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Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Past

Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Past Eric Sandberg The body never stays buried. If a field of cultural production as diverse and multifaceted as crime fiction could be said to have a single, over-arching principle, this might well be it. In the narratives of mystery, detection, transgression, and punishment of all sorts that constitute the broad literary field of the genre, the past is frequently a tangible presence. It may be temporarily forgotten, it may have been swept with all the energy of desperation under the carpet of the passing years, it may seem to have lost its grip and sway upon the present, but, almost inevitably, it returns. And accompanied all too often by the putridity of decay – metaphorical, actual, or both. This presence of the past (often in very unpleasant forms) is perhaps clearest in the variant of the crime narrative sometimes described as the mystery, at other times as the classic detective story or the whudunnit. As Carl D. Malmgren points out, the ‘double-plot structure’ of this type of crime writing (most influentially discussed by Tzvetan Todorov in his essay ‘The Typology of Detective Fiction’) offers at least a partial explanation of the subgenre’s ‘orientation towards the past’: the crime, the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Crime Fiction Studies Edinburgh University Press

Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Past

Sandberg, Eric
Crime Fiction Studies , Volume 1 (2): 4 – Sep 1, 2020
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2517-7982
eISSN
2517-7990
DOI
10.3366/cfs.2020.0017
Publisher site
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Abstract

Eric Sandberg The body never stays buried. If a field of cultural production as diverse and multifaceted as crime fiction could be said to have a single, over-arching principle, this might well be it. In the narratives of mystery, detection, transgression, and punishment of all sorts that constitute the broad literary field of the genre, the past is frequently a tangible presence. It may be temporarily forgotten, it may have been swept with all the energy of desperation under the carpet of the passing years, it may seem to have lost its grip and sway upon the present, but, almost inevitably, it returns. And accompanied all too often by the putridity of decay – metaphorical, actual, or both. This presence of the past (often in very unpleasant forms) is perhaps clearest in the variant of the crime narrative sometimes described as the mystery, at other times as the classic detective story or the whudunnit. As Carl D. Malmgren points out, the ‘double-plot structure’ of this type of crime writing (most influentially discussed by Tzvetan Todorov in his essay ‘The Typology of Detective Fiction’) offers at least a partial explanation of the subgenre’s ‘orientation towards the past’: the crime, the

Journal

Crime Fiction Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2020

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