BOOK NEWS: Examining unseen structures and uncertain spaces in crime writing

The Crossroads of Crime Writing: Unseen Structures and Uncertain Spaces

EDITED BY MEGHAN P. NOLAN AND REBECCA MARTIN 

Anthem Press, 2024

ISBN: 9781839991172

https://anthempress.com/the-crossroads-of-crime-writing-hb

Over a century ago, in his examination The Sensational in Modern English Fiction (1919), Walter Clarke Phillips declared, “Whatever sources of appeal may come or go, there is one which from the very structure of modern democratic society seldom bids for applause unheeded—that is, the appeal to fear” (p. 2). It is to this appeal that we owe the abundance of crime writing at our disposal—a trove of mystery that undoubtedly fascinates in its ability to entertain while safely reflecting the ugliest truths about ourselves and the societies in which we live. 

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

This volume argues that we must examine the boundaries in fiction and non-fiction crime writing with an awareness of and turn toward the unseen structures and spatial uncertainties that so often lead to and reflect collective fears and anxieties. Drawing upon the insights and expertise of an international array of scholars, the chapters explore the interplay of the literary, historical, social, and cultural in various modes of crime writing from the 1890s to as recent as 2017. They examine unseen structures and uncertain spaces, and simultaneously provide new insights into the works of iconic authors, such as Agatha Christie, and iconic fictional figures, like Sherlock Holmes, as well as underexplored subjects, including Ukrainian detective fiction of the Soviet period and crime writing by a Bengali police detective at the turn of the twentieth century. The breadth of coverage—of both time and place—is an indicator of a text in which seasoned readers, advanced students, and academics will find new perspectives on crime writing employing theories of cultural memory and deep mapping.  

This volume features authors and subjects that are global in scope with original, innovative work on crime writing. The breadth of coverage—of both time and place—is an indicator of a text in which seasoned readers, advanced students, and academics will find specialized explorations of individual works and authors, while the critical and theoretical approaches and the topical coherence of the collection offer to a wide audience a scholarly overview of crime writing, as a still-growing area of popular interest and a still-evolving field of intellectual exploration.

This distinctive collection investigates boundaries in crime fiction, paying attention to hidden narratives, structures, and spaces. Comprising wide-ranging essays examining topics such as ecology, politics, Black and Indian detective fiction, and true crime, Nolan and Martin’s edited volume makes a powerful contribution to the ever-diversifying field of crime fiction criticism.  — Charlotte Beyer, University of Gloucestershire

Nolan and Martin have interestingly brought together analyses of texts likely unfamiliar to English readers and re-evaluations of ones that are overly familiar, making seen how the less visible geo-spatial and genre-spatial organizations have profound bearing on the social contributions of crime fiction. — Malcah Effron, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Meghan P. Nolan, MFA, MA, PhD, is an associate professor of English and Chair of the Honors program at SUNY Rockland Community College. She is a multigenre writer, who focuses on (Neo-)Victorian and Modern literature/crime writing and fragmented perceptions of self-hood through many published academic works, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Rebecca Martin, PhD, is professor emerita of English at Pace University in New York. In addition to her PhD, which focused on the eighteenth-century Gothic novel in England, she holds a graduate certificate in film studies from CUNY Graduate Center, and her interest in crime writing focuses on the hardboiled tradition.

BOOK NEWS: Subversion of convention in Irish noir fiction

Finders: Justice, Faith, and Identity in Irish Crime Fiction

BY ANJILI BABBAR

Syracuse UP, 2023

ISBN: 9780815611578

https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/5582/finders/

Some of the most iconic, hard-boiled Irish detectives in fiction insist that they are not detectives at all. Hailing from a region with a cultural history of mistrust in the criminal justice system, Irish crime writers resist many of the stereotypical devices of the genre. These writers have adroitly carved out their own individual narratives to weave firsthand perspectives of history, politics, violence, and changes in the economic and social climate together with characters who have richly detailed experiences.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Recognizing this achievement among Irish crime writers, Babbar shines a light on how Irish noir has established a new approach to a longstanding genre. Beginning with Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor, who rejects the detective title in favor of “finder”—a reference to Saint Anthony of Padua in the context of a traditionally secular form—Babbar examines the ways Irish authors, including John Connolly, Tana French, Alex Barclay, Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway, Claire McGowan, Gerard Brennan, Stuart Neville, Steve Cavanagh, and Eoin McNamee, subvert convention to reclaim their stories from a number of powerful influences: Revivalism, genre snobbery, cultural literary standards, and colonialism. These writers assert their heritage while also assuming a vital role in creating a broader vision of justice.

"Babbar's rigorous, serious, and insightful Finders is the most comprehensive study into the exciting phenomenon of Northern Irish crime fiction. A must-read for literary scholars and the casual fan of the most explosive sub genre of Celtic Noir."—Adrian McKinty, author of The Chain

"This is an astonishing achievement. . . . Historically rich and geographically expansive, Babbar’s study, in smooth, erudite prose, casts an astute eye over the complexities and distinctiveness of Irish crime fiction."—Andrew Pepper, Queen’s University Belfast

"Babbar provides a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the major authors in the contemporary Irish noir field. She accomplishes a minor miracle in synthesizing so many texts in an interesting, provocative, and engaging way."—Andrew Kincaid, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

"Babbar’s hopeful readings broaden the critical lens in distinctive and valuable ways by exploring Irish crime fiction’s acute insights about the thorniest matters of community faith and self."—Brian Cliff, coeditor of Guilt Rules All: Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction

Anjili Babbar is associate professor of English at the Community College of Baltimore County. She has published on topics ranging from Irish crime fiction to representations of Irish folklore in popular culture.

Book News: Welty's use of crime fiction conventions

Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight

EDITED BY JACOB AGNER AND HARRIET POLLACK

UP of Mississippi, 2022

ISBN: 9781496842718

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/E/Eudora-Welty-and-Mystery

Eudora Welty’s ingenious play with readers’ expectations made her a cunning writer, a paramount modernist, a short story artist of the first rank, and a remarkable literary innovator. In her signature puzzle-texts, she habitually engages with familiar genres and then delights readers with her transformations and nonfulfillment of conventions. Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight reveals how often that play is with mystery, crime, and detective fiction genres, popular fiction forms often condescended to in literary studies, but unabashedly beloved by Welty throughout her lifetime.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Put another way, Welty often creates her stories’ secrets by both evoking and displacing crime fiction conventions. Instead of restoring order with a culminating reveal, her story-puzzles characteristically allow mystery to linger and thicken. The mystery pursued becomes mystery elsewhere. The essays in this collection shift attention from narratives, characters, and plots as they have previously been understood by unearthing enigmas hidden within those constructions.

Some of these new readings continue Welty’s investigation of hegemonic whiteness and southern narratives of race—outlining these in chalk as outright crime stories. Other essays show how Welty anticipated the regendering of the form now so characteristic of contemporary women mystery writers. Her tender and widely ranging personal correspondence with the hard-boiled American crime writer Ross Macdonald is also discussed. Together these essays make the case that across her career, Eudora Welty was arguably one of the genre’s greatest double agents, and, to apply the titles of Macdonald’s novels to her inventiveness with the form, she is its “underground woman,” its unexpected “sleeping beauty.”

"Eudora Welty and Mystery constitutes an unexpected, surprising, but productive approach to the works of a major American twentieth-century writer." - David McWhirter, professor of English at Texas A&M University

"Focusing on the influence exerted by the mystery/detective fiction genre on Welty's writing, Eudora Welty and Mystery unambiguously opens an overlooked and original avenue of inquiry. The essays powerfully evoke Welty, the late modernist caught in a postmodernist pose, and showcase some of her best critics patiently and cleverly teasing out various textual refractions and echoes." - Stephen M. Fuller, author of Eudora Welty and Surrealism

"The prose is accessible throughout. . . . Welty scholars will enjoy these well-argued pieces." - Publishers Weekly

Jacob Agner is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Mississippi. As a recipient of the Eudora Welty Research Fellowship, funded by the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, he has examined the writer’s correspondence for connections to film history.

Harriet Pollack, College of Charleston, is author of Eudora Welty’s Fiction and Photography: The Body of the Other Woman and editor of New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race; Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race; Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination (with Christopher Metress); Eudora Welty and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade? (with Suzanne Marrs); and Having Our Way: Women Rewriting Tradition in Twentieth-Century America. She now serves as editor of University Press of Mississippi’s book series Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty. She has twice served as president of the Eudora Welty Society, has directed three international Welty conferences including the 2009 Centennial, and in 2008 received the Phoenix Award for outstanding contributions to Welty scholarship.