Detective Story Research Articles

Historical Detective Story and History as a Detective Story: to the Question of Cross-genre Synthesis

The article presents an analysis of the popular historical / retro detective genre, considered in terms of semantic fields shared with other literary genres, which for their synthesis. In particular, the motive of the activity of the past in the present and the future, present in almost all literary forms, is of a formative significance in the detective story. The plot is built on a retrospective reconstruction of events leading to a particular situation, typically a crime. This motive is crucial for historical and quasi-historical genres such as alternative history and cryptohistory, in which similar “detective” work on the reproduction of real or hypothetical events, their origins and results is carried out by the author himself and to some extent by the recipient. Such artistic research holds a significant place in the “investigation novel” genre, allowing the author to present his/her own scientifically based version of ambiguous historical material.The motive of understanding the true causes and nature of events is also present in the psychological novel, where the focus is shifted from the “external” mystery of the situation to the secrets of the depths of the human psyche. The fundamental principles of the detective genre reach considerable archetypal depth, based on such mythological and philosophical themes as the essence of time and the cause-and-effect relationships of events, the meaning of being and the essence of repentance. All this creates significant opportunities for philosophy, including historiosophical artistic research, allowing a complex synthesis of genres (most often: detective story – history – science fiction and fantasy), with extensive use of the achievements of psychological and social literature. All these forms of the artistic interpretation of the “past-in-the-future” are very relevant to the culture that is seeking new understanding of its own past and the history of international relations. It explains the relative popularity of the historical and retro-detective in contemporary Ukrainian literature.For Ukrainian authors, the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries remains the most attractive period. The strongest points of their novels are a significant amount of historical and local history information, as well as efforts to understand (and rethink) the imperial heritage in its various forms; after all, it is not only about the Russian but also about the Austro-Hungarian empire.

A Comparative Study of Reflection of Societal Trends In 'Hound of Baskervilles' and 'Origin'

The study of literature from many cultures, languages, and historical periods is known as comparative literature. The novels ‘Origin’ by Dan Brown and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle centre on mysteries, have clever protagonists, make use of symbolism, and use evocative locales to create an immersive atmosphere. They also both include intelligent protagonists. The Hound of the Baskervilles is a famous detective story that examines hereditary misfortunes and the authority of perception whereas Origin focuses on the conflict over science and religion in a contemporary setting. The pair of books are compelling reads in their respective categories thanks to their suspenseful investigations and provocative ideas. The researcher has used analogy to compare the two works. An analogous similarity between the two works explores mysteries and investigations and use suspense, symbolism, and smart characters to captivate readers.

Revival and Spiritual Awakening in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'The Black Cat'

Objectives: Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849) is credited with the creation of the detective story. However, his tales have not been extensively researched, especially in areas such as religiosity and spirituality. This paper aims to delve into these deeply-embedded areas and explore the neglected themes within Poe's works. The objective is to uncover the religious experiences that some of Poe's protagonists undergo. Methods: Employing an intrinsic approach, this study demonstrates that the protagonists in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" experience spiritual growth and awakening after losing their proper orientation and going astray. These characters do not appear to be true believers, as they do not believe in the existence of God. However, after facing a crisis resulting from committing a crime, God suddenly becomes apparent to them. Results: Therefore, the present study focuses on analyzing the gothic setting, inner conflict, symbols, and narrative techniques in Poe’s two stories. It aims to highlight the significance of the psychological turmoil experienced by the two protagonists, which ultimately leads to their spiritual awakening. Conclusions: Under the weight of guilt and remorse, the two protagonists begin to perceive existence in a new light, as revealed through their monologues. They express a need for spiritual revival.

LydiaGoehr, Red Sea, Red Square, Red Thread: A Philosophical Detective Story. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 720pp., $45.00 (hbk).

European Journal of PhilosophyEarly View BOOK REVIEW Lydia Goehr, Red Sea, Red Square, Red Thread: A Philosophical Detective Story. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 720pp., $45.00 (hbk). Lydia Moland, Corresponding Author Lydia Moland [email protected] Colby College, Waterville, USA Correspondence Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Lydia Moland, Corresponding Author Lydia Moland [email protected] Colby College, Waterville, USA Correspondence Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 19 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12853Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Poe in Cyberspace: The Pleasure Principle Revisited

Poe in Cyberspace: The Pleasure Principle Revisited

Play the Game by Charlene Allen (review)

Reviewed by: Play the Game by Charlene Allen Wesley Jacques Allen, Charlene Play the Game. Tegen/HarperCollins [304p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780063212794 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780063212817 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 7-12 Seventeen-year-old Brooklynite Victor "VZ" Zemblist has been struggling to mourn his best friend Ed, who was fatally shot by a white man last year; he couldn't bring himself to attend the protests and memorials, and his other relationships, with parents, school, but especially with Jack, another long-time friend, have suffered. When the body of the man responsible for Ed's death is found in the same place Ed was killed, Jack becomes the primary suspect, meaning VZ must both grieve one friend and vindicate another, all while crushing hard on Diamond, who's flirty but taken. For nerdy game designer Ed, VZ is determined to finish and make public his late friend's point-and-click mystery game imbued with Ed's unique (read: corny) [End Page 248] sense of humor and theatrics. For Jack, VZ must gather clues and navigate his complicated relationships as well as an obviously illegitimate police investigation. Despite the contemporary themes of police brutality and racialized violence at the forefront, this is ultimately an old school hard-boiled detective story delivered skillfully in a rich contemporary context by debut author Allen. The multiple story threads inform a sometimes frustratingly paced but immersively realistic whodunit, in which the cynicism of classic noir and pulp stories is replaced with the promising optimism of restorative justice circles and a tough protagonist that's nonetheless willing to take the help that's offered. Teens will find VZ's story a rewarding read with undeniably difficult lessons to teach. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Visual, Auditory, and Verbal Modes of the Metaphor: A Case Study of the Miniseries "Chernobyl"

The article examines the multimodal metaphors which actualise the concept of CHORNOBYL in the five episodes of the miniseries Chernobyl. The procedure of the analysis includes identifyingand selecting the multimodal metaphors following the Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure, construing and describing the structure of key and sub-metaphors with the target domain CHORNOBYL, distinguishing the modes of the domains, interpreting the meanings and attitudes that are mapped onto the target domain. The source domains DETECTIVE STORY, ESPIONAGE,DISEASE, HOSPITAL are cued via the combination of visual, auditory (sonic and musical), and verbal (written and spoken) modes.

Ash the Poet and Ash the Tree: Possession by the Past in A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance

Abstract This article examines five poem extracts written by the fictional Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash in A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance, which, depicting the Paradise gardens in various mythologies across the world, become rewritten tales of the Paracelsian elemental spirits guarding treasure hoarded in nature.These poems, placed at the heads of different chapters, are read as summaries of the detective stories, indicating to the reader the developments in the forthcoming quest plot. Furthermore, they are interpreted as embodying Roland’s search for coherence in the postmodern world, which culminates in his psychological maturation at the end of his quest. Finally, these poems are deciphered as expressive of Ash’s quest for the prelapsarian Eden which he believes inspires generations of poets’ literary imagination. In conclusion, this article addresses three readings of the philosopher’s stone and two characters' visions of the past.

Watching the Detectives: The Reciprocal Gaze inOur Mutual Friend

ABSTRACTDickens scholars have often noted the failure of Our Mutual Friend as a detective story. In this article, the author argues that Dickens draws from the parable tradition to reimagine the detective genre. Dickens delineates a parabolic detective story that foregrounds, rather than a story of surveillance supporting a panoptic vision of the novel, a reciprocal and mutual gaze that challenges the authority and character of the watcher. The reciprocal turning upon the figure of the watcher also implicates the reader, usually a participant in a non-reciprocal relation with the text, in a deeper formal, ethical, and moral engagement.

Holmes' Reformulation Through Elements of Feminist in Enola Holmes

As time goes by, fiction has become a medium that satisfies people’s wishes. This phenomenon happens because the purpose of popular fiction is to fulfill people's demands of plot lines. Therefore, the storyline or narrative of the story is a crucial point in discussing popular fiction. Genre becomes the key point in discussing the formulation of a story. This formulation is based on convention and one of the famous formulations is the genre of detective. One of the famous works of detectives is Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has created his own world and has produced so many adaptations. One of the adaptations that hooked people's attention is a spin-off work of Sherlock Holmes, Enola Holmes. Enola Holmes is a novel series written by Springer that got recognition from many people because she wrote a story on the line of Sherlock Holmes’s canonical story. Due to the fame, this series got adapted into film as Jack Thorne rewrote the story based on the original. However, Enola—written by Springer and Thorne—represents a contra point in the formulation. In order to discover and prove the formulation, this study focuses on using genre critcisim focusing on the formulation of feminist in the objects. Furthermore, this study also uses genre theories by Cawelti and Gelder in conducting the discussion. This research proves that Enola is a detective story by following the classical detective formula following the original formulation by Doyle on Sherlock. The problem of contra point is represented in the invention or innovation of the detective genre as it is taking women as the detective and main villain and a mystery around women characters.

The Case of the Peculiar Story: Medical Investigation and the Detective in Edgar Allan Poe and Marguerite Duras.

In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), Poe invents the detective story in English, introducing his gentleman sleuth Auguste Dupin as he solves the locked-room mystery of two women found brutally murdered in a Paris apartment. In L'Amante Anglaise (1967), Duras revisits the detective form, fictionalizing the true 1949 crime of a woman murdering and dismembering her cousin in Viorne, France. These literary detective stories highlight the powerful but unspoken role of affective experience in driving what appears, on the surface, to be a forensic medical or psychological investigation. In both tales, peculiarity is an affective and cognitive force that, contrary to what the majority of affect literature argues, inherently moves toward resolution and closure. Using peculiarity as an analytical concept, we argue that the concealment / discovery binary must acknowledge its affective origins, breaking a barrier between narrative scholarship and medical practice.

Minor Literature and Minor Form: The Case of The Chinese Detective

“Minor forms” of literature (in this case the detective story) are far from unimportant to literary history. Gilles DeLeuze and Félix Guattari show us in their treatment of Franz Kafka as a writer with a complex relationship to literature both major and minor that writers who conceive of themselves as minority voices take on an echo chamber of obligations that complicate their work. When the work they intend to produce is also perceived to be “minor” (e.g. the detective novel), echoes multiply. Two entwined cases are explored here: Earl Derr Biggers’s series of Charlie Chan detective novels of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Henry Chang’s five-novel series of Jack Yu novels of the early twenty-first century. Issues of ethnicity, cultural expropriation, exilic melancholy enrich and transform their works in a “minor form.”

“Nordic (Scandinavian) Noir” vs Scandinavian Detective: a Debatable Aspect of Study

The phenomenon of “Nordic (Scandinavian) noir”, which has formed in the literature of Northern Europe in the last two decades, is studied. The author considers the works of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian prose writers and proves the insufficient legitimacy of their attribution to “noir”. The term noir is substantiated. Based on the analysis of the novels by S. Larsson, J. Nesbø, H. Flood, M. Lindstein, A. Mette Hancock, the relevance of the term detective in relation to the work of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish prose writers is stated. It has been established that the definition of “Scandinavian (Nordic) noir” is not applicable to any of the newest Scandinavian novels. In terms of genre, in fact, each of these works is a detective story that combines other genre elements. “Millennium” by S. Larsson, “The Snowman”, “Leopard”, “Redneck” by J. Nesbø, “Corpse Flower” by A. M. Hancock synthesize elements of a detective, family and social novel. “The Therapist” H. Flod is a synthesis of a psychological thriller and a detective story. “A sect from a misty island” by M. Lindsteen combines the properties of a gothic novel (a closed chronotope of a manor, which is an analogue of a castle chronotope; the presence of a villain hero who determines the plot deployment) and a psychological detective story (an investigating heroine who reconstructs the events of the past, relying on logic to solve the mystery and giving realistic motivation to what is happening).

Game Strategies as a Principle of Creating Supertext Unity in Work of B. Akunin

The article is devoted to the strategies for creating a prosaic super-cycle by Boris Akunin by referring to the technique of the game as a through cycle-forming principle. The relevance of the proposed analysis is due to the fact that the potential for creating principles for creating supertextual unity requires additional research in Russian literary criticism, since in modern literature a number of authors resort to this particular model of arranging their works (in addition to Akunin, these are, for example, Pelevin, Rubina, Vodolazkin, etc.). The novelty of the study is due to the research of how the works of the “Fandorin corpus” are combined into a supertext integrity due to a number of game tactics, including the tactics of an enigmatic-game dialogue with the reader. The classic canon of the detective, set by 19th-century authors, involves a game with the reader based on the calculation of the criminal, and this game is hermetic. Akunin, explicitly referring to the 19th century in the annotations to the New Detective series, opens the game system in the text of the detective story, offering the reader to enter an interactive quest at will. The same principle is used in other works of the “Fandorin corpus”.

British Detective Fiction 1891-1901: The Successors to Sherlock Holmes, by Clare Clarke

Reviewed by: British Detective Fiction 1891–1901: The Successors to Sherlock Holmes by Clare Clarke Caroline Reitz (bio) British Detective Fiction 1891–1901: The Successors to Sherlock Holmes, by Clare Clarke; pp. xi + 166. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $74.99, $59.99 ebook. Clare Clarke’s British Detective Fiction 1891–1901: The Successors to Sherlock Holmes begins like any good detective story: with a missing person. That person is Sherlock Holmes, who died tumbling over Reichenbach Falls with archnemesis Professor Moriarity in “The Final Problem” (1893). Clarke examines six different authors who published detective fiction during “The Great Hiatus,” the decade between Holmes’s fall and Arthur Conan Doyle’s revival of the Great Detective in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–2). Focusing on this decade allows Clarke to explore the colorful characters who stepped through the Sherlock-shaped hole. More importantly, the book adds to an ongoing critical correction. Scholarly work on the genre has been theorized disproportionately around the Sherlock Holmes canon. Clarke persuasively and engagingly makes the case that stories that “enjoyed widespread circulation . . . but . . . did not conform to later-decided rules of the genre” allow us to see “what the post-Sherlock fin-de-siècle detective narrative could be and do” (7–8). While some of these stories and series are derivative of Holmes (from archnemeses, to vulnerable female clients, to twelve story collections), and while Holmes is frequently invoked in reviews and marketing as both yardstick and lure, some of these stories represent a real departure in character and tone, including a female Romany pawnbroker, a ghost detective fighting man-eating plants on the “blurry boundaries” of the detective story, and an amoral detective-cum-murderer (150). These innovations challenge some sacred ideas about the genre, such as the immunity of detectives, the American origin of hardboiled detective fiction, and the conservative cultural work that the whodunnit allegedly provides. This book is a sequel of sorts to Clarke’s earlier and excellent Late Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock (2014); like that text, it balances close readings of significant overlooked figures with a broad overview of historical and publication contexts. Indeed, if recovery anthologies have been organized around gender or nationality (for example, Nick Rennison’s Sherlock’s Sisters: Stories from the Golden Age of the Female Detective [2020] or LeRoy Lad Panek and Mary M. Bendel-Simso’s Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology [2014]), Clarke is “particularly eager to uncover the lesser-known places and the publications in which late-Victorian British readers consumed detective fiction” (154). Clarke’s attention to the original publication (and republication) of these stories in regional weekly and daily newspapers is a tremendously useful addition to our [End Page 689] understanding of the popular fiction of this period. As Clarke writes, we are familiar with the “well-known account of white-collar London middle-class male workers on their commuter trains reading sixpenny or shilling monthlies, like the Strand,” the home of Sherlock (154). But regional newspapers outnumbered and outsold London publications from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1950s. An eager cadre of writers emerged (think George Gissing’s 1891 New Grub Street) to meet a newly literate reading public and drew their topics from a late-nineteenth-century culture anxious about scientific discoveries, shifting gender roles, imperial expansion, urban poverty, and religious crises. Noting that she “simply [wrote] to order,” L. T. Meade’s complicated female criminals replaced Holmes in the Strand (1891–1950) and ticked several of those boxes (qtd. in Clarke 16). While Madame Koluchy and Madame Sara are perhaps the most well-known of Clarke’s subjects, her chapter on Meade goes beyond showing the ways in which femme fatales are brought to heel by the middle-class masculine professional competence of scientists, lawyers, and police. These stories, Clarke notes, feature strong secondary female characters, including a New Woman journalist, a bacteriologist’s assistant, and a woman brought in to assist Scotland Yard who is like a “bloodhound when she scents the prey” (32). Popular fiction at the end of the century is a fertile ground for female characters. C. L. Pirkis’s Loveday Brooke, frequently compared to Sherlock...

BRITISH ACCENTS IN SCREEN ADAPTATIONS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

The article investigates British English and its various accents, in particular from the point of view of identifying characters’ social class, education, life activities in the most famous screen adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories about Sherlock Holmes. The adaptations of «The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes», «Without a Single Clue» and «Sherlock», reflecting different eras, were taken into account. The first two adaptations take us to Victorian Britain, which has its own phonetic peculiarities: the «correctness» of speech is a sign of the speaker's aristocracy or wealth, and a specific accent and the use of dialectal contractions are features of the middle and lower classes. It has been proven that Victorian speech is much easier to understand because of the intonation, which forces you to drawl and pronounce words clearly. The BBC TV adaptation «Sherlock» takes the characters into the present. Intonation still plays a significant role in the characters' speech, but the pace of speech has become much faster compared to the Victorian era. For a modern native speaker, it is quite common to «swallow» words, pronounce them partially or shorten them.

Integration of Narrative Thinking and Detective Logic in Chesterton’s Father Brown

The vast body of detective stories offer a model of how to integrate two complementary forms of thinking: logic thinking and narrative thinking. This article offers an hypothesis, created by Chesterton, in which Father Brown is a paradigm of the relationship between these two forms. Since the existence of logical thinking tools has been affirmed for more than two thousand years, this article focuses on the existence of narrative thinking tools specifically in the character of Father Brown. Demonstrating the existence of these narrative thinking tools is an important first step toward achieving an integration with logic. This article therefore represents a preview of further studies that are being done as part of the doctoral thesis: How the Existence of Narrative Thinking in Chesterton’s Detective, Father Brown, equipped him to know reality.
 This article proposes that there is room for further study to actually codify these narrative thinking tools; just as Aristotle had done for logic. Also it points to the possibility of a detective model of thinking; especially because detective stories continue to be so popular.

The Culinary Space: Food as a Narrative Tool in Agatha Christie’s Detective Novels

Kevin Burton Smith in his article ‘Murder on the Menu’ (2010), comments, “right from the start there’s been a curious link between food (and drink) and crime fiction.” Despite the fact that culinary mystery novels arose as a subgenre of crime fiction in the late twentieth century, food has always been a part of crime fiction, and has played an important role in the early stories of Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe. Food is frequently depicted as a source of stability and order in crime novels, establishing verisimilitude, creating a genuine world, a world as we know it. Agatha Christie, too, has included significant reference to food, eating habits and food rituals throughout her detective stories, using it as a tool to create a feminine and domestic space. This paper will analyse how Christie has used the depiction of food as a tool to further the narrative, portraying it in her novels as a calming ritual and a clue to the murder. However, food in Christie’s stories can also gain a more sinister undertone, and this paper will also analyse this, focusing on how Christie transforms food into a murder weapon itself, as a bad omen indicating events, thereby, blending reality with the storyline and lending vivacity to her characters and her plots.

L’homme aux lèvres de saphir d’Hervé Le Corre: un exemple de l’évolution générique du polar

"From the detective story, considered a literary sub-genre, to the present-day detective story, the evolution of the detective story shows to what extent this genre has been able to consolidate itself. In its evolution, it has been able to go beyond the limits to assert itself, showing at the same time that the detective story offers a variety of openings to tackle all kinds of subjects. At present, the historical detective story is enjoying enormous success and, based on Hervé Le Corre’s novel L’homme aux lèvres de saphir, we will show that the detective story goes beyond the limits and generic labels. However, the disappearance of boundaries leads to a new debate, since detective novel readers are not targeted by the novels. "

СУСПІЛЬНО-ПОЛІТИЧНА ПРОБЛЕМАТИКА ДЕТЕКТИВНОЇ ТРИЛОГІЇ ЗИГМУНТА МІЛОШЕВСЬКОГО

The problems presented in the detective trilogy of Zygmunt Miłoszewski do not lose their relevance because there are connected with the past and the social life of the country. The author immerses the reader in historical plots in order to show social occurrence more fully. In “Entanglement” the leitmotif is the activities of the Security Service of the People’s Republic of Poland and the consequences of the existence and disintegration of this structure. “Grain of Truth” addresses the problem of anti-Semitism in Poland. In order to explain the genesis of this phenomenon, the author touches on the issue of common Polish-Jewish history. The third part, titled as “Rage” addresses a problem that has begun to be recognized and discussed recently, namely domestic violence. It was established that the detective touches on many aspects of this phenomenon, namely describing all types of domestic violence, namely psychological, economic, sexual and physical, showing its negative impact on children, as well as the problems the victim faces in society. The socio-political background of Zygmunt Miłoszewski’s trilogy is diverse and vivid. Detective intrigue does not dominate, but it allows to fully discuss a certain social problem, to look at it from a new, still unpopular point of view and to form the reader’s own opinion on the subject. The modern literary process is not characterized by genre purity, so the detective stories of the trilogy by Z. Miloszewski combine features of several subgenres, as well as other literary genres. The focus on the protagonist’s inner world and the psychological motives behind all the murders indicates a psychological detective story. The use of the motif of a crime that took place in the past and requires investigation in the present indicates that the trilogy belongs to historical detective fiction. «Entanglement» uses the motif of a closed space, supposedly as in a classic detective story, but the main rule was broken, as the killer entered from the outside. «Grain of Truth» with its constant plot tension and the only action scene in the entire trilogy, can be considered a thriller. “Rage” on the other hand, which pays great attention to the protagonist’s daily and personal life, contains elements of a novel of manners. In the context of this genre diversity, the social problems of contemporary Poland are shown comprehensively, realistically and with great artistic aesthetics. The problems signaled in the novels require further research in the future.