From antiheroes to new realism: French and Italian crime fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first century

In the twenty-first century, the extraordinary success of Scandinavian crime fiction in translation has challenged long-held assumptions about the hierarchy of nations, languages and genres in global publishing. This chapter assesses the ‘Scandinavian publishing miracle’ by considering various consecration processes (e.g. literary prizes), domestic changes brought to the publishing field towards the end of the last century (e.g. literary agents and the regional publishing field) and the dynamics of translation and promotion of Scandinavian crime fiction with a focus on the UK market since 2000. The chapter presents a case study of Henning Mankell’s impact on the international market – a case which also demonstrates that the Scandinavian twenty-first-century publishing phenomenon is the tip of an iceberg hiding strategic coordinated practices between small-nation actors established in the early 1990s, which provided a ‘marginocentric’ model for how literatures from small European nations could successfully enter the international mainstream.

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‘There are Some Perversities that Cannot Stand’: Nostalgia, Homosexuality, and the Continuation Novel

Crime Fiction Studies ◽

10.3366/cfs.2020.0010 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 114-129

Author(s):

J. C. Bernthal

Keyword(s):

Crime Fiction ◽

First Century ◽

Male Homosexuality ◽

Literary Marketplace ◽

Lesbian History ◽

Crime Novel ◽

Twenty First Century

Crime fiction scholars tend to ignore continuation novels (written as part of an established series after its creator's death) despite their importance in the international literary marketplace. As these novels exist in dialogue with their own contexts and those of their predecessors, they raise important questions about the handling of social mores. This article examines the presentation of homosexuality and its connection to criminality in two twenty-first century continuation novels, Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk (2011) and Stella Duffy's Money in the Morgue (2018). Horowitz's deliberately conservative novel uses the Victorian context to present a relationship between male homosexuality, conspiracy, and paedophilia that would be unacceptable in a ‘contemporary’ mainstream crime novel. Duffy's rewriting of Ngaio Marsh's unfinished Roderick Alleyn novel, however, creates a dialogue with lesbian history in the context of speculation around Marsh's own repressed sexuality.

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Twenty-First-Century Irish Mothers in Tana French's Crime Fiction

Clues A Journal of Detection ◽

10.3172/clu.32.1.61 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 61-70 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rosemary Erickson Johnsen

Keyword(s):

Crime Fiction ◽

First Century ◽

Twenty First Century

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From Vidocq to the Locked Room

Criminal Moves ◽

10.3828/liverpool/9781789620580.003.0010 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 163-178

Author(s):

Stephen Knight

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

International Development ◽

The United States ◽

Crime Fiction ◽

First Century ◽

Transnational Mobility ◽

Legal Narratives ◽

History Of ◽

Twenty First Century

This chapter provides an in-depth history of the international development of the crime genre prior to the twentieth century. The chapter traces the emergence of a transnational genre from the 1700s through legal narratives and Romantic preoccupations and aesthetics in France, Germany, England, the United States, the Scandinavian countries and Australia. While crime fiction scholars have traditionally maintained that the genre emerged in Britain and America, this chapter places doubt on the supposed centrality of the genre’s British and American genealogy. By examining the genre’s early transnational mobility, the chapter challenges the dominant perception that the genre’s transnationality is a consequence of twentieth- and twenty-first-century globalization and, as such, that it is largely a contemporary phenomenon.

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Contradicting the Golden Age Reading Agatha Christie in the Twenty-First Century

Criminal Moves ◽

10.3828/liverpool/9781789620580.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 77-92

Author(s):

Merja Makinen

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Detective Fiction ◽

Golden Age ◽

Crime Fiction ◽

World Politics ◽

First Century ◽

Genre Criticism ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Agatha Christie ◽

Age Reading

This chapter argues that it is precisely because Agatha Christie is synonymous with the Golden Age of detective fiction that her novels have long been neglected by literary criticism. A critical shift, in the form of “millennial criticism”, is described, which is now breaking down this monolithic view of Christie’s work and challenging the limitations of “genre criticism”, whose focus was typically on antecedents, influences and developments. Crime fiction is in turn opened up to a multiplicity of readings. Christie’s work is shown to be far more than the sum of its plots, however ingenious; instead, it offers the literary range and textual pleasures of Modernism and genuine social interventionism, including a surprising focus on world politics.

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