Twentieth‐Century Crime Fiction

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Twentieth‐Century Crime Fiction", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 6, pp. 514-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710760454

“The aim of this book has been to provide readers with a historical and analytic context within which to enjoy the huge variety of twentieth‐ and twenty‐first century crime writing” Lee Horsley (lecturer in English at Lancaster University and author of Fictions of Power in English Literature, 1900‐1950, London, Longman, 1995) ends her study of crime fiction with this statement. In a well‐populated field, both of primary texts in crime and detection and thrillers and of secondary critical texts (with which Horsley shows admirable familiarity), this is likely to establish itself as a good working text for anyone running, or thinking of running, a course (at college and university, or in evening class format) or giving a talk on a genre they know and like.

The content clearly derives from the author's own experience of teaching the genre in literature and cultural studies courses. She says in her preface that the study will interest anyone who enjoys reading crime fiction, as well as people running or taking academic courses. This makes it (hardback for libraries, paperback for anyone else, costing a mere £16.99) highly suitable for both academic and public libraries. It can also be used as a selection tool, and for this reason a short listing of other critical sources is provided (from the book) at the end of this review.

Horsley's approach is to examine six aspects of crime fiction (this for her easily and convincingly includes detection and thrillers): the classic tradition, hard‐boiled fiction, the appeal of evil and dead bodies (“transgression and pathology”), crime fiction's role as a socio‐political critique, black appropriations, and regendering the genre. To anyone familiar with the field, these headings are unsurprising, but Horsley does at least four things with them that will appeal to readers. First, she writes in a fresh clear way, blending plot‐lines and characterization with critical insights easily. Second, she bases her discussions, step by step, on specific crime texts (like Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley or Sara Paretsky's Bitter Medicine), not only making her case convincingly but also giving readers (including students) clear signposts to actual steps they themselves can study. The selection of texts is good – inevitably people will have other favourites, but these are chosen because they raise important critical points about the genre and its context.

Third, Horsley accepts the fact that categories in this area are arbitrary and that things roll back upon themselves. So, while Christie and Sayers and Allingham are attributed to the classic tradition and the Golden Age of crime, not all their works, and not all the works of writers who followed in their footsteps (like P.D. James, Highsmith, and Ruth Rendell) exist in that so‐called classic tradition alone – their representations of female detectives also test the male encoding of the genre. Also, while we associated Hammett and Chandler (and later Spillane and MacDonald, McBain and Sallis) with the hard‐boiled tradition, the noir aspect of such writing feeds through into criminal‐centred narratives from writers from Burnett to Harris (of Hannibal Lecter fame) and also offers a socio‐political critique and satire of contemporary society (think not just of their own novels but others like Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Carl Hiaasen's Stormy Weather, and Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?).

And fourth, Horsley makes a persuasive case for literary and cultural transformations, not only of the primary texts and styles themselves, but of the critical apparatus that has grown up around them. Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd notoriously turned the classic formula on its head. Not all classic writers deserved Chandler's famous criticism in “The Simple Art of Murder” in 1944. Differences between Hammett and Chandler are subtler than mere bibliographical listing suggests, and, within the hard‐boiled tradition, MacDonald (by going inside the guilt‐ridden protagonist) and Sallis (with an interest in existential identity that reminds us of Auster) by no means stick to the formula. Iain Banks and Hiaasen have a satirical cynicism in common that Chester Himes brings through his Harlem novels, which themselves reveal suppressed realities and reverse the literary gaze of contemporary writing. Feminist and lesbian writing is not one thing – as reading Grafton and Wings and Paretsky and Hendricks confirms – and not only rewrote male thriller conventions but reflect contemporary resistance to gender stereotypes.

Crime and detective fiction is widely recognized as reflecting social and cultural preoccupations – the patriarchal and hierarchical society disturbed by criminal behaviour, the white and black perspectives on urban crime and violence, the dehumanizing effect of consumerism, the fascination with the gruesome and psychopathology. Ways of reading these – post‐post‐structuralist – emphasize new dialogic readerly ways of interpreting texts. And – a final comment – this is a genre that has survived the 20th‐century and looks as if it will be healthy and varied in the 21st. Horsley keeps to a strict brief of Anglophone crime fiction, mainly American and British, and her critical insights cover generic and chronological transitions, cultural and political ideology and ways of reading the text. A very perceptive and useful text of its type. OUP have interesting examples of crime writing in their “Oxford books” of Victorian and American and English detective stories and these might interest librarians and collectors.