This book explores the vast array of animals that populate detective fiction. If the genre begins, as is widely supposed, with Edgar Allan Poes Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), then detective fictions very first culprit is an animal. Animals, moreover, consistently appear as victims, clues, and companions, while the abstract conception of animality is closely tied to the idea of criminality. Although it is often described as an essentially conservative form, detective fiction can unsettle the binary of human and animal to intersect with developing concerns in animal studies: animal agency, the ethical complexities of human/animal interaction, the politics and literary aesthetics of violence, and animal metaphor. Gathering its 14 essays into sections on ontologies, ethics, politics, and forms, Animals in Detective Fiction provides a compelling and nuanced analysis of the central role creatures play in this enduringly popular and continually morphing literary form.
Recenzijas
The collections major findings and offer suggestions for future research, but the arguments presented by all 13 essays, plus the introduction, are enlightening and clearly presented, whether readers are new to the study of animal ethics or already familiar with research in this and related disciplines. Ultimately, the grounding of these animal- related issues within the detective fiction genre makes important and innovative contributions to both areas of study. (Rachel Schaffer, Clues, Vol. 42 (2), 2024)
A corrective volume that successfully sets the record straight, Animals and Detective Fiction is the starting point for further literary scholarship on genre fiction and animal studies. (Dominic OKey, The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, May 8, 2023)
Origins and Evolutions: The Brutal History of Detective Fiction.-
Ontologies.- Tigers, Criminals, Rogues: Animality in Dickens Detective
Fiction.- Quantum Entanglements in Arthur Conan Doyles The Hound of the
Baskervilles.- Wolverines, Werewolves and Demon Dogs: Animality, Criminality
and Classification in James Ellroys L.A. Quartet.- Ethics.- The Psittacine
Witness: Parrot Talk and Animal Ethics in Earl Derr Biggers The Chinese
Parrot and Earl Stanley Gardners The Case of the Perjured Parrot.- Ecology,
Capability and Companion Species: Conflicting Ethics in Nevada Barrs Blood
Lure.- Laboratory Tech-Noir: Genre, Narrative Form, and the Literary Model
Organism in Jay Hoskings Three Years with the Rat.- Reptiles, Buddhism, and
Detection in John Burdetts Bangkok 8.- Politics.- Animals, Biopolitics, and
Sensation Fiction: M. E. Braddons Lady Audleys Secret.- The Motto of the
Mollusc: Patricia Highsmith and the Semiotics ofSnails.- Before the white
man came, when animals still talked: Colonial Creatures in Sherman Alexies
Indian Killer and Adrian C. Louiss Skins.- Forms.- Aping the Classics: Terry
Pratchetts Satirical Animals and Detective Fiction.- Animal Image and Human
Logos in Graphic Detective Fiction.- As easy to spot as a kangaroo in a
dinner jacket: Animetaphor in Raymond Chandler and Jonathan Lethem.
Ruth Hawthorn is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Lincoln. She is currently completing a monograph on American detective fiction for the BAAS Paperbacks series with Edinburgh University Press. Her research interests include crime fiction, the literature of LA, and ecocriticism.
John Miller is Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Sheffield, President of ASLE-UKI (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, UK and Ireland), and co-editor of Palgrave Studies in Animals in Literature. His books include Empire and the Animal Body (Anthem, 2014) and The Heart of the Forest (British Library Publishing, 2022).
