Abstract
It is very much in style these days in France to write American-style detective novels or thrillers. However, what does this rather vague terminology really refer to? Are we dealing with simple suspense and horror stories which take place in the United States, with situations and scenes echoing those of popular TV series? Or are these hybrid novels, combining highly complex detective plots and thorough sociological investigations about contemporary America? Taking as examples Joël Dicker’s La Vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert (2012), Carole Allamand’s La Plume de l’ours (2013) and Antoine Bello’s Roman américain (2014), we will examine three rather ambivalent representations of America based each time on a contrast between two generations and two key periods: the 1960s and the 2000s. We will also examine three striking devices of mise en abyme and see how they allow the authors to comment on the detective thriller as a genre while playing on the traditional opposition between high-brow literature and popular literature.
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