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Contact Form. Manufacturer information: Koninklijke Brill B. Social Media Overview. General Resources. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Statement. Browse Our Titles. Login to my Brill account Create Brill Account. Volume Editors: Anne Mullen. Emer O'Beirne. The essays in this collection are based on papers given at a conference on detective fiction in European culture, held at the University of Exeter in September The range of topics covered is designed to show not only the presence and variety of narratives of detection across different European countries and their different media although there is a predictable emphasis on the novel.
It also illustrates the fertility of the genre, its openness to a spectrum of readings with different emphases, formal as well as thematic. Such approaches can yield valuable insights.
Nonetheless there is a risk of limiting the value of the genre as a whole solely to its role as a mirror held up to society. In this perspective, issues of structure and style are sidelined, or, if addressed, are praised to the extent that they approach invisibility β concision, spareness, realism are the qualities singled out for praise. The eclectic diversity of the detective narratives considered in this volume reveal the malleability of the traditional constraints of the genre.
The essays bear rich testimony to the value of considering the interplay of thematic and structural issues, even in the most apparently unselfconscious and popular or populist forms of narrative.
