This book represents the first extended consideration of contemporary crime fiction as a European phenomenon. Understanding crime fiction in its broadest sense, as a transmedia practice, and offering unique insights into this practice in specific European countries and as a genuinely transcontinental endeavour, this book argues that the distinctiveness of the form can be found in its related historical and political inquiries. It asks how the genre’s excavation of Europe’s history of violence and protest in the twentieth century is informed by contemporary political questions. It also considers how the genre’s progressive reimagining of new identities forged at the crossroads of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality is offset by its bleaker assessment of the corrosive effects of entrenched social inequalities, political corruption, and state violence. The result is a rich, vibrant collection that shows how crime fiction can help us better understand the complex relationship between Europe’s past, present, and future. Seven chapters are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This collection of articles studies the development of crime fiction in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden since the 1960s, offering the first English-language study of this widely read and influential form. Since the first Martin-Beck novel of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö appeared in 1965, the socially-critical crime novel has figured prominently in Scandinavian culture, and found hundreds of millions of readers outside Scandinavia. But is there truly a Scandinavian crime novel tradition? Scandinavian Crime Fiction identifies distinct features and changes in the Scandinavian crime tradition through analysis of some of its most well-known writers: Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, Anne Holt, Liza Marklund, Leena Lehtolainen, and Arnaldur Indriðason, among others. Focusing on Scandinavian crime fiction’s snowballing prominence since the 1990s, articles zoom in on the transformation of the genre’s social criticism, study the significance of cultural and geographical place in the tradition, and analyze the cultural politics of crime fiction, including struggles over gender equity, sexuality, ethnicity, history, and the fate of the welfare state. Scandinavian Crime Fiction maps out the contribution of Scandinavian crime writers to contemporary European culture and society, making the volume valuable to scholars and the interested public.

This book is one of the first English-language studies to chart the development of crime fiction in French from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It analyses the distinctive features of a French-language tradition and introduces readers to a rich and varied body of work. Each chapter examines a specific period, movement or group of writers, as well as engaging with wider debates on the place of crime fiction within contemporary French and European culture. From early twentieth-century pioneers, such as Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc, to the phenomenal success of Georges Simenon, from May 68 to the gender politics of crime fiction and postmodern reinventions, this collection approaches crime fiction in an interdisciplinary manner, alive to the innovative and often critically informed perspective it provides on French society and culture. The book also includes short extracts in English translation and an extensive bibliography of critical material for further reading. Such resources are aimed at encouraging the reader to gain a greater appreciation and understanding of this potent and formidable narrative of modern times.

Commissario Brunetti delves into the shadows of a Venetian family’s past in this “gripping intellectual mystery” in the New York Times–bestselling series (Publishers Weekly). In A Noble Radiance, a new landowner is summoned urgently to his house not far from Venice when workmen accidentally unearth a macabre grave. The human corpse is badly decomposed, but a ring found nearby proves to be a clue that reopens an infamous case of kidnapping involving one of Venice’s most aristocratic families. Only Commissario Brunetti can unravel the clues and find his way into both the hearts of patrician Venice and that of a family grieving for their abducted son. “Goes a long way to confirming Donna Leon’s claim to have taken literary possession of Venice . . . A Noble Radiance gives the reader a delightful foretaste of the summer holidays to come, but it also offers much more than that.” —The Independent on Sunday “The marvel of this book is that almost every detail on every page forms part of a succession of clues, planted with exquisite precision, to unraveling the mystery.” —The Sunday Times “Brunetti emerges as an intelligent, somewhat world-weary individual who believes in his cause if not the system itself. In short, he’s the ideal protagonist for this culturally rich mystery.” —Publishers Weekly “In her detective novels with Commissario Brunetti, Donna Leon can paralyze the reader with a joyful suspense, lost in the environs of Venice and hopelessly in love with her central character and his wife.” —Mail on Sunday

The present volume is the first study in the English language to focus specifically on Italian crime fiction, weaving together a historical perspective and a thematic approach, with a particular focus on the representation of space, especially city space, gender, and the tradition of impegno, the social and political engagement which characterised the Italian cultural and literary scene in the postwar period. The 8 chapters in this volume explore the distinctive features of the Italian tradition from the 1930s to the present, by focusing on a wide range of detective and crime novels by selected Italian writers, some of whom have an established international reputation, such as C. E. Gadda, L. Sciascia and U. Eco, whilst others may be relatively unknown, such as the new generation of crime writers of the Bologna school and Italian women crime writers. Each chapter examines a specific period, movement or group of writers, as well as engaging with broader debates over the contribution crime fiction makes more generally to contemporary Italian and European culture. The editor and contributors of this volume argue strongly in favour of reinstating crime fiction within the canon of Italian modern literature by presenting this once marginalised literary genre as a body of works which, when viewed without the artificial distinction between high and popular literature, shows a remarkable insight into Italy’s postwar history, tracking its societal and political troubles and changes as well as often also engaging with metaphorical and philosophical notions of right or wrong, evil, redemption, and the search of the self.

This book offers a study of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and French crime fictions covering a fifty-year period. From 1965 to the present, both Scandinavian and French societies have undergone significant transformations. Twelve literary case studies examine how crime fictions in the respective contexts have responded to shifting social realities, which have in turn played a part in transforming the generic codes and conventions of the crime novel. At the centre of the book’s analysis is crime fiction’s negotiation of the French model of Republican universalism and the Scandinavian welfare state, both of which were routinely characterised as being in a state of crisis at the end of the twentieth century. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book investigates the interplay between contemporary Scandinavian and French crime narratives, considering their engagement with the relationship of the state and the citizen, and notably with identity issues (class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in particular).

An analysis of the relationship between detective fiction and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country.