International in scope and varied in its theoretical approaches, this collection of ten new critical essays examines the prevailing trends in recent crime fiction. Of particular interest are shifting, and increasingly globalized, conceptions of crime, as well as the genre’s response to technological, legal, and social changes at the end of the 20th century. Employing critical tools new to crime-fiction studies, the essays also gesture toward a future for genre scholarship.

Malcah Effron is a Lecturer in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication program at MIT. She has published diverse articles on detective fiction and is a peer reviewer for The Journal of Popular Culture. Additionally, she is one of the co-founders of the International Crime Studies Network. This is her first book.

Edited by Malcah Effron

Foreword by Stephen Knight

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 200
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-5851-6
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8682-3
Imprint: McFarland

Foreword by Stephen Knight      1
Preface by Malcah Effron      5
Introduction by Malcah Effron      11

Crime Fiction and the Politics of Place: The Post-9/11 Sense of Place in Sara Paretsky and Ian Rankin
(P. M. NEWTON)      21
A Normal Pathology? Patricia Cornwell’s Third- Person Novels
(BETH HEAD)      36
Inheriting the Mantle: Wallander and Daughter
(SUSAN MASSEY)      50
“A Visitor for the Dead”: Adam Dalgliesh as a Serial Detective
(SABINE VANACKER)      66
Transforming Genres: Subversive Potential and the Interface between Hard- Boiled Detective Fiction and Chick Lit
(SONJA ALTNOEDER)      82
The Poetics of Deviance and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
(CHRISTIANA GREGORIOU)      97
“A Natural Instinct for Forensics”: Trace Evidence and Embodied Gazes in The Bone Collector
(LINDSAY STEENBERG)      112
“Post- Modern or Post- Mortem?” Murder as a Self- Consuming Artifact in Red Dragon
(DAVID LEVENTE PALATINUS)      128
Revisiting Paranoia: The “Witch Hunts” in James Ellroy’s The Big Nowhere and Walter Mosley’s A Red Death
(MAUREEN SUNDERLAND)      142
A Detective Series with Love Interruptions? The Heteronormative Detective Couple in Contemporary Crime Fiction
(MALCAH EFFRON)      157
Detective Fiction and Serial Protagonists: An Interview with Ian Rankin
(SIÂN HARRIS and MALCAH EFFRON)      173

About the Contributors      185
Index      187