Historical Crime Fiction Research Articles

Culture after Catastrophe: A Conversation with David Peace on the Tokyo Trilogy

Abstract In this conversation with Max Ward, David Peace discusses his motivations for writing the Tokyo Trilogy, the historical research that went into it, and the political questions related to postwar Japan that he wanted to pursue. They then discuss the responsibility of historical crime fiction, as well as the literary, cultural and philosophical sources that influence Peace's unique style of what he calls “occult history.” The conversation took place on December 15, 2023, and the transcript was subsequently edited and annotated for content and readability.

Romanul judiciar. Către un nou subgen al romanului istoric românesc

The lifespan and popularity of a subgenre are determined by the inventiveness with which novelists develop and innovate the standard formulas. The judicial novel emerges as an extension of the popularity of the outlaw novel, adding a technical dimension to the misdeeds committed by wrongdoers. The outlaw and judicial novels are anthropomorphized subgenres that set in motion symbolic models, with a central figure dominating the entire course of events. The judicial novel reconfigures the perspective of naturalism, transforming the social milieu into a triggering factor for reprehensible acts. Shocking acts, such as crimes or suicides, and their mysterious circumstances, are analyzed from multiple angles, akin to using a set of parallel mirrors, while the brisk steps of investigations are fascinatingly reconstructed within the eloquent phrases of the novelists. One of the central ideas that the judicial novel seeks to develop is the sacrifice as a social practice, whether symbolic, articulated in the imposition of precarious living conditions leading to extreme gestures. Spatiality and temporality constitute the central pillars that compose the dramatic scenes of the Romanian judicial novel. Crimes are plotted and committed in the moonlight, in neighborhoods or on winding streets. The schematism of gloomy settings and the rudimentary nature of character profiles are countered by allusions to an undefined darkness, the contours of which elude discernment. The judicial subgenre utilizes conventions from the detective novel formula, involving the exaggeration of a cause-and-effect relationship as inevitable and the conquest of a reassuring imaginary, complementary to the moral imperatives discussed by Romanian novelists determined to rehabilitate the reputation of the genre through fictional digressions on morality. In its dimension of historical crime fiction, the Romanian judicial novel not only accentuates its documentary aspect, showing how the institutions responsible for investigations and judicial processes function but also the expansiveness of historicizing interpretations of the analyzed bloody events. Within the context of a dynamically structured novel distinguished by thematic configuration and ideological significance, the incorporation of illustrations transcends mere decorative intent. The judicial novel strategically incorporates illustrations as a highly effective extratextual approach. This not only disrupts the linear narrative trajectory and heightens suspense but also concurrently bestows substance upon the ethereal images adeptly invoked by the literary text.

Łódź „retro” w kryminałach historycznych

The article analyzes the way of constructing the image of the city in historical crime fiction set in Łódź. The texts analyzed in the article are the novel Perkalowy dybuk [Percale dybbuk] by Konrad T. Lewandowski about the events of 1929, Tramwaj Tanfaniego [Tanfani’s tram] by Marcin Andrzejewski, a novel set in 1905, and Krzysztof Beśka’s trilogy Trzeci brzeg Styksu [The Third Shore of Styx] Pocztówka z Londynu [A Postcard from London] and Dolina popiołów [Valley of Ashes], novels set in the years 1892–1893. All the texts provide an point of departure for showing the image of Łódź at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and in the interwar period, as shaped in the contemporary popular literature. Władysław Reymont’s Ziemia obiecana [The Promised Land] seems to be a starting point for all authors, but in all texts this image borrowed from the fundamental “Łódź text” becomes complicated. It seems that eventually in this unconventional form, which historical crime fiction undoubtedly is, we find a reflection of contemporary dilemmas of the urban space. Its residents try to find their own identity in the meanders of memory and oblivion in the industrial-proletarian past of the “bad city”.

Popular fiction and white extremism: Neo‐Nazi ideology and medievalist crime fiction

Dystopian near-future fantasies of violent white revolution and genocide—most infamously, William L. Pierce's The Turner Diaries (1978)—are the most well-known and studied fictions by white extremists. They are, however, not the only genre through which the extreme far-right engage with popular culture. In this article, we explore how popular historical fictions can accomodate white extremist presence and propagandising. We analyse generic conventions in the medieval murder mystery The Black Flame (2001) by self-identified neo-Nazi Harold A. Covington (1953–2018), showing that the book shares trends and tropes with contemporary medievalisms, including in historical crime fiction and other popular genres and media. By focussing on these conventions, we seek common places in the popular that can, paradoxically, create space for the fringe extreme.

Historical Crime Fiction as Popular Historiography

Due to the current history boom in the UK, which manifests itself in the conspicuous popularity of historical novels, costume dramas, and in rising visitor numbers to museums, the study of popular historiography has become a growing and vibrant field. Popular historiography formats such as costume dramas, historical romances, and re-enactments have been recognised as a key influence on the public's knowledge of the past. Consumed informally and voluntarily, entertaining and easily accessible, popular histories are often more significant for the public's perception of ‘historical fact’ than ‘academic’ forms of historiography.This article examines historical crime fiction as a genre of popular historiography with a special focus on recent novels set in the late seventeenth century, a period that has lately been the focus of a number of exciting crime series. As a genre mostly written to a formula, concentrating on a narrow theme (i.e. crime and violence), and typically showing the life of ‘the mean streets’, crime fiction has a genre-specific view of the past. Due to its focus on the everyday, it shows aspects of history which are particularly popular with a wider public. Additionally, as it is frequently preoccupied with history's dark secrets, crime fiction is especially suited to re-writing established images of the past.

From a Place in the Sun to the Heart of Darkness: Contemporary Crime Fiction and Italy’s Colonial Past

ABSTRACTFocussing on a group of recent novels set against the background of Italy’s colonies in East Africa during the Fascist period, this essay aims at investigating a fundamental tension within the tradition of Italian crime fiction, and, more specifically, of historical crime fiction. On the one hand, by shedding light into the darker and less explored corners of Italy’s past, the genre aims at serving as a sort of ‘new social novel’, to paraphrase the title of a 2004 book by Marco Sangiorgi and Luca Telò. On the other, the conventions and generic requirements of crime and detective fiction – in particular, its frequent recourse to stereotyped situations and characters – can hamper the reconstruction of complex experiences such as that of Italian colonialism. A detailed discussion of Giorgio Ballario’s novels featuring the Major of the Carabinieri Aldo Morosini (2008–2012), Davide Longo’s Un mattino a Irgalem (2001), Luciano Marrocu’s Debrà Libanòs (2002), and Andrea Camilleri’s La presa di Macallé (2003) will show how for contemporary Italian writers, as for many authors of late 19th- and 20th-century colonial novels, Africa often continues to be an empty space upon which to project European fantasies, regardless of whether the author’s intention is a critique or a celebration of empire. Only Camilleri manages to provide a more complex account of Italian imperialism by shifting his attention from the colonies themselves to the impact of colonialism upon the ‘motherland’, thus bringing into relief the constitutive function of colonialism in the formation of Fascist ideology.

Barbara Pezzotti, Murder in the Age of Chaos: Investigating Italy’s Past Through Historical Crime Fiction, Films, and TV Series

Barbara Pezzotti, <i>Murder in the Age of Chaos: Investigating Italy’s Past Through Historical Crime Fiction, Films, and TV Series</i>

“I Stand Out Like a Raven”: Depicting the Female Detective and Tudor History in Nancy Bilyeau’s The Crown

Abstract This article examines the portrayal of female identity and crime in the Tudor period in Nancy Bilyeau’s contemporary historical crime fiction novel, The Crown (2012). Featuring a female detective figure, Joanna Stafford, Bilyeau’s novel forms part of the wealth of contemporary fiction using Tudor history as context, reflecting a continued interest in and fascination with this period and its prominent figures. This article examines Bilyeau’s representation of the Tudor period in The Crown through the depiction of English society and culture from a contemporary perspective, employing genre fiction in order to highlight issues of criminality. My investigation of The Crown as crime fiction specifically involves analysing gender-political questions and their portrayal within the novel and its tumultuous historical context. This investigation furthermore explores the depiction of agency, individuality, religion, and politics. The article concludes that Bilyeau’s suspense-filled novel provides an imaginative representation of Tudor history through the prism of the crime fiction genre. Central to this project is its employment of a resourceful and complex female detective figure at the heart of the narrative.

Representing Spectral Subjects in Historical Crime Fiction

Representing Spectral Subjects in Historical Crime Fiction

“The Crime Scene as Museum: The (Re)construction in the Bresciano Series of a Historical Gibraltarian Past”

The “Bresciano” series of seven historical detective novels (2010-2015) by Sam Benady and Mary Chiappe set in a period of four decades early in the British imperial history of Gibraltar from the 1780s to the 1820s provides an excellent opportunity not only for reconstructing a significant image of the historical past of the colony – and possibly also of its current status – but also for investigating a complex of critical approaches to such writing in terms of historical crime fiction, post-coloniality, and the wider ramifications of the function of cultural-historical “museumification” and its impact on the literary narrative. The present brief study should be regarded as an introductory discussion rather than a definitive analysis.

Learning all the tricks: critiquing crime fiction in a creative writing PhD

In the late 1920s Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her impressive contributions to the crime fiction genre, wrote of the idea that the genre would fall into a decline, that there ‘certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks’ (1947: 108). This article takes this idea, of learning ‘all the tricks’, and applies it to the process of producing an artefact (a crime novel) and exegesis for a creative writing doctoral program. Specifically, this article looks at the notion of how the artefact and exegesis should work together, as two halves of a single whole. In addition, this article explores the idea of how the task of writing an historical crime fiction novel, and accompanying exegesis, can draw on both crime fiction and on crime fiction criticism. This base, of the creative and critical, can inform the production of a work that offers an aesthetic quality and an academically rigorous contribution to conversations around one of the world’s best-selling genres.

Roman noir et drapeau noir: Didier Daeninckx and the libertarian legacy

The crime novelist Didier Daeninckx originally established himself as an author of historical crime fiction. His 1984 novel, Meurtres pour mémoire, in particular challenged occluded and intertwined memories of the Occupation and the Algerian War of Independence. Since then, and through his subsequent writings and political activities, Daeninckx has been recognised as giving voice to a range of marginalised communities and memories. Much academic study has therefore concentrated on the recovery of the past in Daeninckx’s fiction, approaching his work from the perspective of cultural history and memory studies, considering it a form of memory activism. This article offers a new perspective on Daeninckx’s political engagement. It will examine Daeninckx’s three contributions to Éditions Baleine’s collaboratively authored detective series Le Poulpe: Nazis dans le métro (1996), Éthique en toc (2000) and La Route du Rom (2003). It will argue that they are informed by a memory of France’s broad libertarian tradition which constitutes a hidden referent essential to understanding the formulation of the ethico-political counter-communities to which many of his characters (and his ideal, implied reader) belong. More particularly, it will argue that these communities form the basis of a new model of political engagement beyond party, state and class, suggesting not only the persistence but also the adaptability of libertarian thinking in Daeninckx’s work and the French roman noir.

Tatort Germany: the curious case of German-language crime fiction

Although George Bernard Shaw quipped that Germans lack talent for two things: revolution and crime novels, there is a long tradition of German crime fiction; it simply hasn't aligned itself with international trends. During the 1920s, German-language writers dispensed with the detective and focused instead on criminals, a trend that did not take hold in other countries until after 1945, by which time Germany had gone on to produce antidetective novels that were similarly ahead of their time. German crime fiction has thus always been a curious case; rather than follow the established rules of the genre, it has always been interested in examining, breaking, and ultimately rewriting those rules. This book assembles leading international scholars to examine today's German crime fiction. It features innovative scholarly work that matches the innovativeness of the genre, taking up the Regionalkrimi; crime fiction's reimagining and transforming of traditional identities; historical crime fiction that examines Germany's and Austria's conflicted twentieth-century past; and how the newly vibrant Austrian crime fiction ties in with and differentiates itself from its German counterpart. Contributors: Angelika Baier, Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Kyle Frackman, Sascha Gerhards, Heike Henderson, Susanne C. Knittel, Anita McChesney, Traci S. O'Brien, Jon Sherman, Faye Stewart, Magdalena Waligorska. Lynn M. Kutch is Associate Professor of German at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Todd Herzog is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Untold Crimes: The First World War and the Historical Crime Fiction of Jean Amila and Didier Daeninckx

This article considers how Jean Amila's Le Boucher des Hurlus (1982) and Didier Daeninckx's Le Der des ders (1984) expose hidden crimes committed by figures of French military authority during the First World War; how they reject the myth of a France united by combat embodied in the heroic and steadfast poilu; and how they complicate and pluralise memories of the war through the existence of a counter-memory and a counter-myth founded upon the figure of the mutin de guerre. It illustrates how the French historical crime novel resolves the tension between the historian, concerned primarily with collective ideas and responsibility, and the judge, seeking to ascertain the extent of individual guilt, thereby constituting an intermediary, marrying the ethical, the factual and the political. It concludes, however, by exploring the limits of memory, narrative and collective political identity proposed in both works, but also considers the readership of such crime fiction as a contemporary counter-community.

Our Nazis: representations of fascism in contemporary literature and film

This is an analysis of the resurgent cultural fascination with Nazism since 1989. Why has a fascination with fascism re-emerged after the Cold War? What is its cultural function now, in an era of commemoration? Focusing particularly on the British context, this study offers the first analysis of contemporary popular and literary fiction, film, TV and art exhibitions about Nazis and Nazism. Petra Rau brings this material into dialogue with earlier responses to fascism and demonstrates how, paradoxically, Nazism has been both mediated and mythologised to the extent that it now often replaces a critical engagement with actual, violent history. In 5 thematic chapters on Nazi Noir, Men in Uniform, Vile Bodies, The Good German and Meta-Cinematic Farce, Rau provides close analysis of contemporary novels such as Jason Lutes' graphic novel series Berlin, historical crime fiction by Philip Kerr and others, Robert Harris' Fatherland, Ian McEwan's Black Dogs and Justin Cartwright's The Song Before It Is Sung; films such as Bryan Singer's Valkyrie and Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards; art installations including Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, and Fucking Hell by Jake and Dinos Chapman; and Piotr Uklanski's photo frieze, Untitled (The Nazis). Features: broad interdisciplinary approach which includes literature, film, TV and art; wide coverage of popular forms and High Art; and comparison with earlier material about fascism which reaches back to the 1930s.

The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction by Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr., Editors

The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction by Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr., Editors

Contemporary feminist historical crime fiction

Contemporary feminist historical crime fiction

Crime Fiction Set in the Middle Ages: Historical Novel and Detective Story

In the wake of Ellis Peters’ first Brother Cadfael Chronicle, A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977), there has been a veritable boom in medieval mystery stories. Since all authors proclaim to write historical crime fiction, they combine the two genres of the historical novel and the detective story. In doing this, they create specific images of the Middle Ages. The notion of what is medieval and how the Middle Ages can be used as a site for crime fiction is the subject of the first part of this investigation. Parts two and three analyze the conventions adopted from the modern detective story, especially the Golden Age clue-puzzle story and the hard-boiled school, and their use in medieval mysteries