ELA – Comprehensive focus
Mystery & Gothic Fiction
Mystery & Gothic – Pulp fiction today
TASK
1 - Choose a “pulp fiction” mystery or gothic novel written roughly within the last
50 years (see list for ideas on back).
2 - Read this novel, as much as possible, within a week!
3 - Complete one of the following
a) write a fan-fiction chapter/ending/prequel/short story in the style of the novel that you post
online (may include images/graphics)
c) write/draw a graphic short story/comic/storyboard for a film inspired by the novel (ask PK for
egs and resources)
d) prepare and present an oral presentation to the class that includes the following:
1) a short explanation of how the novel fits into the mystery or gothic genre
2) a 30 - 60 second reading of the best writing (in your opinion) in the novel, with an
explanation that includes the following:
- explanation of why the writing is technically good
- discuss why the ideas or characters or setting in your reading are interesting or
important
- an argument/proposal that the novel does/does not present a real pictureof
human nature, no matter how bizarre or banal (boring)
3) a visual component (image slideshow? Film clips (if there’s a movie adaptation)?)
(you may use PowerPoint, but you don’t have to)
4) a recommendation of the novel to other readers, based on your experience reading
it:
- who might like it? why?
- how long will it take to read it?
- other novels you’ve read that are like it?
An incomplete list of suggestions of current mystery & gothic novels:
mystery (includes thriller & crime fiction)
Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon
P.D. James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
Colson Whitehead’s The Illusionist
Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
Chester Himes’s A Rage in Harlem – Panther Crime
Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress
James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice
John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
Ian Fleming’s Bond, From Russia, With Love
Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
John Gregory Dunne’s True Confessions
Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley
Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent
Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal
Dennis Lahane’s Mystic River
Thomas Berger’s Sneaky People
Tana French’s In The Woods
Barbara Vine’s A Dark-Adapted Eye
Ken Follet’s Eye of the Needle
Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury
James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia
Elmore Leonard’s LaBrava
Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
... and so on
gothic (includes horror)
Stephen King’s Misery
Barbara Michaels’s Be Buried in the Rain
Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic
Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby
Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls
Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop
Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black
Mo Hayder’s Tokyo
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon
Iain Banks The Wasp Factory
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens
Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus
Patrick Suskind’s Perfume
Christopher Priest’s The Prestige
Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire
Margaret Millar’s Beast in View
… and so on