Timeline of Crime Fiction

Ancient Roots

Biblical:

• 10 commandments, original laws.

• Cain and Abel, Cain tries to hide his crime and is marked with the ‘Mark of Cain’ and sent into exile.

• In the old testament, darkness represents the presence and judgement of GOD.

• John 8:32: ‘The truth shall set you free'.’

Classical Era / Ancient Greece

• Often explores relationships between mortals and higher powers, such as fate.

• Explores conflicts created by loyalties, personal desires v societal needs, right v wrong, and punishment.

• WH Auden: ‘Greek tragedy and the detective story have one characteristic in common, in which they both differ from modern tragedy, namely, the characters are not changed by their actions: in Greek tragedy because their actions are fated, in the detective story because the decisive event, the murder, has already occurred.

Old English and Medieval Quest Narratives: 500AD-1400AD.

• Verse narratives (not novels) focus on transgression, wrongdoing, honour and restitution.

• Explicitly religious

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight explores themes of honour, transgression, fear and guilt, and references the Mark of Cain through the belt he chooses to wear.

Renaissance Tragedy: 1500AD-1650AD

• Develops from the medieval period, as rather than focusing on the crime, the focus is placed on the psychology of the crime on its victims and perpetrators.

• Moves beyond the ‘flat’, 2-dimensional characters with characters such as Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth

• Similarly to medieval fiction, there is a focus on religion.

1600s Poetry

• Puritan era meant theaters were closed so narrative poetry had a resurgence.

• John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ explores Satan rebelling against GOD and being banished from Heaven, were he chooses to seek revenge by corrupting humans and making them eat the forbidden fruit.

• The focus is on religion whilst also exploring the psychology of the criminal

Romantic Era: 1700s-early 1800s

• Focus is on personal ethics and morality, E.g. Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Crime fiction is used to expose ‘social ills’ to the reader

• In ‘Peter Grimes’ the author explores the personal and social consequences of crime, where the eponymous character is accused of killing a series of apprentices, and the readers are given an insight into the mind of a criminal who displayed violent tendencies as a child.

Newgate Calendar: 1750s-1866

1749: Bow Street Runners founded (very early police force in London)

1812: Paris creates force of plainclothed police, as it was believed the best people to detect crime were the people who knew it from the inside

1829: Metropolitan Police Force founded by Sir Robert Peel (known as Peelers)

1842: Detective division founded as an elite group to investigate serious crimes.

Newgate Calendar:

• Contained semi-fictionalised accounts of criminals

• Revealed the gory details of execution

• Focus is on punishment rather than detection

• Critics believed this would only inspire criminals rather than deter them, as it romantacised criminality.

Victorian Crime Fiction, arise of the detective: 1837-1901

• ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ became popular, and were short stories published in weekly parts and sold for only a penny. The content was usually sensationalised narrative focused on the exploits of detectives, criminals or the supernatural.

• Oscar Wilde, ‘The ballad of reading Gaol’ - a poem from his own experience of being imprisoned for homosexuality, focus on the horrors of prison life.

• Gothic novels were popularised and dealt with the criminal edges of society. Focused on abuse, brutality, forbidden relationships, guilt and fear as well as criminal abuse of power. Dracula, Jeckyll and Hyde.

• Later there is a focus on forensic investigation as science becomes a focal point of narrative in detective fiction. Sherlock Holmes.

Golden Age Detective Fiction: 1920s-30s

• After WW1, detective stories offered a sense of control, as guilt and horror were containable and peace could be restored by a detective.

• The Guilty Vicarage: they explore ‘the dialectic of innocence and guilt’

• Agatha Christie, Miss Marple and Poirot.

  1. A state of equilibrium

  2. Disruption of the equilibrium by an event

  3. A recognition that a disorder has occurred, the discovery

  4. Restitution, an attempt to repair damage, investigation

  5. Restoration, a new equilibrium is found.

American Hard Boiled Fiction: 1930s-1940s

• Blurs distinction between criminals and detectives

• Detectives are often ‘anti-heroes’

• Misogyny- male detectives who are overtly sexist and woman are often victims to criminal mistreatment

• Women are presented as powerless yet also femme fatale

20th century novel 1900-1999

• Detective fiction keeps its appeals, and updates to match modern forensics and detective technology.

• Many novels become ‘police procedural’-involves police detectives rather than private detectives

• Crime is dealt with in unconventional ways, e.g. dystopia presents crime as a freedom of expression.

• Modern crime fiction does not always reestablish order, so are less reassuring.

• Development of narratives which cause unease due to the character we see the story through.

21st Century Crime Fiction

• Female detectives become more popular, such as DCI Louise Monroe in ‘when will there be good news’

• Trends such as cosy crime, nordic noir, historical crime fiction, even cat detectives.