Editorial. Contemporary Crime Fiction: A Surfeit of Riches

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In early 2014, several articles appeared proclaiming the rise to prominence of a new subgenre of the crime novel: “chick noir,” which included popular books like Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, and Before We Met. However, there was also resistance to the new genre label from critics who viewed it as belittling to women’s writing and to female-focused narratives. Indeed, the separation of female-centred books - whether “chick lit” or “chick noir” - from mainstream fiction remains highly problematic and reflects the persistence of a gendered literary hierarchy. However, as this paper suggests, the label “chick noir” also reflects the fact that in these novels the crime thriller has been revitalized through cross-pollination with the so-called chick lit novel. I contend that chick lit and chick noir are two narrative forms addressing many of the same concerns relating to the modern woman, offering two different responses: humour and horror. Comparing the features of chick noir to those of chick lit and noir crime fiction, I suggest that chick noir may be read as a manifestation of feminist anger and anxiety - responses to the contemporary pressure to be “wonder women.”</abstract>

“Chick Noir”: Shopaholic Meets Double Indemnity

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The aim of this essay is to discuss the legacy of the roman noir in contemporary detective fiction produced outside the hegemonic center of power, here represented by the novel Death in Little Tokyo (1996), written by Japanese-American author Dale Furutani. Starting from the concept of the metaphysical detective (Haycraft 76; Holquist 153-156), characterized by deep questioning about narrative, interpretation, subjectivity, the nature of reality and the limits of knowledge, this article proposes a discussion about how these literary works, which at first sight represent a traditionally Anglo-American genre, constitute narratives that aim to rescue the memory, history and culture of marginalized communities. Typical of late modernity detective fiction, the metaphysical detective has none of the positivistic detective’s certainties, as he does not share in his Cartesian notion of totality, being presented instead as a successor of the hardboiled detective of the roman noir. In this article I intend to analyze the paths chosen by the author and discuss how his re-reading of the roman noir dialogues with the texts of hegemonic noire detective fiction, inscribing them in literary tradition and subverting them at the same time.</abstract>

A Japanese-American Sam Spade: The Metaphysical Detective in Death in Little Tokyo, by Dale Furutani

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This study will explore the role of female authors in contemporary Scottish crime fiction. Over the past thirty years, women writers have overhauled the traditionally male dominated genre of crime fiction by writing about strong female characters who drive the plot and solve the crimes. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Lin Anderson are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender and genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, both journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series, I wish to explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives.This essay documents the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research which involves writing a crime novel set in a post referendum Scotland. I examine a progressive and contemporary Scottish society, where women hold many senior positions in public life, and investigate whether this has an effect on the outcome of crimes. Through this narrative, my main character will focus on the current and largely hidden crimes of human trafficking and domestic abuse. By doing this I examine the ways in which the modern crime novel has evolved to cross genre boundaries. In addition to focusing on a crime, the victims and witnesses, today’s crime novels are tackling social issues to reflect society’s changing attitudes and values.</abstract>

Bloody Women: How Female Authors Have Transformed the Scottish Contemporary Crime Fiction Genre

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> My essay proposes a reading of J.G. Ballard’s 1988 novella Running Wild as a cautionary crime story, a parable about the self-fulfilling prophecies of contemporary urban fears and about the “prisons” they create in a consumerist, technology- and media-dominated civilization. Interpreted in the light of Foucault’s concept of panopticism, Ballard’s gated community as a crime setting reveals how a disciplinary pedagogy meant to obtain “docile bodies,” masked under the socially elitist comfort of affluence and parental care, “brands” the inmate-children as potential delinquents and ultimately drives them to an act of “mass tyrannicide.” Ballard uses the murder story as a vehicle for the exploration of the paradoxical effects of a regime of total surveillance and of mediated presence, which, while expected to make “murder mystery” impossible, allows for the precession of the representation to the real (crime). The essay also highlights the way in which Ballard both cites and subverts some of the conventions of the Golden Age detective fiction, mainly by his rejection of the latter’s escapist ethos and by the liminal character of his investigator, at once part of a normalizing panoptic apparatus and eccentric to it, a “poetic figure” (Chesterton) relying on imagination and “aestheticizing” the routines of the detection process.</abstract>

Discipline and Murder: Panoptic Pedagogy and the Aesthetics of Detection in J.G. Ballard’s Running Wild

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This article examines the portrayal of female identity and crime in the Tudor period in Nancy Bilyeau’s contemporary historical crime fiction novel, The Crown (2012). Featuring a female detective figure, Joanna Stafford, Bilyeau’s novel forms part of the wealth of contemporary fiction using Tudor history as context, reflecting a continued interest in and fascination with this period and its prominent figures. This article examines Bilyeau’s representation of the Tudor period in The Crown through the depiction of English society and culture from a contemporary perspective, employing genre fiction in order to highlight issues of criminality. My investigation of The Crown as crime fiction specifically involves analysing gender-political questions and their portrayal within the novel and its tumultuous historical context. This investigation furthermore explores the depiction of agency, individuality, religion, and politics. The article concludes that Bilyeau’s suspense-filled novel provides an imaginative representation of Tudor history through the prism of the crime fiction genre. Central to this project is its employment of a resourceful and complex female detective figure at the heart of the narrative.</abstract>

“I Stand Out Like a Raven”: Depicting the Female Detective and Tudor History in Nancy Bilyeau’s The Crown

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Auggie’s Revenge is Alex Kudera’s comic crime novel about academic labor in urban America. In the city of brotherly unemployment, instructor of philosophy Michael Vittinger shares an adjuncts’ office far removed from any full-time or tenure-track position. After more than a decade of teaching, Michael still lives paycheck-to-supermarket in a small studio apartment. In the following excerpt, Vittinger gets stood up at the bar by his girlfriend, encounters less fortunate street dwellers on his way to securing affordable comestibles at the local convenience store, and retires for the evening to watch frisky bears on late-night television.</abstract>

Excerpt from Auggie’s Revenge

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Myra Hindley is one of the most notorious female murderers in the world. This poem explores the ways in which Hindley has been, and continues to be mythologised by society. It examines the mythical women that have been compared to her, and attempts to demonstrate how dangerous it is to compare real people to fictional characters. The poem discusses how the press depicts murderers and the affect this has on the world. Using examples such as Dracula, the poem also reflects on how facts lose truth over time, and how many stories about real people have become mythologised whether this was intentional or not.</abstract>

What Big Teeth She Has

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This poem is a creative response to contemporary true crime narratives about baby farming in Victorian times, namely Alison Rattle and Allison Vale’s The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money: The Story of Amelia Dyer (London: André Deutsch, 2011); and the TV documentary, “Amelia Dyer: Martina Cole’s Lady Killers.”</abstract>

True Crime

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> A critical day in the life of Leonard Rose, an Edinburgh (Embra) criminal with undertones of Homer’s Odysseus and James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom. He thinks of his son, Stevie, whom he has not seen for fifteen years. After his morning ablutions he attends the cremation service of a notable lawyer, who had ties to local crime kingpin, Big Sam. Leonard is shaken by visions of the people he murdered for Big Sam. Stevie is waiting outside, accompanied by two detectives. Leonard is told that his ex-wife, Penny, is setting up Glasgow gang boss Boy ‘The Boiler’ Boyle. Leonard takes the police to his bar, the End of the World, aware that Big Sam’s number two, Nessie, is following. After knocking the policemen out and overpowering Nessie and his men, Leonard and Stevie go to Big Sam’s palatial home. When he understands that Penny intended to betray Big Sam as well, Leonard deserts his son and goes home, free of emotional and professional ties. He decides to leave Edinburgh and go inland, where no one knows him. But before that he will knock on his female neighbour’s door, hoping she will give his attentions a positive reception.</abstract>

Ulysses of Embra

Reviews. Detective Types and Criminal Minds

Reviews. The Teaching Life as a House of Troubles

Reviews. Investigating Crime in Margaret Atwood’s Oeuvre

Reviews. Soviet History as Crime Scene

Reviews. Gender on the Agenda

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 41 (2023): Issue 1 (December 2023)

Volume 40 (2023): Issue 1 (June 2023)

Volume 39 (2022): Issue 1 (December 2022)

Volume 38 (2022): Issue 1 (June 2022)

Volume 37 (2021): Issue 1 (December 2021)

Volume 36 (2021): Issue 1 (June 2021)

Volume 35 (2020): Issue 1 (December 2020)

Volume 34 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

Volume 33 (2019): Issue 1 (December 2019)

Volume 32 (2019): Issue 1 (June 2019)

Volume 31 (2018): Issue 1 (December 2018)

Volume 30 (2018): Issue 1 (June 2018)

Volume 29 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017)

Volume 28 (2017): Issue 1 (June 2017)

Volume 27 (2016): Issue 1 (December 2016)

Volume 26 (2016): Issue 1 (June 2016)

Volume 25 (2015): Issue 1 (December 2015)

Volume 24 (2015): Issue 1 (June 2015)

Volume 23 (2014): Issue 1 (December 2014)

Volume 22 (2014): Issue 1 (August 2014)

Volume 21 (2014): Issue 1 (January 2014)

Volume 20 (2013): Issue 1 (June 2013)

Volume 19 (2012): Issue 2012 (December 2012)

American, British and Canadian Studies

 Publishing House and Owner: Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania  Founded in 1999 as the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, American, British and Canadian Studies is currently published biannually by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, under the aegis of the Research Centre for Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Studies at LBUS and the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania. It is an international, peer-reviewed journal that sets out to explore disciplinary developments in Anglophone Studies in the changing environment forged by the intersections of culture, technology and electronic information. Our primary goal is to bring together in productive dialogue scholars conducting advanced research in the theoretical humanities. As well as offering innovative approaches to influential crosscurrents in contemporary thinking, the journal seeks to contribute fresh angles to the academic subject of English and promote shape-changing research across conventional boundaries. By virtue of its dynamic and varied profile and of the intercultural dialogue that it caters for, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to fill a gap in the Romanian academic arena, and function as the first publication to approach Anglophone Studies in a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within the proposed range of diversity, our major scope is to provide close examinations and lucid analyses of the role and future of the academic institutions at the cutting edge of high-tech. With this end in view, we especially invite contributions in the fields of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Language and Linguistics, Multimedia and Digital Arts, Translation Studies and related subjects. With its wide subject range, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to become one of the academic community’s premium scholarly resources.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 