Table Of Contenti
THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO
CRIME FICTION
The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction is a comprehensive introduction to crime fiction and
crime fiction scholarship today. Across forty-fi ve original chapters, specialists in the field offer
innovative approaches to the classics of the genre as well as groundbreaking mappings of emer-
ging themes and trends.
The volume is divided into three parts. Part I, Approaches, rearticulates the key theoretical
questions posed by the crime genre. Part II, Devices, examines the textual characteristics of the
genre. Part III, Interfaces, investigates the complex ways in which crime fiction engages with the
defining issues of its context – from policing and forensic science through war, migration and
narcotics to digital media and the environment.
Engagingly written and drawing on examples from around the world, this volume is indis-
pensable to both students and scholars of crime fiction.
Janice Allan is Associate Dean in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, UK.
Jesper Gulddal is Associate Professor in Literary Studies at the University of Newcastle,
Australia.
Stewart King is Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and
Linguistics at Monash University, Australia.
Andrew Pepper is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at Queen’s University,
Belfast.
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ROUTLEDGE COMPANIONS TO LITERATURE
Also available in this series:
The Routledge Companion to International Children’s Literature
Edited by John Stephens, with Celia Abicalil Belmiro, Alice Curry, Li Lifang and Yasmine S. Motawy
The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks
Edited by Bettina Kümmerling- Meibauer
The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History
Edited by May Hawas
The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing
Edited by Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics
Edited by Matt Seybold and Michelle Chihara
The Routledge Companion to Twenty- First Century Literature
Edited by Daniel O’Gorman and Robert Eaglestone
The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies
Edited by Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung and Takayuki Tatsumi
The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature
Edited by Dennis Denisoff and Talia Schaffer
The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities
Edited by Paul Crawford, Brian Brown and Andrea Charise
The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction
Edited by Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma
Edited by Hanna Meretoja and Colin Davis
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability
Edited by Alice Hall
iii
THE ROUTLEDGE
COMPANION TO CRIME
FICTION
Edited by Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King
and Andrew Pepper
iv
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Allan, Janice M., 1966– editor. | Gulddal, Jesper, editor. |
King, Stewart, 1968– editor. | Pepper, Andrew, 1969– editor.
Title: The Routledge companion to crime fiction / edited by Janice Allan,
Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019055758 | ISBN 9781138320352 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780429453342 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories–History and criticism. |
Crime in literature.
Classification: LCC PN3448.D4 R68 2020 | DDC 809.3/872–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055758
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 32035- 2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 429- 45334- 2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
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CONTENTS
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xviii
Introduction: New directions in crime fiction scholarship 1
Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper
PART I
Approaches 11
1 Genre 13
Jesper Gulddal and Stewart King
2 Counterhistories and prehistories 22
Maurizio Ascari
3 The crime fiction series 31
Ruth Mayer
4 Crime fiction in the marketplace 39
Emmett Stinson
5 Adaptations 48
Neil McCaw
6 Hybridisation 57
Heather Duerre Humann
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Contents
7 Graphic crime novels 65
Robert Prickett and Casey A. Cothran
8 World literature 76
Jakob Stougaard- Nielsen
9 Translation 85
Karen Seago and Victoria Lei
10 Transnationality 94
Barbara Pezzotti
11 Gender and sexuality 102
Gill Plain
12 Race and ethnicity 111
Sam Naidu
13 Coloniality and decoloniality 120
Shampa Roy
14 Psychoanalysis 129
Heta Pyrhönen
PART II
Devices 139
15 Murders 141
Michael Harris- Peyton
16 Victims 149
Rebecca Mills
17 Detectives 159
David Geherin
18 Criminals 168
Christiana Gregoriou
19 Beginnings and endings 177
Alistair Rolls
20 Plotting 185
Martin Edwards
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Contents
21 Clues 194
Jesper Gulddal
22 Realism 202
Paul Cobley
23 Place 211
Stewart King
24 Time and space 219
Thomas Heise
25 Self- referentiality and metafiction 227
J.C. Bernthal
26 Paratextuality 236
Louise Nilsson
27 Affect 244
Christopher Breu
28 Alterity and the Other 252
Jean Anderson
29 Digital technology 261
Nicole Kenley
PART III
Interfaces 271
30 Crime fiction and criminology 273
Matthew Levay
31 Crime fiction and theories of justice 282
Susanna Lee
32 Crime fiction and modern science 291
Andrea Goulet
33 Crime fiction and the police 301
Andrew Nestingen
34 Crime fiction and memory 310
Kate M. Quinn
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Contents
35 Crime fiction and trauma 318
Cynthia S. Hamilton
36 Crime fiction and politics 327
José V. Saval
37 Crime fiction and the city 335
Eric Sandberg
38 Crime fiction and war 343
Patrick Deer
39 Crime fiction and global capital 353
Andrew Pepper
40 Crime fiction and the environment 362
Marta Puxan- Oliva
41 Crime fiction and narcotics 371
Andrew Pepper
42 Crime fiction and migration 379
Charlotte Beyer
43 Crime fiction and authoritarianism 388
Carlos Uxó
44 Crime fiction and digital media 397
Tanja Välisalo, Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki and Aino- Kaisa Koistinen
45 Crime fiction and the future 406
Nicoletta Vallorani
Index 414
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CONTRIBUTORS
Janice Allan is Associate Dean in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford.
Her research focuses on nineteenth- century crime and sensation fiction and constructions of
literary value. She is the Executive Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection and the co- editor
of The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes (2019, with Christopher Pittard). Recent
publications explore Gothic topographies in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the representation of
private investigators in sensation fiction, the use of false hair in the construction of nineteenth-
century femininity, and the relationship between realism and sensation in the periodical press.
She is currently working on a new Oxford World Classics edition of The Case- Book of Sherlock
Holmes (2022).
Jean Anderson is Associate Professor of French at Victoria University of Wellington, where
she founded the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation in 2007. Her research interests
include translation theory and practice, late nineteenth-c entury fiction and francophone writing.
With Barbara Pezzotti and Carolina Miranda, she has co-e dited three collections of essays, The
Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations (Bloomsbury, 2012), Serial Crime
Fiction: Dying for More (Palgrave, 2015) and Blood on the Table: Essays on Food in International
Crime Fiction (McFarland, 2018). She is currently working on intercultural aspects of French
crime fiction, particularly the work of Charles Exbrayat and Maurice- Bernard Endrèbe.
Maurizio Ascari teaches English Literature at the University of Bologna (Italy). He has
published books and essays on crime fiction (A Counter- History of Crime Fiction, Palgrave,
2007, nominated for the Edgar Awards), transcultural literature (Literature of the Global Age,
McFarland, 2011) and inter- art exchanges (Cinema and the Imagination in Katherine Mansfield’s
Writing, Palgrave, 2014). His edited collections include “Crime Narratives: Crossing Cultures”
(European Journal of English Studies, 2010), with Heather Worthington, and From the Sublime to
City Crime (2015), with Stephen Knight. He has also edited and translated works by Henry
James, Katherine Mansfield, William Faulkner, Jack London and William Wilkie Collins.
J.C. Bernthal is a panel tutor at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Lecturer at Middlesex
University. His interests are in crime fiction and queer theory, separately and in combination. He
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