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Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki, and Marinella Rodi-Risberg, editors, Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection

Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki, and Marinella Rodi-Risberg, editors, Transnational Crime... Book Reviews murder as a mode of self-creation. Building on Highsmith biographer Andrew Wilson’s work on the ambiguity of fictional criminal Tom Ripley’s ‘authentic’ and fictional identities, LeVay highlights the metaphysical interchangeability of subjects to describe modernism as an ‘unceasing project of aesthetic and cultural critique’ that responds to changing socio-economic and political landscapes (217). While Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal offers an ambitious account of the encounters between crime fiction and modernist fiction in relation to the history of criminology, the division between the first and second halves somewhat weakens LeVay’s emphasis on the interrelations between genre fiction and high art. He is right to point out that the fact that modernist writers like Lewis and Stein wrote crime fiction does not necessarily eliminate the high/low binary. However, LeVay himself adopts a strategy of exclusion when grouping authors together in the first two chapters: Doyle and Sayers, Stein and Lewis. The interrelationships between modernism and genre fiction are most effectively presented in the final chapter’s discussion of Patricia Highsmith’s ambiguous narratives and (criminal) identities. According to LeVay, Highsmith’s intention was to call ‘into question some of the most foundational categories for establishing the contours of subjectivity’– a http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Crime Fiction Studies Edinburgh University Press

Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki, and Marinella Rodi-Risberg, editors, Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection

Sandberg, Eric
Crime Fiction Studies , Volume 2 (2): 5 – Sep 1, 2021
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2517-7982
eISSN
2517-7990
DOI
10.3366/cfs.2021.0050
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Abstract

Book Reviews murder as a mode of self-creation. Building on Highsmith biographer Andrew Wilson’s work on the ambiguity of fictional criminal Tom Ripley’s ‘authentic’ and fictional identities, LeVay highlights the metaphysical interchangeability of subjects to describe modernism as an ‘unceasing project of aesthetic and cultural critique’ that responds to changing socio-economic and political landscapes (217). While Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal offers an ambitious account of the encounters between crime fiction and modernist fiction in relation to the history of criminology, the division between the first and second halves somewhat weakens LeVay’s emphasis on the interrelations between genre fiction and high art. He is right to point out that the fact that modernist writers like Lewis and Stein wrote crime fiction does not necessarily eliminate the high/low binary. However, LeVay himself adopts a strategy of exclusion when grouping authors together in the first two chapters: Doyle and Sayers, Stein and Lewis. The interrelationships between modernism and genre fiction are most effectively presented in the final chapter’s discussion of Patricia Highsmith’s ambiguous narratives and (criminal) identities. According to LeVay, Highsmith’s intention was to call ‘into question some of the most foundational categories for establishing the contours of subjectivity’– a

Journal

Crime Fiction Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2021

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