Detective Fiction Research Articles

‘Tale Engineering’: Agatha Christie and the Aftermath of the Second World War

The ‘golden age’ of clue-puzzle detective fiction is usually considered to end in 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War. Yet Agatha Christie, the most high-profile and successful exponent of the form, continued to produce bestselling novels until her death in 1976. This essay examines three novels from the immediate postwar period to consider how she adapted her writing to negotiate a changing world and evolving fashions in genre fiction. Engaging with grief, demobilisation, gender, citizenship and the new fears of the atomic age, Christie proves unexpectedly attentive to the anxieties of a new modernity.

The Mysteries of Food: Reading Select Detective Fiction by Kalpana Swaminathan and Madhumita Bhattacharyya

Food studies, a new addition to the family of humanities, has experienced a rapid rise in the last twenty years and a number of scholars have devoted their time and energy in studying food culture as well as the patterns of eating (Albala, 2013). Food writing has slowly spread its branches into all literary genres including into crime fiction. In more recent crime mysteries, the main plot is supplemented by authentic recipes and descriptions of food and cooking and “gumshoes not only track killers” but also “grill sherry-flavoured tuna” or “bake” chocolate cookies (Carvajal, 1997). The sub-genre of crime fiction that brings together food and crime, has been termed as ‘culinary mystery’ and with the more recent academic interest in food in literature, it has received the critical attention it deserves. The present paper will analyze the role of food in the Reema Ray mysteries of Madhumita Bhattacharyya, The Masala Murder (2012) and Dead in a Mumbai Minute (2014) and the Lalli mysteries of Kalpana Swaminathan, The Secret Gardener (2013) and Page 3 Murders (2006). While for Lalli and her niece Sita, food becomes a luxury, an indulgenceafter a hard day’s grim investigative work; for Reema, baking is her sleuthing tool and stands for her intelligence and autonomy. This paper will thus argue how these novels, with female sleuths who use food/cooking as tools of detection, pose a challenge to the patriarchal roles assigned to women as caregivers and providers of nutrition, and attempt to show how “food mysteries are ultimately about female independence and sustaining the self” (Kalikoff, 2006, p. 75). In doing this, it will alsofocus on how women bridge the gap between the public and private spheres.

Policing Immigration: A Study of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander

The present paper looks at the representation of inter-national mobility and immigrants in select works from Swedish author Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series. Mankell’s works are set in Sweden, a country where despite exceptionally inclusive foreign policies lies fault lines within its very social exceptionalism. This challenges the complete denouement that is conventionally observed in the genre of detective fiction. Sweden’s geographical proximity with the Baltic countries makes its national boundaries porous, which enables the covert extremist factions to surface and function globally. Illegal human trafficking, followed by the absence of any restriction in compliance with the social welfare state allows one to blend in better, despite the rising anti-immigrant sentiments across the nation in the more recent years. This paper studies the underpinnings of geographical features in the constant run and chase, and how these boundaries are breached by the severity, rigidity, and interdependency of these morally fractured underground networks. Mankell’s Faceless Killers (1991) reveals nascent xenophobia provoked by the neo-Nazi remnants, which is supplemented by local projection of immigrants. These boundaries are further abused in The White Lioness (1993) which has Russian and African fugitives operating deeper networks of extremist groups that manifest an inexistent national security. The paper will reflect on the idea of an immigrant figure as potentially a victim, as a criminal. Finally, an engagement with the physical aspects of the represented urban spaces will facilitate a discussion on the (il)legality of immigration which punctures the welfare state now close to collapse.

ALTERNATING NARRATION AND THE ANTI-DETECTIVE IN I AM GONE BY JEAN ECHENOZ

Le travail cherche à analyser le roman intitulé Je m’en vais dont le héros Félix Ferrer, propriétaire d'une galerie d'art, voyage au pôle Nord et retourne à Paris avec des objets d'art disparus dans le naufrage d'un bateau, mais ces articles précieux sont volés mystérieusement. Le narrateur narre le voyage pour trouver ces objets, les processus jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient volés et retrouvés en focalisant sur les événements autour du héros. Le protagoniste dépourvu des talents nécessaires pour mener une enquête se figure comme un anti-détective qui obtient ironiquement le résultat d’une manière aléatoire et hasardeuse. En se concentrant sur la structure en alternance et sur le remaniement des conventions romanesques des genres policiers, l’article se donne pour tâche d’étudier la composition divergée de la narration, l’infidélité du narrateur, l’enquête et l’enquêteur du point de vue des théories des mondes possibles, de la narratologie et de la fiction.

Enrique Mendieta and the Ghosts of Leftism Past: The Aftereffects of Mexico’s Dirty War in Élmer Mendoza’s Detective Fiction

The continuance of the revolutionary strife of Mexico’s dirty war into the present day, both as a legacy and in the form of its survivors, resonates strongly in the work of the novelist Élmer Mendoza. Mendoza’s early novel Janis Joplin’s Lover uses its protagonist to portray a 1970s Mexico torn between a revolutionary path of collective social amelioration and the corrupt, mercenary self-interest embodied by Mexican narco-traffickers, with the country pushed toward the latter through the repression of student activists by the Mexican state. Mendoza’s five subsequent novels that center on the exploits of detective Lefty Mendieta focus on the fallout from this period of repression, using the figure of Lefty’s brother Enrique, a former leftist guerrilla, to represent a lost (but not totally lost) egalitarian and socially just alternative to the neoliberal political economy that has ravaged the living conditions of most Mexicans for almost four decades. La continuada lucha revolucionaria en el marco de la guerra sucia que ha caracterizado a México hasta la hoy en día, tanto como legado a la vez que en la presencia de sus sobrevivientes, resuena poderosamente en la obra del novelista Élmer Mendoza. La primera novela de Mendoza, Janis Joplin’s Lover, utiliza a su protagonista para retratar a México en la década de 1970, dividido entre un camino revolucionario de mejora social colectiva y el corrupto y mercenario interés propio encarnado por los narcotraficantes mexicanos; el país se ve empujado en esta última dirección a través de la represión de los activistas estudiantiles por parte del Estado. Las cinco novelas posteriores de Mendoza, centradas en las hazañas del detective Lefty Mendieta, se centran en las consecuencias de este período de represión y emplean la figura de Enrique, el hermano de Lefty, un ex guerrillero izquierdista, para representar la pérdida (si bien no total) de una alternativa igualitaria y socialmente justa en oposición a la economía política neoliberal que mermado las condiciones de vida de la mayoría de los mexicanos durante casi cuatro décadas.

The Give and Take: Feminist Redefinition of Detective Fiction in Maisie Dobbs and Death at La Fenice

Jacqueline Winspear and Donna Leon have written two very different, but both feminist, detective novels in Maisie Dobbs (2003) and Death at La Fenice (1992). The novels take place in London and Ven...

Revaluation of Cheng Xiaoqing’s Detective Fictions

Cheng Xiaoqing is a great writer of modern Chinese detective fictions, with his unique creative vision and artistic technique, he pioneered the creation paradigm of modern Chinese detective fictions and broadened the theoretical construction on it. His series of detective fictions “Hawthorne detective case” were popular, elegant and novel, integrated with classical and modern style characteristics, full of scientific spirits and progressive thoughts, which could not only arouse happy feelings of readers, but also realize the literary utility of enlightening ignorant and awakening the new people, showing unique enlightenment and modernity characteristics. His brilliance raised his detective fictions above the other fictions of the same era. Moreover, Cheng Xiaoqing’ writing process showed the struggle, innovation and persistence of modern Chinese writers in the floating times. As a result, Cheng Xiaoqing should have a place in the history of modern Chinese literature.

Detective Facts|Detective Fiction: Listing the Tools of the Trade

Dashiell Hammett is often regarded as the founding father of the American school of hard-boiled detective fiction, which features tough male detective figures, organized crime, and treacherous wome...

Vagueness and Withholding Information in Christie’s (1926) Detective Fiction The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Pragma-Stylistic Study

This study is intended to examine the deceptive strategies utilized in the well-renown Agatha Christie’s (1926/2002) detective fiction The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to fill a gap in the literature by conducting a pragma-stylistic analysis of the novel. To do so, the researchers have set two objectives which are phrased as follows: firstly, examining the pragma-stylistic choices that are used to surface the deceptive strategies on the character-character level in the pre-denouement stage and secondly, investigating the pragma-stylistic choices that are used to surface the deceptive strategies on the narrator-reader level in the pre-denouement stage. The stylistic idiosyncrasies of Christie’s Dr. Sheppard are carried out through an eclectic pragma-stylistic approach to expose his deceptive strategies for the fulfillment of his selfish ends. Therefore, the study at issue follows an eclectic conceptual framework which comprises Merzah and Abbas’s deceptive principle (2020) and Chen’s (2001) self-politeness, along with the stylistic effects achieved via the manipulation of such linguistic tools, to explore the two levels of discourse, namely, character-character level and narrator-reader level proposed by Black (2006). The qualitative analysis of the novel has exhibited that Dr. Sheppard is an expert deceiver who principally relies on indirect strategies, as he is cognizant of the power of what is insinuated but left unsaid.

Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal

Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal

文體、舞宮、身體：論程小青《霍桑探案集》中的舞影謎境

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 程小青（1893—1976）被認爲是民初最具代表性的中國偵探小說作家，中國大陸的評論者立足於民族主義，對程氏的創作讚揚肯定，爲當前相關研究最主要的觀點。其小說文本具有因應文類的特質，改變了中國固有文體的敘事方式。而程氏筆下的洋場風情，與同時期關注都市體驗的中國新感覺派小說十分不同。“舞廳”是體現三〇年代上海現代性的重要物質空間，也是新感覺派作家穆時英小說中的核心場景；舞廳裏妖嬈嫵媚的舞女在諸多海派作家筆下，幾乎是上海的代名詞。本文以程氏代表作《霍桑探案集》中的《舞宮魔影》、《舞后的歸宿》爲主要討論文本，分析其作品如何形塑舞廳與舞女、觀看舞女的身體與屍體、映射上海的城市圖景與犯罪問題，從而開創迥異於域外偵探小說的風格特色，並探討其背後所隱含社會文化的實質意義。
 Cheng Xiaoqing (1893-1976) was known as the most representative local writer of detective fiction in Early Republican China, and his works are well recognized by Chinese critics. The commendation for Cheng’s works was based on a nationalist perspective, an approach that has been further developed into a major viewpoint for related research. However, this paper takes a different approach to Cheng’s works and aims to explore how they transformed the traditional Chinese narrative style according to the traits of genre. Moreover, from the perspective of Shanghai urban space, it contrasts Cheng’s works on the urban experience with those by Chinese Neo-Sensationalist writers to find out the different presentations of life in the Concession Zone. “Ballroom” is a significant material space that demonstrates the modernity of Shanghai in the 1930s and was the core scene of most novels by Mu Shiying (1912-1940), a Neo-Sensationalist writer. In the writings of most Shanghai style novelists, enchanting dancers at ballrooms may be considered synonymous with Shanghai. This paper discusses Cheng’s masterpieces “Evil shadows at the ballroom” and “Permanent home of the dancing queen” of the Huo Sang detective series to explore how Cheng portrayed ballrooms and dancers; how readers would interpret the living and dead bodies of the dancers; and what scenes of Shanghai city and its crime issues were reflected. It also discusses the substantial social and cultural meanings in his works. Through these means, Cheng founded a literary style that differed from Western detective fiction.

Detective Fiction, Nostalgia and Rian Johnson'sKnives Out: Making the Golden Age Great Again

The Golden Age is back with a vengeance: reprints, re-boots, and adaptations of interwar detective fiction and its off-shoots have proliferated in the twenty-first century, as have works more loosely, but nonetheless substantially, inspired by the clue-puzzle format developed and perfected by authors like Agatha Christie. This resurgence of the ‘whodunnit’ mystery is something of mystery itself, as the centre of gravity of crime writing has long shifted away from this ostensibly dated and aesthetically limited form. This paper explores this unexpected development, looking in particular at the role of nostalgia in relation to new Golden Age mysteries. While nostalgia is frequently, and quite justly, viewed in negative terms as a personally and politically regressive phenomenon, in some cases, as in Rian Johnson’s murder mystery Knives Out (2019), examined here, it can be used not simply as a dubious marketing or aesthetic strategy, but as part of a broader social critique in which one form of nostalgia is used to critique another.

『李公案奇聞』 初探

『Li Gong’an qiwen』 is a Gong’an fiction published in The 28th year of Guangxu(1902), the end of Qing Dynasty. This novel has been mentioned several times in Chinese literature history, but full scaled study has not been conducted yet. Therefore, this study conducts the basic exploration work on 『Li Gong’an qiwen』, a Gong’an fiction in the end of Qing Dynasty. The overview of event, characteristics and narrative characteristics along with overall bibliography information, such as authors and editions are reviewed. The most important achievement of this work depends on the narrative technique. Since western detective fictions were translated and published in the end of Ching Dynasty, traditional Gong’an fiction authors gradually had felt a sense of crisis. 『Li Gong’an qiwen』 is evaluated to be a work that already accepted the techniques of the then-popular “detective fiction”. Of course, the author may not have attempted to depart from tradition based in terms of enlightenment. It is believed that the struggle of the writer who could not simply resist the tide of the times has brought this result.

The Many Pasts of Detective Fiction

Building on Tzvetan Todorov's observation that the detective novel ‘contains not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation’, this essay argues that detective novels display a remarkably wide range of attitudes toward the several pasts they represent: the pasts of the crime, the community, the criminal, the detective, and public history. It traces a series of defining shifts in these attitudes through the evolution of five distinct subgenres of detective fiction: exploits of a Great Detective like Sherlock Holmes, Golden Age whodunits that pose as intellectual puzzles to be solved, hardboiled stories that invoke a distant past that the present both breaks with and echoes, police procedurals that unfold in an indefinitely extended present, and historical mysteries that nostalgically fetishize the past. It concludes with a brief consideration of genre readers’ own ambivalent phenomenological investment in the past, present, and future each detective story projects.

Father Brown, Labor Priest: G. K. Chesterton and the Class Politics of Golden Age Detective Fiction

Father Brown, Labor Priest: G. K. Chesterton and the Class Politics of Golden Age Detective Fiction

Alterethnography: Reading and writing otherness in organizations

Inspired by the alternative ethnographic tradition, the aim of this article is to contribute with an approach to organizational ethnography informed by the radical imperative to encounter and understand the Other in his/her complex otherness and difference. The approach is conceptualized in terms of alterethnography and it is outlined as a way of doing research/writing for change at odds with dominant patriarchal scientific writing orders. Illustrated by a study of creativity, written in the form of an academic postmodern detective novel fiction, alterethnography is envisioned as uncontained and disruptive, unpatriarchal and disconformist: it is an approach that transgresses the boundaries of the ego, striving to embrace otherness as togetherness.

‘Complete rubbish but a real page-turner’ Chukovsky and detective stories

K. Chukovsky was one of Russia’s first scholars of detective fiction. Yet his literary criticism on this particular topic has never been researched. Nor has it come to light that his attitude to the genre was ambivalent. On the one hand, he knew it very well, was a regular reader of detective stories and made a number of valuable observations about the works of Conan Doyle (whose writing he contrasted with the cheap sensationalist books about Nat Pinkerton, stressing the quality of logic in Conan Doyle’s stories) and Wilkie Collins. On the other hand, he often made very critical and ironic remarks about the genre, confessing that he failed to comprehend the reason for its popularity. The article suggests the grounds for Chukovsky’s attitude: he argued that literature was linked to ‘the most important personal experience’ (in the words of the writer N. Oleynikov), with entertaining literature automatically dismissed as an outsider to real art.

A detective in a world of illusions: Stereotypes and the narrative voice in Murder is Easy by Agatha Christi

Already the sensational novel writers of the second half of the nineteenth century renounced the stereotypical image of peaceful and idyllic provincial life, dominating in English culture at the time. This stereotype is recalled in a number of Agatha Christie’s novels, where the seemingly quiet countryside occurs to be a scene of the crime. The object of analysis in the paper is Murder is Easy (1938), one of Christie’s novels where the action of is set in the country. The narration here is carried almost exclusively from the protagonist’s point of view, who imposes various stereotypes — literary and cultural — on the observed reality (among others that of the peaceful countryside, but also its more sinister counterpart — that of country witches). The stereotypes and the clash with reality re-sult in a more complex vision of the world than that which is proposed in classical detective fiction where the crime is merely an intellectual problem.

“Bluebeard” versus black British women’s writing

AbstractHelen Oyeyemi’s 2011novelMr. Foxartfully remasters the “Bluebeard” fairytale and its many variants and rewritings, such asJane EyreandRebecca. It is also the first novel in which Oyeyemi does not overtly address blackness or racial identity. However, the present article argues thatMr. Foxis concerned with the status of all women writers, including women writers of colour. WithMr. Fox, Oyeyemi echoes the assertiveness and inquisitiveness of Bluebeard’s last wife, whose disobedient questioning of Bluebeard’s canonical authority leads her to discover, denounce, and warn other women about his murderous nature. A tale of the deception and manipulation inherent in storytelling,Mr. Foxallows for its narrative foul play to be exposed on the condition that its literary victims turn into detective-readers and decipher the hidden clues left behind by the novel’s criminal-authors. This article puts the love triangle between author St. John Fox, muse Mary, and wife Daphne under investigation by associating reading and writing motifs with detective fiction. Oyeyemi’sménage à troiscan thus be exposed as an anthropomorphic metaphor for the power struggle between the patriarchal literary canon, established feminist literature, and up-and-coming (black British) women writers, incarnated respectively by Mr. Fox, Mary Foxe, and Daphne Fox.

Back to bodies: female detectives and bodily tools and tells in Victorian detective fiction

Back to bodies: female detectives and bodily tools and tells in Victorian detective fiction