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.

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

Autorentext

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her previous books include Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction: DCI Shakespeare (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The Deep Dead: Detective Fiction and Archaeology.- Chapter 3: The tongue is a fire: Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver Novels.- Chapter 4: The Body in the Library: Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, Sarah Caudwell.- Chapter 5: Cover Her Face: Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama.- Chapter 6: Historic Scotland: Val McDermid's Cold Cases.- Chapter 7: Crime at Christmas.- Chapter 8: Detecting the Dead.- Chapter 9: Conclusion.