Contemporary Crime Fiction: Constraints and Development

Abstract

Much has been written about crime fiction, and treatments of the subject vary greatly. Whereas, for instance, some writers view such material as no more than entertaining, crime fiction has been elsewhere treated more seriously. Theorists, critics and analysts have described both the history of the genre and changing attitudes to it (Ball, 1976; Winks, 1980; Roth, 1995; Messent, 1997; Knight, 1980, 2004; Scaggs, 2005; Horsley, 2005 and so on). According to Knight (1980: 1), less evaluative approaches have tried to establish why crime fiction is so compelling; psychoanalysts found the basis of the form’s patterns in the psychic anxieties of writers and readers, while another type of analysis has seen the social attitudes and the pressures of the modern environment as the basic drive in crime fiction. Overall, though the development of the genre was traced by literary critics, ‘culturally’ attuned critics, psychoanalysts and sociologists, little linguistic work has been undertaken in the area. It is in Chapter 3 that I aim to apply analytical stylistic frameworks to crime fiction extracts, and hence put forward the argument that the discipline of linguistic stylistics has a great deal of insight to offer as to the genre’s form, preferred structures, and effects.