Overview
- Examines understudied writers of British crime fiction
- Further studies the influence of drama on crime fiction by identifying allusions to non-Shakespearean early modern plays
- Considers diverse aspects of the detective fiction genre such as cold cases and Christmas crime
Part of the book series: Crime Files (CF)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Burial Plots in British Detective Fiction offers an overview of the ways in which the past is brought back to the surface and influences the present in British detective fiction written between 1920 and 2020. Exploring a range of authors including Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Val McDermid, Sarah Caudwell, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, Jonathan Stroud and Ben Aaronovitch, Lisa Hopkins argues that both the literal and literary disinterment of the past use elements of the national past to interrogate the present. As such, in the texts discussed, uncovering the truth about an individual crime is also typically an uncovering of a more general connection between the present and the past. Whether detective novels explore murders on archaeological digs, hauntings, cold crimes or killings at Christmas, Hopkins explores the underlying message that you cannot understand the present unless you understand the past.
Reviews
“If you like to find novel and entertaining ways of killing somebody, this is the blood-stained book for you. Lisa Hopkins writes with witty panache and an enviably capacious literary recall, in a book mercifully littered with spoilers so we are not left in suspense. An ideal Christmas present, supplying a handy chapter on seasonal crime.” (R. S. White, Emeritus Professor, University of Western Australia, and author of Shakespeare’s Cinema of Crime (2016))
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her previous books include Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction: DCI Shakespeare (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Burial Plots in British Detective Fiction
Authors: Lisa Hopkins
Series Title: Crime Files
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65760-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-65759-8Published: 25 January 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-65762-8Published: 25 January 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-65760-4Published: 24 January 2021
Series ISSN: 2947-8340
Series E-ISSN: 2947-8359
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 201
Topics: Contemporary Literature, Fiction, British and Irish Literature, Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, British Culture, Crime and the Media