Academic literature on the topic 'Detective fiction'

In this thesis I set out to write the first in-depth study of Pessoa's detective stories. I approached this task in three steps: firstly, by tracing Pessoa's interest in the genre of crime fiction, his readings and influences. Secondly, by analysing the themes and structure of the Quaresma stories. Thirdly, by placing them in the context of Pessoa's written output. The first step is addressed in the first two chapters of the thesis, where I study the connections between Pessoa and Anglo-American detective fiction, as well as how he adapted foreign models to a Portuguese context. The second step of my approach is developed in chapters 3 to 5. In the first of these I focus on the construction of Quaresma as a literary character. My key finding is that the texts featuring him are composed by two kinds of writing: on the one hand narrative prose, including descriptions, actions and elements that further the plot; on the other, an essayistic prose which consists of Quaresma's long speeches expounding his theories on criminal investigation, philosophy, psychology, and reasoning. Chapters 4 and 5 study several of the Quaresma stories from the point of view of gender relations and how these shape the construction of plot and character. At this juncture I use Lacanian and Derridean readings on Poe's 'The Purloined Letter', having previously established that author's influence on Pessoa. The third and final step of my thesis is an attempt to interpret Pessoa's detective fiction in relation to his wider work: I propose a reading of the Quaresma stories, other prose texts and heteronymity as parts of a literary project of creating non-narrative fictions.

Lesbian Detective Fiction: the outsider within is a creative writing thesis in two parts: a draft lesbian detective novel, titled Fatal Development (75%) and an exegesis containing a critical appraisal of the sub-genre of lesbian detective fiction, and of my own writing process (25%). Creative work: Fatal Development -- It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a dead body, but it didn’t seem to get any easier. -- When Dirk and Stacey discover a body in the courtyard of their Brisbane woolstore apartment, it is close friend and neighbour, Kersten Heller, they turn to for support. The police assume Stuart’s death was an accident, but when it emerges that he was about to take legal action against the woolstore’s developers, Bovine, Kersten decides there must be more to it. Her own apartment has flooded twice in a month and the builders are still in and out repairing defects. She discovers Stuart was not alone on the roof when he fell to his death and the evidence he had collected for his case against Bovine has gone missing. Armed with this knowledge, and fed up with the developer’s ongoing resistance to addressing the building’s structural issues, Kersten organises a class action against Bovine. Kersten draws on her past training as a spy to investigate Stuart’s death, hiding her activities, and details of her past, from her partner, Toni. Her actions bring her under increasing threat as her apartment is defaced, searched and bugged, and she is involved in a car chase across New Farm. Forced to fall back on old skills, old habits and memories return to the surface. When Toni discovers that Kersten has broken her promise to leave the investigation to the police, she walks out. The neighbouring – and heritage-listed – Riverside Coal development site burns to the ground, and Kersten and Dirk uncover evidence of a network of corruption involving developers and local government officials. After she is kidnapped in broad daylight, narrowly escaping from the boot of a moving car, Kersten is confident she is right, but with Toni not returning her calls, and many of the other residents selling up, including Dirk and Stacey, Kersten begins to question her judgment. In a desperate attempt to turn things around, Kersten calls on an old Agency contact to help prove Bovine was involved in Stuart’s death, her kidnapping, and ongoing corruption. To get the evidence she needs, Kersten plays a dangerous game: letting Bovine know she has uncovered their illegal operations in order to draw them into revealing themselves on tape. Hiding alone in a hotel room, Kersten is finally forced to confront her past: When Mirin didn’t come home that night, I was ready to go out and find her myself, disappear, and start a new life together somewhere far away. Instead they pulled me in before I could finish making arrangements, questioned me for hours, turned everything around. It was golden child to problem child in the space of a day. This time, she’s determined, things will turn out differently. Exegesis: The exegesis traces the development of lesbian detective fiction, including its dual origins in detective and lesbian fiction, to compare the current state of the sub-genre with the early texts and to establish the dominant themes and tropes. I focus particularly on Australian examples of the sub-genre, examining in detail Claire McNab’s Denise Cleever series and Jan McKemmish’s A Gap in the Records, in order to position my own lesbian detective novel between these two works. In drafting Fatal Development, I have attempted to include some of the political content and complexity of McKemmish’s work, but with a plot-driven narrative. I examine the dominant tropes and conventions of the sub-genre, such as: lesbian politics; the nature of the crime; method of investigation; sex and romance; and setting. In the final section, I explain the ways in which I have worked within and against the subgenre’s conventions in drafting a contemporary lesbian detective novel: drawing on tradition and subverting reader expectations. Throughout the thesis, I explore in detail the tradition of the fictional lesbian detective as an outsider on the margins of society, disrupting notions of power and gender. While the lesbian detective’s outsider status grants her moral agency and the capacity to achieve justice and generate change, she is never fully accepted. The lesbian detective remains an outsider within. For the lesbian detective, working within a system that ultimately discriminates against her involves conflict and compromise, and a sense of double-play in being part of two worlds but belonging to neither. I explore how this double-consciousness can be applied to the lesbian writer in choosing whether to write for a mainstream or lesbian audience.

Lesbian Detective Fiction: the outsider within is a creative writing thesis in two parts: a draft lesbian detective novel, titled Fatal Development (75%) and an exegesis containing a critical appraisal of the sub-genre of lesbian detective fiction, and of my own writing process (25%). Creative work: Fatal Development -- It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a dead body, but it didn’t seem to get any easier. -- When Dirk and Stacey discover a body in the courtyard of their Brisbane woolstore apartment, it is close friend and neighbour, Kersten Heller, they turn to for support. The police assume Stuart’s death was an accident, but when it emerges that he was about to take legal action against the woolstore’s developers, Bovine, Kersten decides there must be more to it. Her own apartment has flooded twice in a month and the builders are still in and out repairing defects. She discovers Stuart was not alone on the roof when he fell to his death and the evidence he had collected for his case against Bovine has gone missing. Armed with this knowledge, and fed up with the developer’s ongoing resistance to addressing the building’s structural issues, Kersten organises a class action against Bovine. Kersten draws on her past training as a spy to investigate Stuart’s death, hiding her activities, and details of her past, from her partner, Toni. Her actions bring her under increasing threat as her apartment is defaced, searched and bugged, and she is involved in a car chase across New Farm. Forced to fall back on old skills, old habits and memories return to the surface. When Toni discovers that Kersten has broken her promise to leave the investigation to the police, she walks out. The neighbouring – and heritage-listed – Riverside Coal development site burns to the ground, and Kersten and Dirk uncover evidence of a network of corruption involving developers and local government officials. After she is kidnapped in broad daylight, narrowly escaping from the boot of a moving car, Kersten is confident she is right, but with Toni not returning her calls, and many of the other residents selling up, including Dirk and Stacey, Kersten begins to question her judgment. In a desperate attempt to turn things around, Kersten calls on an old Agency contact to help prove Bovine was involved in Stuart’s death, her kidnapping, and ongoing corruption. To get the evidence she needs, Kersten plays a dangerous game: letting Bovine know she has uncovered their illegal operations in order to draw them into revealing themselves on tape. Hiding alone in a hotel room, Kersten is finally forced to confront her past: When Mirin didn’t come home that night, I was ready to go out and find her myself, disappear, and start a new life together somewhere far away. Instead they pulled me in before I could finish making arrangements, questioned me for hours, turned everything around. It was golden child to problem child in the space of a day. This time, she’s determined, things will turn out differently. Exegesis: The exegesis traces the development of lesbian detective fiction, including its dual origins in detective and lesbian fiction, to compare the current state of the sub-genre with the early texts and to establish the dominant themes and tropes. I focus particularly on Australian examples of the sub-genre, examining in detail Claire McNab’s Denise Cleever series and Jan McKemmish’s A Gap in the Records, in order to position my own lesbian detective novel between these two works. In drafting Fatal Development, I have attempted to include some of the political content and complexity of McKemmish’s work, but with a plot-driven narrative. I examine the dominant tropes and conventions of the sub-genre, such as: lesbian politics; the nature of the crime; method of investigation; sex and romance; and setting. In the final section, I explain the ways in which I have worked within and against the subgenre’s conventions in drafting a contemporary lesbian detective novel: drawing on tradition and subverting reader expectations. Throughout the thesis, I explore in detail the tradition of the fictional lesbian detective as an outsider on the margins of society, disrupting notions of power and gender. While the lesbian detective’s outsider status grants her moral agency and the capacity to achieve justice and generate change, she is never fully accepted. The lesbian detective remains an outsider within. For the lesbian detective, working within a system that ultimately discriminates against her involves conflict and compromise, and a sense of double-play in being part of two worlds but belonging to neither. I explore how this double-consciousness can be applied to the lesbian writer in choosing whether to write for a mainstream or lesbian audience.

This dissertation compares Native American and Sardinian literatures, focussing on literary renditions of detective stories, a recent development which has occurred in both literatures. The study is based on Procedura (1988), and Il terzo suono (1995), by Sardinian author Salvatore Mannuzzu; The Sharpest Sight (1992), Bone Game (1994), and Nightland (1996) by Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish writer Louis Owens. In both literatures the use of detective fiction embodies the authors' commentary regarding the discourse on colonization. Recurrent thematic features are the concern with history, notably the history of domination and the processes that have led to the present post-colonial condition. The drive towards solving the crime symbolizes and comments upon the necessity of addressing the history of colonization, past and present, both of the land and its people. All the novels included in this study elaborate the basic features of the genre in innovative ways that offer significant commentaries on the condition of these two colonized peoples. The truth at the end of the narration is broken down to a multiplicity of competing narratives. The dispossession and exploitation of ancestral land are textually structured as crimes which further parallel and comment upon the murder of human beings. Also, the characters of the detectives are pivotal for the embodiment of a critique of the classic anthropological model. The gathering of data in order to offer a 'scientific' version of the truth is an endeavor shared by criminal investigators as well as anthropologists, ethnologists and archaeologists. Since classic detective fiction and modern science developed simultaneously around the middle of nineteenth century, it is not coincidental that post-colonial authors of detective fiction feel the necessity to address the self-appointed superiority of so-called scientific discourse. As both cultures have been commodified as objects to be studied by external social scientists, Mannuzzu's and Owens's refusal to depict a univocal solution is also indicative of the clash between definitions elaborated by outsiders versus forms of traditional knowledge within the cultural group.

Orientador: Francisco Foot Hardman<br>Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem<br>Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T01:28:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Guerra_BrunaTella_M.pdf: 1281442 bytes, checksum: 03ca81a82ade5bc6bffa8816adb45df4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013<br>Resumo: A síntese deste trabalho é a ressignificação da detective fiction em Los detectives salvajes, de Roberto Bolaño. O ponto de partida são os vários textos do autor que têm a figura do detetive na intitulação, sendo esse apenas um dos vários aspectos que recorre na obra bolañiana. Entendendo que a enorme rede de relações que existe em seus textos é sugestiva de seu projeto literário, coerentemente será assumida uma visão transtextual para a análise da narrativa: através de textos críticos de Bolaño, de sua obra ficcional geral e do histórico da detective fiction, algumas interpretações serão traçadas para que se perceba de que forma novos sentidos deste gênero podem ser atribuídos a Los detectives salvajes. Para isso, será feita uma análise conjectural, num nível fragmentário, e nunca totalizante<br>Abstract: The synthesis of this work is the resignification of the detective fiction in Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes. The starting point is the various texts of the author that have the figure of the detective in the entitlement, being this aspect only one of the many others that resort in bolañian work. Understanding that the huge network of relationships that exist in his texts is suggestive of his literary project, it will coherently be assumed a transtextual vision for analyzing the narrative: through Bolaño's critical texts, his general fiction and the history of the detective fiction, some interpretations shall be outlined for the perception of how new meanings of this genre can be attributed to Los detectives salvajes. To achieve this aim, it will be assumed a conjectural analysis, in a fragmentary level, and never totalizing<br>Mestrado<br>Teoria e Critica Literaria<br>Mestra em Teoria e História Literária