Author: Anita Higgie
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443809071
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
With essays by an international group of scholars, Questions of Identity in Detective Fiction delves into the ways in which this genre, given its status as popular yet marginalized literature, allows for the exploration of a wide range of meanings. Contributors examine how the genre both mirrors and focuses the personal/sexual/ ethnic/spiritual, how it interfaces with national literatures and histories, and how the generic identity of detective fiction has evolved over time. Chapters include discussions of novels and short stories from American, Argentine, British, Canadian, French, German, and Japanese national literatures, ranging from the mid 19th century to the early 21st century.
Author: Marieke Krajenbrink
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042025298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
Investigating Identities: Questions of Identity in Contemporary International Crime Fiction is one of the relatively few books to date which adopts a comparative approach to the study of the genre. This collection of twenty essays by international scholars, examining crime fiction production from over a dozen countries, confirms that a comparative approach can both shed light on processes of adaptation and appropriation of the genre within specific national, regional or local contexts, and also uncover similarities between the works of authors from very different areas. Contributors explore discourse concerning national and historical memory, language, race, ethnicity, culture and gender, and examine how identity is affirmed and challenged in the crime genre today. They reveal a growing tendency towards hybridization and postmodern experimentation, and increasing engagement with philosophical enquiry into the epistemological dimensions of investigation. Throughout, the notion of stable identities is subject to scrutiny. While each essay in itself is a valuable addition to existing criticism on the genre, all the chapters mutually inform and complement each other in fascinating and often unexpected ways. This volume makes an important contribution to the growing field of crime fiction studies and to ongoing debates on questions of identity. It will therefore be of special interest to students and scholars of the crime genre, identity studies and comparative literature. It will also appeal to all who enjoy reading contemporary crime fiction.
Author: P. D. James
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 030739882X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
P. D. James examines the genre of detective fiction from top to bottom, beginning with the mystery plots at the hearts of such novels as Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, and bringing us firmly into the present with such writers as Amanda Cross and Henning Mankell. Along the way she writes about Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Josephine Tey, among many others. She traces the facts of their lives into and out of their work; clarifies their individual styles; and gives us indelible portraits of the characters they've created: from Sherlock Holmes, "the unchallenged Great Detective," to Sara Paretsky's spunky, sexually liberated female investigator, V. I. Warshawski. She compares British and American "Golden Age" mystery writing, including the groundbreaking work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. She discusses detective fiction as social history; the stylistic components of the genre; her own process of writing; how critics have reacted over the years (Edmund Wilson hated it, W.H. Auden was "addicted"); and what she sees as a renewal of detective stories—and of the detective hero—in recent years. Here is the perfect marriage of writer and subject—essential reading for every lover of detective fiction.
Author: Ralph E. Rodriguez
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292774559
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Winner, Modern Language Association Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies, 2006 Popular fiction, with its capacity for diversion, can mask important cultural observations within a framework that is often overlooked in the academic world. Works thought to be merely "escapist" can often be more seriously mined for revelations regarding the worlds they portray, especially those of the disenfranchised. As detective fiction has slowly earned critical respect, more authors from minority groups have chosen it as their medium. Chicana/o authors, previously reluctant to write in an underestimated genre that might further marginalize them, have only entered the world of detective fiction in the past two decades. In this book, the first comprehensive study of Chicano/a detective fiction, Ralph E. Rodriguez examines the recent contributions to the genre by writers such as Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Rolando Hinojosa, Michael Nava, and Manuel Ramos. Their works reveal the struggles of Chicanas/os with feminism, homosexuality, familia, masculinity, mysticism, the nationalist subject, and U.S.-Mexico border relations. He maintains that their novels register crucial new discourses of identity, politics, and cultural citizenship that cannot be understood apart from the historical instability following the demise of the nationalist politics of the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to that time, when Chicanas/os sought a unified Chicano identity in order to effect social change, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have seen a disengagement from these nationalist politics and a new trend toward a heterogeneous sense of self. The detective novel and its traditional focus on questions of knowledge and identity turned out to be the perfect medium in which to examine this new self.
Author: Nels Pearson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317151968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Taking up a neglected area in the study of the crime novel, this collection investigates the growing number of writers who adapt conventions of detective fiction to expose problems of law, ethics, and truth that arise in postcolonial and transnational communities. While detective fiction has been linked to imperialism and constructions of race from its earliest origins, recent developments signal the evolution of the genre into a potent framework for narrating the complexities of identity, citizenship, and justice in a postcolonial world. Among the authors considered are Vikram Chandra, Gabriel García Márquez, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa, Suki Kim, and Walter Mosley. The essays explore detective stories set in Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and North America, including novels that view the American metropolis from the point of view of Asian American, African American, or Latino characters. Offering ten new and original essays by scholars in the field, this volume highlights the diverse employment of detective fictions internationally, and uncovers important political and historical subtexts of popular crime novels.
Author: June Thomson
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 9780385132459
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
Author: Susan Hill
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144813871X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
'Serrailler, Hill's brilliant detective, is the central character in the great writer's crime fiction novels' CAMILLA, DUCHESS OF CORNWALL How do you catch a killer who doesn't exist? One snowy night in the cathedral city of Lafferton, an old woman is dragged from her bed and strangled with a length of flex. DCS Simon Serrailler and his team search desperately for clues to her murderer. All they know is that the killer will strike again, and will once more leave the same tell-tale signature. Then they track down a name: Alan Keyes. But Alan Keyes has no birth certificate, no address, no job, no family, no passport, no dental records. Nothing. Their killer does not exist. 'As addictive as Rankin' Scotsman
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 904202917X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Investigating Identities: Questions of Identity in Contemporary International Crime Fiction is one of the relatively few books to date which adopts a comparative approach to the study of the genre. This collection of twenty essays by international scholars, examining crime fiction production from over a dozen countries, confirms that a comparative approach can both shed light on processes of adaptation and appropriation of the genre within specific national, regional or local contexts, and also uncover similarities between the works of authors from very different areas.Contributors explore discourse concerning national and historical memory, language, race, ethnicity, culture and gender, and examine how identity is affirmed and challenged in the crime genre today. They reveal a growing tendency towards hybridization and postmodern experimentation, and increasing engagement with philosophical enquiry into the epistemological dimensions of investigation. Throughout, the notion of stable identities is subject to scrutiny.While each essay in itself is a valuable addition to existing criticism on the genre, all the chapters mutually inform and complement each other in fascinating and often unexpected ways. This volume makes an important contribution to the growing field of crime fiction studies and to ongoing debates on questions of identity. It will therefore be of special interest to students and scholars of the crime genre, identity studies and comparative literature. It will also appeal to all who enjoy reading contemporary crime fiction.
Author: Amanda Dennis
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
ISBN: 194265877X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
An atmospheric debut novel about one lost young woman’s search for another “Spellbinding. . . . Wholly engrossing.” —Washington Post Elena, struggling with memory loss due to a trauma that has unmoored her sense of self, deserts graduate school and a long-term relationship to accept a bizarre proposition from an estranged family friend in Paris: she will search for a young woman, Ella, who went missing six years earlier in Thailand, by rewriting her journals. As she delves deeper into Ella’s story, Elena begins to lose sight of her own identity and drift dangerously toward self-annihilation. Her Here is an existential detective story with a shocking denouement that plumbs the creative and destructive powers of narrative itself. An Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and Cambridge Gates Scholar, Amanda Dennis teaches at the American University of Paris. Her Here is her first novel.
Author: Anthea Fraser
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1780102771
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
Meet Rona Parish, a talented biographer who has a skill for writing about the past and encountering danger along the way, and her adorable golden retriever, Gus. Rona Parish has to verify a rumour of what seems to be a huge scandal which happened a long time ago at a closed-down school. But will the past catch up with her before she can unravel the truth? Biographer Rona Parish is at her wits' end when she struggles to finish her latest writing project. Open to distraction, she catches up with her friends and family and tries to clear her head in the meantime. An old school photograph in which someone seems to have been blacked out hints at a curious event . . . A far more inconvenient distraction, her twin sister Lindsey persuades her to use her detective skills for a discovery concerning an old school photograph in which someone deliberately blacked out a figure. Who is the mysterious person in the photograph and why would someone want to hide their identity? Rona Parish has to uncover long-forgotten secrets and a rumoured scandal that took place decades ago . . . Reluctantly, Rona takes on the job and tries to put the pieces together. But investigating a decades-old scandal proves trickier than she anticipated, and brings up the question if this story will stay buried after all . . . A page-turning cosy mystery set in the fictional English market town of Marsborough in the stunning Chiltern Hills. Fans of M.C. Beaton, Richard Osman, Reverend Richard Coles, G.M. Malliet, Margery Allingham, Betty Rowlands and Faith Martin will love this series. READERS ADORE RONA PARISH: "Excellent mystery" "I enjoy this series and like catching up with Rona Parish and her extended family" "This is a good clean murder mystery" "British cozy fans will enjoy the sophisticated plot and country atmosphere" Booklist "Solid plotting complements the author's in-depth examinations of the varied relationships among her characters, in particular the bond between Rona and Lindsey" Publishers Weekly The Rona Parish mysteries 1. Brought to Book 2. Jigsaw 3. Person or Persons Unknown 4. A Family Concern 5. Rogue in Porcelain 6. Next Door to Murder 7. Unfinished Portrait 8. A Question of Identity 9. Justice Postponed 10. Retribution
