kritikon Litterarum', 39: 1/2 (2012), pp. 114-17.

Muller, Nadine, ‘Dead Husbands and Deviant Women: Investigating the Neo-Victorian Detective Widow’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 30:1 (Spring 2012), pp.99-109

by Nadine Muller

Over the past decade, the detective widow has become a well-established character in the little explored subgenre of... more Over the past decade, the detective widow has become a well-established character in the little explored subgenre of neo-Victorian crime fiction. Considering Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily series (2005–2011) in particular, this essay argues that the detective widow investigates the gendered characteristics and complexities of Victorian widowhood, while also detecting the artistic crimes associated with historical fiction’s imitations and adaptations of the past.

Imperial Rogues: Reverse Colonization Fears in Guy Boothby's A Prince of Swindlers (1897).

by Clare Clarke

Forthcoming in Victorian Literature and Culture 41.2 (Spring 2013)

This article looks at how the question of late-Victorian imperial decline is contested, formulated, and framed within... more This article looks at how the question of late-Victorian imperial decline is contested, formulated, and framed within Guy Boothby’s A Prince of Swindlers - a popular, yet critically-overlooked, collection of detective stories set in Calcutta and London, that appeared in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Horace Dorrington, Criminal-Detective: Investigating the Re-emergence of the Rogue in Arthur Morrison’s The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897)

by Clare Clarke

Clues 28.2 (Autumn 2010)

This article examines The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897), Arthur Morrison’s critically neglected second contribution to... more This article examines The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897), Arthur Morrison’s critically neglected second contribution to the post–Sherlock Holmes detective short story genre. The article argues that as Dorrington is both a detective and a criminal, and the victim is the narrator, the stories subvert the usual reassuring moral and formal conventions of the late-Victorian detective genre. The Dorrington Deed-Box therefore contributes to a necessary re-evaluation of the formal, political, and ideological complexity of a genre that is more conventionally concerned with the upholding of law and order.

The crime writer as historian: representations of National Socialism and its legacies in Joseph Kanon's The Good German and Pierre Frei's Berlin

by Katharina Hall

Journal of European Studies, 42 (1) 2012, 50-67.

This article explores the cross-fertilization of Joseph Kanon’s The Good German (2001) and Pierre Frei’s Berlin (2003)... more This article explores the cross-fertilization of Joseph Kanon’s The Good German (2001) and Pierre Frei’s Berlin (2003) with the historiography of Alltagsgeschichte, illustrating how the novels reflect, but also extend, the examination of everyday life under National Socialism through their depiction of German suffering during defeat and Allied occupation. In the process, the texts instigate a controversial thematic turn whose possible implications, such as the marginalization of the memory of Jewish suffering, illuminate the ‘memory contests’ taking place at the beginning of the new millennium. The article also scrutinizes the tensions arising from the authors’ dual role as crime writer and historian, examining the opportunities crime fiction offers for probing the history and legacy of National Socialism, as well as the limits placed on authors’ historical representations by the conventions of the genre. These issues are explored through close readings of both texts and the analysis of over 150 Amazon readers’ responses, which illuminate the plurality of functions the texts have for readers and the capacity of crime fiction to provide valuable access to historical materials and debates.

Investigating the Motif of Crime as Transcultural Border Crossing: Cinnamon Gardens and The Sandglass

by Vera Alexander

"'The Jesuits taught me how to think': Catholicism and Jesuit Education on Homicide: Life on the Street"

by Maggie Gordon Froehlich

In Christianity and the Detective, eds. Anya Morlan and Walter Raubicheck. Forthcoming on Cambridge Scholars Press.

On Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1997), the character Frank Pembleton represents one of the ways in which the... more On Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1997), the character Frank Pembleton represents one of the ways in which the show both worked within and challenged the conventional representations of detective work in fiction, film, and television. Frank’s character arc is unique among popular representations of the detective in that, over the course of the series, Frank loses and struggles successfully to regain his faith. For the Catholic Fontana, and fellow products of Jesuit education writer James Yoshimura and actor Andre Braugher, Catholicism and Jesuit training were integral elements of Frank’s character from its inception. The extraordinary coherence of this subtle, respectful representation of faith reflects a striking continuity of vision nurtured by an entire creative team.

"'The Jesuits taught me how to think': Catholicism and Jesuit Education on Homicide: Life on the Street"

by Maggie Gordon Froehlich

In Christianity and the Detective, eds. Anya Morlan and Walter Raubicheck. Forthcoming on Cambridge Scholars Press.

On Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1997), the character Frank Pembleton represents one of the ways in which the... more On Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1997), the character Frank Pembleton represents one of the ways in which the show both worked within and challenged the conventional representations of detective work in fiction, film, and television. Frank’s character arc is unique among popular representations of the detective in that, over the course of the series, Frank loses and struggles successfully to regain his faith. For the Catholic Fontana, and fellow products of Jesuit education writer James Yoshimura and actor Andre Braugher, Catholicism and Jesuit training were integral elements of Frank’s character from its inception. The extraordinary coherence of this subtle, respectful representation of faith reflects a striking continuity of vision nurtured by an entire creative team.

‘The Third Degree’: Press Reporting, Crime Fiction and Police Powers in 1920s Britain', Twentieth Century British History, 21, no. 4 (2010): 464-85.

by John Carter Wood

The late 1920s saw a dramatic upsurge in popular concern about the abuse of police powers in Britain, the end result... more The late 1920s saw a dramatic upsurge in popular concern about the abuse of police powers in Britain, the end result of a longer-term trend. Various aspects of policing were seen as worrying, but the most important concerned illegitimate forms of questioning. The phrase ‘the third degree’—imported from America—came to encapsulate this unease. Before the First World War, the terminology began to be used in British coverage of American crimes and their investigation, typically accompanied by disparaging commentary on American methods as well as the confident assertion of the superiority of British policing. The war-time growth in police powers and broader state regulation caused some to see an erosion in the ‘liberty of the subject’, and a series of scandals seemed to reveal serious problems with police procedure. The popularity of crime dramas featuring ‘third degree’ interrogations also shaped public images of the police. Scandals in 1928 generated enough outcry to force the calling of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure (1928-29). Even though few concrete procedural changes were undertaken, it appears to have successfully calmed worries about the police. Concerns about the police receded, not to reach a similar level until the late 1950s.

What are they? The pseudo-mystery stories of Fitz-James O'Brien

by Pete Orford

Clues: A Journal of Detection (forthcoming).

This article considers how Fitz-James O’Brien’s short stories “The Pot of Tulips” (1855) and “What Was It? A Mystery”... more This article considers how Fitz-James O’Brien’s short stories “The Pot of Tulips” (1855) and “What Was It? A Mystery” (1858) bear relevance to detective fiction. In doing so it consider the nature of the paranormal and detective fiction to consider whether a narrative can successfully meet the criteria of both, and what compromises need to be made. In particular it assesses how the hero of these stories, Harry Escott, both conforms and subverts the figure of the detective as presented by the bookending icons of Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes.

When Reading Becomes a Crime: Book Trafficking in Mao's China

by Ray Pun

World History Bulletin, Fall 2011

Detecting Disability: Moving beyond metaphor in the crime fiction of Jeffrey Deaver

by Helen Meekosha

Prescription: Columbo

by Deboleena Rakshit

Term Paper on the popular American TV show 'Columbo' for the course 'Crime Fiction'.

Psychoanalytic reading of Columbo. Please refer to first 2 pages for a more detailed abstract.

Writer may... more Psychoanalytic reading of Columbo. Please refer to first 2 pages for a more detailed abstract.

Writer may be contacted at deboleena.r[at]gmail[dot]com.

Paris, terre d’aventures La construction d’un espace exotique dans les récits de mystères urbains.

by Matthieu Letourneux

Article publié dans Le voyage à Paris, RITM, n°37, 2007.

Né d'une volonté de représenter la ville moderne, espace exotique et quelque peu effrayant qu'Eugène Sue décrira comme... more Né d'une volonté de représenter la ville moderne, espace exotique et quelque peu effrayant qu'Eugène Sue décrira comme l'équivalent, dans nos contrées, de l'Amérique sauvage de Fenimore Cooper, le récit de " mystères urbains " est rapidement devenu un genre à succès, à tel point qu'il a dominé tout le roman-feuilleton au XIXe siècle. Alors qu'il était né d'un souci de peindre les transformations de la ville et qu'il pouvait être lu chez Eugène Sue, Paul Féval ou, en Grande-Bretagne, G. W. M. Reynolds comme une métaphore des tensions sociales, au fil des imitations par les feuilletonistes professionnels (Gutave Aimard, Ponson du Terrail, Pierre Zaccone...) le mystère urbain est très vite entré dans une logique sérielle, avec ses marqueurs architextuels, ses intertextes privilégiés et ses stéréotypes. Pourtant, les auteurs n'ont jamais cessé d'affirmer son rôle de dévoilement d'une réalité cachée et monstrueuse, dans une tension constante entre vraisemblances architextuelle et réaliste. Or, les structures narratives et les motifs d'un sens caché sont révélateurs des tensions entre logique référentielle et logique sérielle, illustrant les problèmes posées par la représentation du monde dans la littérature populaire.

Scarlet and Black: Non-Mainstream Religion as ‘Other’ in Detective Fiction

by Carole Cusack

in Carole M. Cusack, Frances Di Lauro and Christopher Hartney (eds), The Buddha of Suburbia: Proceedings of the VIIIth International Conference for Religion, Literature and the Arts 2004, RLA Press, 2005, pp. 159-174.

Detective fiction, a literary mode developed in the nineteenth century, is most often a conservative genre. From as... more Detective fiction, a literary mode developed in the nineteenth century, is most often a conservative genre. From as early as Conan Doyle’s seminal A Study in Scarlet (1887), new religious movements have provided detective and crime novelists with fertile subject matter for exploring deviance and anti-social motivations. Conan Doyle’s Mormons are exotic, secretive, and hold ‘strange’ beliefs and values; they are therefore more likely to be the perpetrators of actions that defy, rather than support, mainstream norms. This alerts the critical reader to the purpose of non-mainstream religion’s presence in detective fiction: the authors do not seek to understand these communities, but use them as a challenge to the norms of society. The conservative nature of much detective fiction demands that the values of mainstream society are reaffirmed in the plot’s resolution; this frequently results in the demonization and punishment of the minority religion featured.

The core of this paper is devoted to an analysis of two recent popular novels by Kathy Reichs, American forensic anthropologist turned author. Her first novel, Deja Dead (1997), introduced Dr Temperance (‘Tempe’) Brennan, her largely autobiographical heroine. The second, Death du Jour (1999), and the fourth, Fatal Voyage (2001), rely for their plot operations on the pseudo-speciation of various new religious movements, in the former the Order of the Solar Temple, in the latter an occult initiatory brotherhood. Using these examples, this paper will argue that new religious movements are pictured as ‘Other’ to mainstream society in both past and recent detective and detective literature. This analysis expands our knowledge of other popular reactions (for example, the media) to new religious movements.

Crime stories

by Todd Herzog

Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany

by Todd Herzog

Fiction, Feminism and the ‘Celtic Church’: The Sister Fidelma Novels of Peter Tremayne

by Carole Cusack

in Pamela O’Neill (ed.), Celts in Legend and Reality: Papers from the Sixth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies, University of Sydney, July 2007. Sydney: Sydney Series in Celtic Studies, 2010, pp. 315-342.

Since the 1994 publication of Absolution by Murder by Peter Tremayne (the pen-name of the popular Celtic Studies... more Since the 1994 publication of Absolution by Murder by Peter Tremayne (the pen-name of the popular Celtic Studies author and bard Peter Berresford Ellis), sixteen further detective novels and two collections of short stories featuring the seventh century Irish nun and Brehon Law advocate, Sister Fidelma, have appeared. The appeal of the series is that it presents a picture of early medieval Ireland and the ‘Celtic Church’ that is compatible with secularised liberal modernity, while exploiting the ‘otherness’ and counter-cultural mores promoted in New Age understandings of ‘the Celts.’ Fidelma is a feisty, professionally successful, sexually attractive (and active) young woman who challenges the traditional image of medieval nuns. The Irish church to which she belongs is free from the dogmatic and illiberal tendencies that medieval Christianity frequently manifested.

Seventh century Ireland is depicted as a tolerant society in which Christians and Pagans interact in a variety of ways; conhospitae (double monasteries) and marriage between monks and nuns are presented as part of mainstream Christianity; and the place of women within the Irish legal system is affirmed as far superior to that of any contemporary society. Tremayne has stated that the novels are based on ‘fact’ and regularly invokes his status as a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and refers to his ‘academic’ published works, and to the works of scholars. This paper argues that the novels are fiction with a distinctively modern sensibility. The ‘evidence’ Tremayne calls upon in his responses to reader queries and in other published interviews will be scrutinized and material from primary sources and reputable academic publications is employed to critique Tremayne’s faulty historical technique and frequent misrepresentation of evidence.

Crime stories: criminalistic fantasy and the culture of crisis in Weimar Germany

by Todd Herzog

„Den Verbrecher erkennen “. Zur Geschichte der Kriminalistik

by Todd Herzog