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The Art of Murder: Detective fiction, gender, genre, race, and class
HT 2015 Course Coordinator: Dr Clare Clarke
This one-semester module traces the historical development of British and American
detective fiction in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Beginning
with Arthur Conan Doyle’s late-nineteenth-century Sherlock Holmes stories, the
course will move on to the US hardboiled novels of the early 20th century (Hammett),
Golden Age ‘clue-puzzle’ novels (Christie), black and feminist detective fiction (Himes,
Paretsky), criminal anti-hero fiction (Highsmith), neo-noir (Ellroy), and contemporary
Nordic noir and historical detective fiction bestsellers (Larsson, James).
Students will study in detail detective fiction’s basic formal structures and the
historical significance of various forms from the Golden Age to neo-noir. Classes will
combine close reading of primary texts and consideration of critical debates on
detective fiction, with discussion of the genre’s shifting representations of heroism,
identity, class, race, gender, and the city.
SET TEXTS:
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Week 1: Introduction: texts, contexts, theory
Week 2: First Golden Age: Arthur Conan Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
(1891-2)
Week 3: Hardboiled: Dashiel Hammett, Red Harvest (1929)
Week 4: Clue-Puzzle: Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Week 5: Criminal hero: Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)
Week 6: Race: Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem (1957)
Week 7: READING WEEK
Week 8: Gender: Sara Paretsky, Bitter Medicine (1987)
Week 9: Neo-noir: James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia (1987)
Week 10: Nordic noir: Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005)
Week 11: Historical crime fiction: PD James, Death Comes to Pemberley (2013)
Week 12: module overview and conclusion
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
By the end of this module students will be able to:
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Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the primary set texts
Identify and examine key themes in 19th-21st century detective fiction
Discuss the themes and concerns of the set texts in relation to their social,
historical, and political contexts
Close read the primary texts paying attention to form, structure, language
Show an awareness of contemporary and historical critical debates about
detective fiction
Demonstrate skills in research, oral and written communication, and teamwork
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SELECTED SECONDARY READING:
Horsley, Lee. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction. Oxford: OUP, 2005.
Knight, Stephen. Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan,
1980.
---. Crime Fiction 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. Houndmills, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004.
Mandel, Ernest. Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story. London: Pluto
Press, 1984.
Pepper, Andrew. The Contemporary American Crime Novel: Ethnicity, Gender, Class.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
Rzepka, Charles, and Lee Horsley, eds. A Companion to Crime Fiction. Chichester,
Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Oxford: Blackwell,
1977.