Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:30:33.103Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Crime Narratives

Forensic Crime Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2024

Aliki Varvogli
Aliki Varvogli
Affiliation:
University of Dundee

Summary

This study of forensic crime fiction from the US and the UK examines the prominent roles that women play in many of these novels, arguing that there are historical continuities with earlier forms of contact with the dead body. Refuting claims that the female forensic examiner exhibits traits of typically masculine behaviour, it suggests that the female gaze humanises the victims of crime and alters their representations. Utilising the views of a world-famous forensic scientist interviewed for this Element, this study also explores the role and treatment of science in forensic crime fiction, shedding light on an area of the genre. Finally, there is a consideration of killers in forensic crime novels, proposing that the relationship between killer and investigator is different from that of the classic crime novel. There are also two Appendices containing interviews with Professor Niamh Nic Daeid and with Val McDermid.
Get access

Keywords

forensic crime fictioncrime noveldetective fictionscience and literaturePatricia Cornwell
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Crime Narratives
Online ISBN: 9781009365918
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 31 October 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Select Bibliography

Anable, S. ‘I’m no angel: PW talks with Tess Gerritsen’, Publishers Weekly (August 4, 2006). www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/10352-i-m-no-angel.html.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. ‘The guilty vicarage’, in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), pp. 146–58.Google Scholar
Bell, S. Crime and Circumstance: Investigating the History of Forensic Science (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belling, C. ‘Reading the operation: Television, realism, and the possession of medical knowledge’, Literature and Medicine, 17.1 (1998), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bergman, K. ‘Fictional death and scientific truth: The truth-value of science in contemporary forensic crime fiction’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 30.1 (Spring 2012), 88–98.Google Scholar
Chou, J. ‘Seeing bones speaking: The female gaze and the posthuman embodiment in Reichs’s forensic crime fiction’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 38.1 (March 2012), 145–69.Google Scholar
Close, G. S. Female Corpses in Crime Fiction: A Transatlantic Perspective (London: Palgrave, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornwell, P. Body of Evidence (London: Warner, 1991).Google Scholar
Cornwell, P. Point of Origin (London: Warner, 1998).Google Scholar
Cornwell, P. Postmortem (London: Warner, 1990).Google Scholar
Dunn, A. ‘PW talks with Kathy Reichs’, Writing Forensics: Publishers Weekly (May 5, 2003).www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/33858-writing-forensics.htmlGoogle Scholar
Foster, N. ‘Strong poison: Chemistry in the works of Dorothy L. Sayers’, in Gerber, S. M. (ed.), Chemistry and Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Today’s Courtroom (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1983), pp. 17–29.Google Scholar
Gerritsen, T. The Sinner (London: Penguin, 2023).Google Scholar
Gerritsen, T. The Surgeon (London: Ballantine Books, 2001).Google Scholar
Goulet, A. ‘Crime fiction and modern science’, in Allan, J., Gulddal, J., King, S., and Pepper, A. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 291–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horsley, K. and L. ‘Body language: Reading the corpse in forensic crime fiction’, Paradoxa, 20 (2006), 1–30.Google Scholar
Howell, K. ‘The suspicious figure of the female forensic pathologist investigator in crime fiction’, M/C Journal, 15.1 (2012). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.454.Google Scholar
Jermyn, D. ‘Labs and slabs: Television crime drama and the quest for forensic realism’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44 (2013), 103–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kenley, N. ‘Global crime, forensic detective fiction, and the continuum of containment’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 46 (2019), 96–114.Google Scholar
Kenley, N. ‘Teaching American detective fiction in the contemporary classroom’, in Beyer, C. (ed.), Teaching Crime Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 63–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, J. G. ‘The limits of reason: Poe’s deluded detectives’, American Literature, 47.2 (1975), 184–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, D. A. ‘Forensic fictions: Science, television production, and modern storytelling’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44 (2013), 92–102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knight, S. Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kobialka, M. ‘Delirium of the flesh: “All the dead voices” in the space of the now’, in Bleeker, M. (ed.), Anatomy Live: Performance and the Operating Theatre (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008) pp. 223–44.Google Scholar
Kristeva, J. The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L. S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Lucas, R. ‘Anxiety and its antidotes: Patricia Cornwell and the forensic body’, Literature Interpretation Theory, 15.2 (2010), 207–22.Google Scholar
Murley, J. The Rise of True Crime: 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, J. ‘Tracing bodies: Gender, genre, and forensic detective fiction’, South Central Review, 18.3/4 (Autumn–Winter 2001), 54–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pâquet, L. ‘Kathy Reichs’s Contiki crime: Investigating global feminisms’, Clues 33.1 (2015), 51–61.Google Scholar
Pepper, A. Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plain, G. ‘From “the purest literature we have” to “a spirit grown corrupt”: Embracing corruption in twentieth-century crime fiction’, Critical Survey, 20.1 (2008), 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plain, G. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Poe, E. A. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin, 1982).Google Scholar
Poe, E. A. ‘The philosophy of composition’. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Raven and The Philosophy of Composition (no date). www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55749/pg55749-images.html.Google Scholar
Reichs, K. Death du Jour (London: Arrow Books, 2000).Google Scholar
Reichs, K. Déjà Dead (London: Arrow Books, 1997).Google Scholar
Ross Nickerson, C. ‘Introduction: The satisfactions of murder’, in Nickerson, C. Ross (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawday, J. The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar
Shepherd, R. Unnatural Causes (London: Penguin, 2019).Google Scholar
Steenberg, L. Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture: Gender, Crime, and Science (London: Routledge, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strengell, H. ‘“My knife is so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance”: Identification between author and serial killer in Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta Series’, Studies in Popular Culture, 27 (October 2004), 73–90.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. R. Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Todorov, T. The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (London: Cornell University Press, 1977).Google Scholar
Vanacker, S. ‘Warshawski, V. I., Kinsey, Millhone and Scarpetta, Kay : Creating a feminist detective hero’, in Messent, P. B. (ed.), Criminal Proceedings: The Contemporary American Crime Novel (London: Pluto Press, 1997), p. 62–77.Google Scholar
Wahrig, B. ‘“Nature is lopsided”: Muscarine as scientific and literary fascinosum in Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Documents in the Case’, in Klippel, H., Wahrig, B., & Zechner, A. (eds.), Poison and Poisoning in Science, Fiction and Cinema, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 57–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitman, W. ‘When I heard the learn’d astronomer’, The Walt Whitman Archive (no date). www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45479/when-i-heard-the-learnd-astronomer.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Forensic Crime Fiction
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Forensic Crime Fiction
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Forensic Crime Fiction
Available formats
×