British Crime Fiction

This chapter was written for a collected volume aiming to expand our understanding of the 1920s – a decade mainly associated with works like "Ulysses" and "The Waste Land" – by exploring literary texts published in 1922 that do not belong to the modernist canon (and are therefore rarely discussed). I offer a reading of A. A. Milne’s only mystery novel, "The Red House Mystery," arguing that it presents an interesting take on the detective genre – one that is paradoxically both highly conventional and highly idiosyncratic. On the one hand, the novel harkens back to the Victorian roots of detective fiction, blending motifs from Arthur Conan Doyle's work with the country-house setting that would later define the Golden Age of detective fiction. On the other hand, Milne’s background in drama influences the novel’s lighthearted and comedic approach to crime writing. With its heavy emphasis on dialogue, "The Red House Mystery" presents detection as "glorious fun," a "profession" performed self-consciously and theatrically by its two amateur detectives. As a result, the novel functions not only as a mystery but also as a meta-mystery, full of intertextual references to earlier detective stories and to the comedy of manners traditions of the nineteenth century.

Modern critics do not consider science fiction and mystery novels to be "serious reading", but Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis questioned the boundaries between "popular" and "serious" literature. Both Christian writers critically discuss the spiritual crisis of the modern world in each fiction genre. This paper will discuss Sayers and Lewis from a Christian postmodernist perspective, that is, the acceptance of both human constructions, such as multiple views on genres, and divine revelation, or what transcends the limitations of humanity. Both Sayers and Lewis agreed in terms of their understanding that a writer is limited by human language, but also in terms of their acceptance of the transcendental guidance offered in the interactive relationship with the divine being. The discussion will present Sayers and Lewis as Christian postmodernist writers who re-evaluate generally overlooked genres, begin to argue in their respective genres that gender matters, and introduce the reader to another world beyond the boundaries of the known literary genres.

A mystery story which focuses on a crime and the investigation of that crime is commonly understood as a crime fiction narrative. Its ability to excite the readers, challenge their rational abilities and involve them in the gradual unravelling of the mystery is what makes crime fiction a huge success. With innumerable critical works, scholarly study and continued relevance, crime fiction has entered the canon of literature. A genre that closely reflects the socio-political, historical and cultural aspects of the society, it has gradually acquired a significant role both in critiquing the social order and at the same time for documenting history through its gradual evolution and development. This paper attempts to map the evolution of crime fiction from the eighteenth century to the contemporary times. In doing so, the paper aims to study how social changes impact literary traditions. This study also aims to establish the relevance of crime fiction as a literary genre as it evolves i...

Peter Ackroyd's 'Hawksmoor' (1985) tells two stories in alternating chapters: one set in London between 1711 and 1715, the other in present-day London. In the first story, a murderous architect beholden to occult beliefs relates his exploits and situates them within his project of subverting the Enlightenment agenda of his superiors; in the second story, told by an apparently objective third-person narrator, the detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is baffled by a series of bizarre murders. The text’s two loci in time mark, respectively, the early days of modernity, in which science and rationality appeared to herald a brighter future, and late modernity, in which this optimism has come under question. The detective, who embodies the rationalist ethos and the tenet of scientific progress, emerges as a figure whose failure casts doubt upon the validity of the core beliefs of Western culture. Peter Ackroyd’s text is an original example of the sub-genre known as the ‘anti-detective narrative.’

The best works of Dorothy Hughes capture the fear and uncertainty of the shifting sands of the Second World War and its uneasy aftermath. Though her novels are entirely set within the United States, her preoccupation is with the darkening international situation and her sensibility is more European (i.e. directly threatened) than American. In fact, it’s hard to think of another contemporary American writer, male or female, so concerned with the worsening international situation and the slide towards fascism, excepting perhaps those Americans who directly experienced the Spanish Civil War, like Hemingway and Dos Passos.

detective novels would be as much a solecism as proposing a discussion of the "British element" in the mysteries of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers or Michael Innes --their "Navajo-ness" and "Britishness," respectively, are obviously not something occasional but something pervasive. In any case, nothing would seem further from the conventions of British detective fiction than the Navajo-based detective stories of Tony Hillerman. What can the parched Navajo Reservation have to do with "England's green & pleasant Land," or the ramshackle hogan with the Palladian country villa, or the Navajo Tribal Police's Lieutenant Leaphorn with Scotland Yard's Inspector Appleby? At the center of the British detective novel of manners is what W. H.

In this paper, I  analyse the narrative in Minette Walters's The Shape of Snakes, focusing on the role of the interpolated letters, the gothic references, and the construction on the first-person narrator-protagonist, who proves to be unreliable. Eclectic uses of genre conventions mean that reading strategies must be reconsidered during reading.