Domestic Noir

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Introduction to Domestic Noir

   • Laura Joyce

   Pages 1-7

3. The Origins of Domestic Noir

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9

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   2. The Literary Antecedents of Domestic Noir

      • Fiona Peters

      Pages 11-25

   3. Hollywood and the Trailblazers of Domestic Noir: The Case of Vera Caspary’s Laura (1943)

      • Stefania Ciocia

      Pages 27-49

4. The Influences of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 51-51

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5. The Influences of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl

   1. Gone Genre: How the Academy Came Running and Discovered Nothing Was As It Seemed

      • Henry Sutton

      Pages 53-69

   2. From Cool Girl to Dead Girl: Gone Girl and the Allure of Female Victimhood

      • Eva Burke

      Pages 71-86

6. Gendered, Sexual, and Intimate Violence in Domestic Noir

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 87-87

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   2. “How Much Do You Want to Pay for This Beauty?”: Domestic Noir and the Active Turn in Feminist Crime Fiction

      • Emma V. Miller

      Pages 89-113

   3. Teenage Kicks: Performance and Postfeminism in Domestic Noir

      • Leigh Redhead

      Pages 115-135

   4. The Violent Mother in Fact and Fiction

      • Nicoletta Di Ciolla, Anna Pasolini

      Pages 137-158

7. Home as a Site of Violence

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159

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   2. “[T]he People that Should Have Lived Here”: Haunting, the Economy, and Home in Tana French’s Broken Harbour

      • Shelley Ingram, Willow G. Mullins

      Pages 161-179

   3. The Subversion of the Male Tradition in Crime Fiction: Liane Moriarty’s Little Lies

      • Elena Avanzas Álvarez

      Pages 181-198

   4. Domestic Noir and the US Cozy as Responses to the Threatened Home

      • Diane Waters, Heather Worthington

      Pages 199-218

8. Geographies of Domestic Noir

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 219-219

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   2. The House and the Hallucination in Tana French’s New Irish Gothic

      • Rosemary Erickson Johnsen

      Pages 221-238

   3. Crime, the Domestic, and Social Commentary in Pierre Lemaitre’s Thrillers

      • Andrea Hynynen

      Pages 239-259

   4. Carmen’s Final Problem: Contesting Crime Fiction and Gender Roles in Marcela Serrano’s Nuestra Señora de la Soledad

      • Patricia Catoira

      Pages 261-279

This book represents the first serious consideration of the 'domestic noir' phenomenon and, by extension, the psychological thriller. The only such landmark collection since Lee Horsley's The Noir Thriller, it extends the argument for serious, academic study of crime fiction, particularly in relation to gender, domestic violence, social and political awareness, psychological acuity, and structural and narratological inventiveness. As well as this, it shifts the debate around the sub-genre firmly up to date and brings together a range of global voices to dissect and situate the notion of 'domestic noir'. This book is essential reading for students, scholars, and fans of the psychological thriller.

• Gender
• Marriage
• Realism
• Transgression
• Home
• Popular fiction

• University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom

  Laura Joyce, Henry Sutton

Laura Joyce is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research focuses on representations of gendered, sexual and intimate violence. She has published two crime novels: The Museum of Atheism (2012) and The Luminol Reels (2014). Her forthcoming critical books are Luminol Theory and Deadly Landscapes.


Henry Sutton is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, UK, and Director of the new Creative Writing MA in Crime Fiction. He is the author of 10 novels, most recently Time to Win (2017) under the pseudonym Harry Brett. Previous novels include My Criminal World (2013), Get Me Out of Here (2010) and Kids’ Stuff (2003). 

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