Detective Story Research Articles

De l’affaire Dreyfus à l’affaire Albertine. Sociopoétique du complot dans À la recherche du temps perdu

French Belle Époque is characterized by a spy mania. During this time, fights against traitors are multiplying. In this article, we would like to show how this social discourse gets into Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu and fuels at the same time an imagination and a poetics of the conspiracy. First, this imagination belongs to armchair conspiracists. Between Dreyfus affair and Eulenburg affair they have indeed a lot to do. This imagination belongs then to the narrator, who is convinced that he is at the heart of a conspiracy, which turns the novel into a paranoid detective story. But he is perhaps the victim of a trick played on him by his imagination. Affected in turn by suspicion, the reader must also become a detective, in search of the traces that form the frame of the conspiracy narrative. More generally, the analysis of the Proustian imagination of conspiracy brings to light a number of interactions concerning a society that also seems to have entered the age of suspicion, fragmented into “little clans” that operate on the model of secret societies.

Сюжетные коллизии детективного романа Ахмета Умита «Народ» (2006)

This article is devoted to the structural and substantive analysis of one of the most famous detective novels by the popular Turkish writer Ahmet Umit "The People" (2006), which stands somewhat apart in the mainstream of his work. The article shows that, unlike other detective stories by the author, the action immediately begins with a crime, and as the plot develops, more and more murders enter the narrative orbit. In parallel with the detective line, the novel develops the idea of multiculturalism in Turkey, in which different peoples and religions have long lived in peace and harmony (Christians, Muslims, Jews). Hence the title of the novel, which is not about some specific people, but about peoples historically coexisting within the framework of a single Turkish state. The purpose of the study is to substantiate that this novel fits into the writer's detective paradigm from the point of view of poetological features. The article analyzes the plot and compositional features of the novel with an emphasis on plot collisions and the image system. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the novel in question "Umita" for the first time becomes an object of analytical study in the domestic Turkological literary criticism. For the first time, the problems of the novel are considered through the prism of its structural and meaningful content. For the first time, it is proved that the artistic structure of the novel is somewhat unusually constructed for the author's detective paradigm. As a result, it is proved that the poetics and plot of the novel correlate with the historical detective genre developed by A. Umit in its most diverse variants.

Integrating sound effects and background music in Robotic storytelling – A series of online studies across different story genres

Social robots as storytellers combine advantages of human storytellers – such as embodiment, gestures, and gaze – and audio books – large repertoire of voices, sound effects, and background music. However, research on adding non-speech sounds to robotic storytelling is yet in its infancy. The current series of four online studies investigates the influence of sound effects and background music in robotic storytelling on recipients’ storytelling experience and enjoyment, robot perception, and emotion induction across different story genres, i.e. horror, detective, romantic and humorous stories. Results indicate increased enjoyment for romantic stories and a trend for decreased fatigue for all genres when adding sound effects and background music to the robotic storytelling. Of the four genres examined, horror stories seem to benefit the most from the addition of non-speech sounds. Future research should provide guidelines for the selection of music and sound effects to improve the realization of non-speech sound-accompanied robotic storytelling. In conclusion, our ongoing research suggests that the integration of sound effects and background music holds promise for enhancing robotic storytelling, and our genre comparison provides first guidance of when to use them.

The Secret Memory. How The Goncourt 2021, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Rewrites the Story of the “Black Rimbaud”

The Secret Memory. How the Goncourt 2021, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Rewrites the Story of the “Black Rimbaud”. In a mixture of “savage detective story” à la Bolaño, of diary, journalism, interviews and discussions on “plagiarism,” the revolutionary book of Mohamed Mbougar Sarr rewrites the history of Western relations to Africa, to its cultures and its storytelling, but also to different forms of marginality, since its main character, Elimane Madag, is also travelling to South America, being part of its most interesting intellectual circles – through, for instance, Sábato, Gombrowicz, Silvina and Victoria Ocampo. Through voices of Senegalese, Haitian, Argentinian writers and poets, through an apocryphal rewriting of the literary history of the twentieth century, through subverting the theory of plagiarism (since African myths are reinterpreted and melted in the Western culture, similar to African artefacts after the expedition Dakar-Djibouti), as well as through detective journalism (since many characters are interrogating the relation facts-fiction), the marginal and the minor are presented as an alternative, disruptive literary history of the twentieth and of the beginning of the twenty-first century. Keywords: marginality, minor, African myths, Western culture, plagiarism

A detective story of intermittent fasting effect on immunity.

Intermittent fasting (IF) refers to periodic fasting routines, that caloric intake is minimized not by meal portion size reduction but by intermittently eliminating ingestion of one or several consecutive meals. IF can instigate comprehensive and multifaceted alterations in energy metabolism, these metabolic channels may aboundingly function as primordial mechanisms that interface with the immune system, instigating intricate immune transformations. This review delivers a comprehensive understanding of IF, paying particular attention to its influence on the immune system, thus seeking to bridge these two research domains. We explore how IF effects lipid metabolism, hormonal levels, circadian rhythm, autophagy, oxidative stress, gut microbiota, and intestinal barrier integrity, and conjecture about the mechanisms orchestrating the intersect between these factors and the immune system. Moreover, the review includes research findings on the implications of IF on the immune system and patients burdened with autoimmune diseases.

The “Consulting Detective” Nithan Thong-in by King Vajiravudh

This short study explores detective stories by Crown Prince Vajiravudh, later King Rama VI, in early 20th-century Siam. Compiled in Nithan Thong-in, these tales provide insights into Siamese society, culture, and history. Despite multiple reprints, an English translation is currently unavailable. This notice introduces the cultural richness of Mr Thong-in’s adventures, along with brief summaries of each story.

On the spread and evolution of pudding

A better author could probably write a detective story about the word pudding. The cultural and linguistic complex associated with this word spans in its full extent a thousand years and six continents. This paper concerns itself only with its semantic evolution in English, and its spread to several of the geographically closest languages: German, French, and Italian, each of which has a different relationship with both the word and the dish. The intention is not to explain everything, it is too early for that, but rather to sketch the overall picture and thus to highlight those areas which require further investigation.

Amaia Salazar

Amaia Salazar is the protagonist of Dolores Redondo’s Baztán trilogy: El guardián invisible, 2012 (The Invisible Guardian), Legado en los huesos, 2013 (The Legacy of the Bones), Ofrenda a la tormenta, 2014 (Offering to the Storm. The novels are hybrid texts that weave in the detective story elements of Basque mythology, fairy tale, and the noir. It is in the character of the detective Amaia Salazar that all these elements converge. Dolores Redondo successfully created a character of a female detective who is not only bright, rational professional investigator relying on the most recent advance in forensic science but also, she is the only one who has access to the mythological sphere. Amaia not only meets the mythological beings basajaun, Mari, and lamias but she interacts with them and receives help from them. The following paper examines the elements that contribute to the hybridity of the novels.

Arctic cinema: War films, detective stories and comedies

This third article examines such genres of cinema as war films, detectives and comedies the latest in the line of Arctic films. Thereby we draw a line under Arctic films, that have not received due attention from film critics and the public until now. The need to return to the past to take a fresh look at the solar, including its storyboard, taking into account the deep rethinking of the war and the direct depiction of what was experienced, to show a truthful and accurate image of the war on the example of the fate of one or many of its participants. Cinematographers constantly return to the theme of the war, its individual episodes, the people who took part in it, who noted their heroism in it, its new reading caused by changing socio-political views and access to previously censored circumstances, what is now called «trench truth».«Another war» in pleacetime was reflected in the Arctic detectives. The enemy appears in them as criminal elements, sometimes was sophisticated and insidious plans, which in the conditions of the north require a special approach to solve then. Comedies have no geographical boundaries. Humor and laughter in the snow and ice is special, very often associated with the behavior of animals, especially dogs.

مظاهر البوليسي في رواية "الاختفاء الغامض" للدكتور نبيل فاروق :دراسة نقدية

This research paper aims to study “Aspects of Detective” in famous Egyptian writer Dr. Nabil Farouk’s novel: “The Mysterious Disappearance”. The detective novel is of the third rank in the Arab world because its writers were preoccupied with the issues and concerns of the sixties and seventies and their relationship to historical morality, and the fact that this art of the novel requires access to legal information from the doors open to detective cases. The detective is a popular subgenre of the novel. The investigation of any crime is called detective. Detective literature is directly related to social reforms. The elements of imagination are evident in “The Mysterious Disappearance” in the hero character who has superior abilities. The author relied on imagination framed by issues of investigation, crimes, and solving mysteries based on major and minor plots and plots that are the engines of imagination. This paper consists of a preface, two chapters and a conclusion. In the 1st chapter gives brief introduction of Dr. Nabil Farouk. The 2nd chapter explains the aspects of the detective story in the novel “The Mysterious Disappearance”.

Practices of Ukrainian high school students in reading fiction in the society of electronic mass media

The article reveals the peculiarities of reading practices of Ukrainian high school students in comparison with the practices of using visual electronic media, and also finds out whether there is a correspondence between the genre preferences of high school students and the actual genre content of the school curriculum in Ukrainian and foreign literature. It is noted that, in Western sociology, considerable attention is paid to the study of the process of formation of reading skills in pre-school and school-age children, which significantly affects their overall academic performance. The empirical part of the article is based on the results of a study conducted in September-October 2023 using the method of in-depth semi-structured interviews with ten Ukrainian high school students. It is emphasized that the participants of the study ranked social media or movies in the first place in the rating of genres, while literature was ranked second or third, and video games were more often ranked fourth. It is noted that the attitude of high school students towards literature changes in adolescence; they begin to value reading practices that are not controlled from the outside, but chosen independently for self-improvement. It is emphasized that the favorite literary genres of Ukrainian high school students are science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, detective stories, and romance novels. The results of the content analysis of school textbooks of Ukrainian and foreign literature for 10th and 11th grades revealed the absence of literary works of the genres preferred by high school students. It is concluded that it is necessary to reform school programs of Ukrainian and foreign literature in order to make them more consistent with the literary genre preferences of Ukrainian high school students. The genre attractiveness of the school literature curriculum can become a powerful “pull” factor for students compared to the “push” influence of social networks and electronic media.

Арбитражный скандал, интрига и расследование: комментарий к решению Высокого суда Англии и Уэльса по делу P&I Developments Limited vs Republic of Nigeria

The English court’s decision, which was published last year on 23 October, is described not merely as precedential but as historic in its impact. This decision is impactful not merely because it released the Nigerian state (the respondent in the arbitral award that was set aside by the English court) from the burden of paying a lion’s share of its forex reserves to a little known offshore entity, but also because this is perhaps the first case where suspicions about abusive procedural tactics and corruption during the arbitral proceedings became a self-sufficient ground to set aside a similar international arbitral award. This article uses the almost detective story that unfolded in this case as an opportunity to address broader issues of public policy, legal ethics and corruption in major international cases, to challenge the traditional understanding of adversarial proceedings and to address other problems that directly implicate the future of arbitration as a means of resolving investment disputes. These issues are also quite relevant for Russia considering the impending legal outcome in the long-running Yukos arbitration.

YEVHENIIA KONONENKO’S PROSE: TOPICS, IDEAS, GENRES, AND STYLE

This paper falls under the category of literary portraits and explores the evolution of Kononenko as a writer and intellectual. She embarked on her creative journey with translation and poetry but later focused primarily on prose. The paper underscores Kononenko’s enduring commitment to liberal perspectives, her view of culture as both a primary social catalyst and a societal objective. Kononenko can boast the broadest spectrum of genres in Ukrainian literature, encompassing short stories, narratives, novels, miniatures, and essays. She often employs genre and generic syncretism, which is most evident in her integration of poetry into prose, where she incorporates sonnets and elegies within short prose collections. Furthermore, her works blend genres by combining elements of detective stories with social novels, feminist narratives, and intellectual explorations. The writer boldly experiments with genres to enhance the expressiveness of her writing and engage a wider readership with complex, intellectually profound works. Kononenko’s prose might be classified as intellectual literature. The themes and ideas explored by the author indicate an existentialist orientation in her work. Kononenko herself interprets all her plots and ‘small tragedies’ as reflections of the human experience. The paper highlights the stylistic features of Kononenko’s texts, emphasizing realism, psychologism, and a dialogic nature, along with the significant role of artistic detail, lyrical qualities, trusting intonation, and irony. As for the sources of the author’s inspiration, her works seem to align with Mykola Riabchuk’s prose standing out for its trustworthy tone and candid conversation with the reader. It is worth to emphasize that the writer once made a compelling choice to depart from her first tongue, Russian, in favor of the Ukrainian cultural minority of the late Ukrainian SSR and early Ukrainian state, thereby challenging the traditional orientation of Russian-speaking Ukrainians toward ‘high’ Russian culture.

Character in the Adapted Series “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries”: Playing with Tradition

The Australian TV-series “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” follows a trend that has emerged in mystery film genre over the last few decades. On the one hand, it is an old story about a private detective; on the other – a new narrative, that fascinates the viewer with an extraordinary setting. This effect is provided by the intertextual links that the series forms with the texts of its surroundings. This article examines how various intertextual elements form the image of the “Roaring Twenties”, linking the cinema text with the ‘classic detective’, while at the same time referring to modern cinema. These challenges are reconciled through the image of the main character. The ironic play with the familiar texts produces a light atmosphere of the series, and the references to the fashion and art of the 1920s construct the illusion of the “reality” of Miss Fisher, who finds her own place in the canon owing to the connections with the world of a detective story

Flipping the Colonialist Paradigm: Grigorii Chkhartishvili’s Akunin

AbstractThis essay examines how the Erast Fandorin series by Boris Akunin (Grigorii Chkhartishvili) employs, revises, and deconstructs the Orientalist paradigm through the portrayal of Masa, the detective’s Japanese sidekick. At first glance, Masa appears to embody Orientalist clichés through allusions to a familiar ethnic stereotype. But the Fandorin series does more than activate the preconceived role of a Russian hero’s Asian valet: in reformulating the detective story narrative, Akunin introduces both Orientalist and Occidentalist perspectives and ultimately reconfigures the master‐servant structure as something similar to a Confucian, father‐son relationship. Despite the stereotypical ethnic image reproduced in the series, Masa’s representation is divorced from the colonizing agenda that is fundamental to Orientalist discourse. After appearing at first as a Colonialist sign, Masa’s depiction turns out to be a pastiche without the implied referent whose trajectory in the cycle traces choices made by Akunin (and ultimately Chkhartishvili). While the author first and foremost pursues entertainment, as the series progresses, he exhibits signs of postcolonial political awareness by flipping and deconstructing the quasi‐Orientalist mode. As a result, the initial division between the implicit perspectives of the fictional and nonfictional authors turns into an alignment of the two.

Reconsidering the “Google effect”: Reduced productivity in externalized information recognition is expedient

The decrease in an ability to independently recall information when it is externalized (e. g., stored on digital devices), also known as the “Google effect”, has become a subject of empirical investigation and a growing concern regarding the Internet’s negative impact on cognition. Several studies have questioned the reproducibility of this effect; however, recent work has replicated it under conditions where participants were confident in the reliability of subsequent access to the information, or in other words, in their ability to use the information in future activities. The findings of this study suggest that the mnemonic “Google effect” may be expedient, meaning that the reduction in recall of information stored on an external source does not occur “automatically”, as previously thought, but in accordance with an individual’s current purposeful and holistic activity. To test this hypothesis, we conducted an empirical study (N = 69, Me = 20 years) that simulated the work of detective, who assisted the police in investigating crimes. Initially, participants were presented with graphic stimuli (“clues”), with instructions based on a narrative explaining what action to take with each (delete, save, scroll through) and how much the material would be needed later (remember the clue, do not remember, or no clear objective). One week later, there was a memory test that involved recognizing and selecting stimuli from the first part, as part of the investigative activity in a detective story. Significantly, clues that needed to be remembered and deleted were recognized more often compared to those that needed to be remembered and saved or skipped. Meanwhile, clues that did not need to be remembered were recognized at the same level regardless of the action taken, significantly better than guess level. Thus, the mnemonic “Google effect” was reproduced, but only under conditions where the externalization of information was purposeful.

A Girardian Genre: The Scapegoat Mechanism in Detective Fiction

In this essay I offer an alternative to the rationalist-scientific distillation of detective fiction by using René Girard’s ideas on the scapegoat mechanism. I explain how the genre is teleologically oriented towards the identification and expulsion of the scapegoat, whom the community believes to be truly guilty and whose removal is regarded as necessary to the restoration of communal peace. The detective here functions as a modern high priest who uses reason and science not as an end in itself but as a means to select a fitting scapegoat, one whose guilt is empirically demonstrable. Next, I use Girard’s remarks on society’s growing sensitivity to various forms of victimization to explain detective fiction’s movement towards more liberal views on crime. The genre has often been criticized for its conservative assumption that crime is rooted in personal moral agency; now, there is a preponderance of detective stories that portray crime as a necessary reaction to unjust social systems, or as mitigated by a psychological condition. In illustrating this section, I present a close reading of F. H. Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles, a Philippine detective novel that features a serial killer who was also a victim of social injustice. In conclusion, I look at how the readers of the genre vicariously enact the scapegoat mechanism. I argue that while it is commendable for society to move towards a more nuanced and compassionate view of criminality, given the ever-present urge to engage in scapegoating in the real world, it is crucial to retain a means by which we could sublimate this urge: through ritual that is the reading of detective fiction.

ÇÖZÜMLENMEMİŞ GİZEMLER: THOMAS PYNCHON'UN THE CRYING OF LOT 49 VE INHERENT VICE ROMANLARINDA DEDEKTİF KURGU VE PARODİ

Thomas Pynchon’s novels are noted for their postmodernist characteristics. Some of his novels also include certain features of detective fiction. In The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the focus of Oedipa –a housewife whose name alludes to Oedipus of Sophocles— shifts to unravelling the mystery of a shadowy underground postal system, and she turns out to be an amateur ‘detective’. The challenge is that the ‘clues’ do not clarify the case, which may or may not be real. A similar pattern is available in Inherent Vice (2009), in which a professional, sandal-wearing, “pothead” detective, Larry “Doc” Sportello, is at work in 1970s California. Inherent Vice does not provide a clear, definitive resolution to the mysteries. Instead, the novel maintains ambiguity and open-endedness, allowing readers to reflect on the intricacies of the narrative and the nature of the quest itself. Thomas Pynchon plays with the detective genre by parodying generic conventions in both works. A parodic work, characterized by its dialogical nature, comically criticizes its target and simultaneously crystallizes its conventions. While utilizing recognizable tropes and characteristics of archetypal private investigators, Pynchon employs unconventional methods for solving the crime, ironic inversions, and absurdities to subvert the stereotypical portrayal of a detective. In this respect, Pynchon, with his examples of postmodern/ metaphysical detective stories, both nurtures and subverts the detective genre. In this paper, The Crying of Lot 49 and Inherent Vice are examined regarding how Pynchon both validates and questions the established norms of the traditional detective genre by using parody.

Traditions of Chinese classical literature and Western literature in Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine”

The article is devoted to the problem of interaction between the genres of Eastern and Western literature, which is an important part of modern literary criticism. In this paper, the interaction of genres is considered on the basis of Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine” (1992), translated into Russian in 2012 by I. Egorov. The work of the modern Chinese writer is studied in the aspect of “hallucinatory realism”, for its development the author was awarded the Nobel Prize (2012). The article studies the influence of classical Chinese literature genres and philosophy and Western literature on modern Chinese literature, based on the novel “The Republic of Wine” by Mo Yan. The novel of the Chinese writer is analyzed in the context of the world literary process. The article discusses the transformation of motifs and characters of Chinese classical literature in the novel by a modern Chinese author. The main characters of the novel are studied in relation to the plot-forming function they perform, the main of them is the detective one. The plot of the detective story is considered in relation to the satirical tradition. The article presents Mo Yan’s view of the traditions, mentality and lifestyle of the Chinese people. The purpose of the work is to determine the main aspects of the influence of Chinese and Western literature on the work of Mo Yan “The Republic of Wine”. As a result of the study, we describe the plot motifs and images of classical Chinese and Western novels, the ideological principles of Chinese philosophy, which are embodied in Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine”.

Criminal Prosecution of Political Leaders: Narrative Analysis of Modern Power Elite Crimes

Political stories about deceit, terror and contract killings have a significant impact on the legal and political culture of all the nations. Crime narratives have the potential to fundamentally change international relations and national politics. From the description of the policy of violence pursued by Qin Shi Huang in ancient China to the criminal legends about Rodrigo Borgia in Rome, from the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 to the death of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 in Chile, we observe an aura of mystery around the motives of political crime and note the constant drama of the power struggle. Digital transformation has changed the format of criminal political stories by creating multimedia narratives around political leaders. It turned a traditional political detective story into a postmodern tragicomedy. The influence of end-to-end digital technologies on the modus operandi of terrorists, corrupt officials and political adventurers is due to the new opportunities that virtual reality provides for creating an image of the enemy in the political consciousness of the electorate. Stories about crimes possibly committed by the leaders of the party in power, and narratives about the betrayal of national interests by the opposition compete for the attention of the audience, whose worldview is becoming increasingly disenchanted in the context of a correspondence dialogue between Niccolo Machiavelli and Max Weber on the methods of legitimizing domination. Power elite’s crimes studied by narrative research methods reveal special patterns of actions of the party in power against the key opposition figures and vice versa, driven by their desire to destroy each other’s reputation. The analysis of political crime narratives confirms the hypothesis that the digital transformation of politics encourages the use of criminal narratives instead of physical violence in an attempt to defame and eliminate political leaders.