Review Articles

Crimeculture has always aimed to include a wide range of articles discussing the central themes of crime fiction and film. The Review Articles included here were published on the site between 2005 and 2017.

Articles Reviewing Crime Fiction

Fatal Isolation: The Haunting Landscapes of Nordic Noir – Reviews ofAgnes Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal, Ragnar Jonasson’s Snowblind, Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Why Did You Lie?, and Antti Tuomainen’s Dark As My Heart

So many different ways of disappearing: five of the best missing person novels – Reviews of Megan Miranda’s All the Missing Girls, Lisa Jewell’s I Found You, David Swinson’s The Second Girl, Lisa Ballantyne’s Redemption Road, and Rachel Abbott’s Stranger Child.

Listening to the Ghosts – Reviews ofJohan Theorin, The Darkest Room and The Voices Beyond; Yrsa Sigurdadottir, I Remember You and The Silence of the Sea; and Mark Edwards, Follow You Home

The Man of the Family – Reviews of Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau; Rebecca Whitney, The Liar’s Chair, and Laura Lippman, After I’m Gone

Fevered Adolescence – Reviews ofMegan Abbott, The Fever and Tana French, The Secret Place

Out of the Past – Reviews ofHarriet Lane, Her, Amanda Jennings, The Judas Scar, and Daniel Woodrell, The Maid’s Version

The Secrets of Houses – Reviews ofChristobel Kent, The Crooked House; D.D. Johnston, The Secret Baby Room; Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train; and Liane Moriarty, The Last Anniversary

Broken Societies – Reviews ofLauren Beukes, Broken Monsters; Lynn Kostoff, Words to Die For; and Paul Johnston, The Black List

“That ain’t the way real detectives do things”:  the Amateur Lady Detectives of Joelle Charbonneau and Hilary Davidson

“Ways to make a fast buck” – Reviews of:   Lynn Kostoff’s Late Rain and Charlie Stella’s Johnny Porno

“Dreaming their big dreams”: the American Nightmares of Megan Abbott and Vicki Hendricks

“The terror of the truth”: the Gothic Noir of Cathi Unsworth and Martyn Waites

“Who the hell are you?” Hits, Lies and Identity Crises in the Thrillers of Kevin Wignall and Olen Steinhauer

The “subterranean night beneath the world”: a review of Sean Cregan’s The Levels and Steve Mosby’s Still Bleeding

 

Articles Reviewing Non-Fiction 

Cross-Cultural Crime Fiction: Special Feature, 2012-13

Cross-Cultural Crime Feature

“Crime Across Cultures” issue of Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings (Volume 13 Number 1, 2013):  “We ask how writers and cultural practitioners from around the world have diversified the crime writing genre, moving beyond the detective novel in order to experiment with a variety of media including short fiction, television, performance, visual art and graffiti.”

Peter Baker (ed), Detecting Detection: International Perspectives on the Uses of a Plot, Continuum, June 2012

Carolina Miranda, Barbara Pezzotti and Jean Anderson (eds), The Foreign in International Crime Writing: Transcultural Representations, Continuum, June 2012

Berit Åström, Katarina Gregersdotter and Tanya Horeck (eds), Rape in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and Beyond: Contemporary Scandinavian and Anglophone Crime Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, October 2012

Boris Dralyuk, Western Crime Fiction Goes East: The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907–1934, Brill: Leiden and Boston, October 2012

Lucy Andrew & Catherine Phelps  (eds), Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crime (European Crime Fictions), University of Wales Press, April 2013

John Cullen Gruesser, Race, Gender and Empire in American Detective Fiction, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, forthcoming Fall/Winter 2013

Introduction: Crime Culture and Modernity” from Crime Culture: Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film (Continuum Literary Studies), edited by Bran Nicol, Eugene McNulty and Patricia Pulham, Continuum Publishing (11 Nov 2010)

The Creation, Marketing and Contexts of Hollywood Crime Films: Reviews of Eddie Muller, The Art of Noir, Eddie Robson, Film Noir, Woody Haut, Heartbreak and Vine, Nicole Rafter, Shots in the Mirror

Past Crime: Pre-nineteenth Century Representations of Criminality:  Reviews of Gillian Spraggs, Outlaws and Highwaymen, Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz (eds), Rogues and Early Modern English Culture and Hal Gladfelder, Criminality and Narrative in Eighteenth-Century England

Goodfellas and Party Monsters: Reporting from Inside the Outside:  Reviews of Nicholas Pileggi,Goodfellas; Dominic Spinale, G-Men and Gangsters, James St James, Party Monster and Frank Owen,Clubland Confidential

 

Articles Reviewing True Crime Writing

An Introduction to the True Crime Press:  Vicky Munro ranges from Victorian origins to the contemporary popularity of writers like Ann Rule and Joe McGinnis, analysing the representations of the lives and alleged crimes of killers whose stories are on sale in the True Crime sections of bookstores.

Serial Killer Non-Fiction:  David Schmid, drawing on his highly regarded monograph, Natural Born Celebrities, begins with earlier non-fiction works on serial murder and then moves on to consider work published by F.B.I. agents alongside the best-selling books of Ann Rule and Truman Capote.

True Crime Covers (PDF):  Lee Horsley’s “Dead Dolls and Deadly Dames”, on the iconic female figures of pulp true crime publishing – “voluptuous, tantalizing and dressed to kill, they voicelessly tempted generations of men to buy the stories of their death or disgrace…”

 

Articles Written by Students of Crime Fiction

This is a small sampling of the earliest articles published on Crimeculture, from 2002 on, by undergraduates and postgraduates studying crime fiction and film at Lancaster University and at a range of other universities.

Dark Along These Streets: Three Argentinean Films Noirs Adapting Cornell Woolrich, SANTIAGO RUBIN DE CELIS, Spanish freelance film critic and reviewer

Capital Crimes, KATY SHAW, University of Brighton

True Detective: A Case for Neo-Noir, ALICIA BERDAN, Texas Woman’s University

Reading House M.D. as a Detective Drama, AYSEGUL KESIRLI, Dogus University, Istanbul

Poe and Doyle: The Genius Detective, ASHLEIGH PROSSER, The University of Western Australia

Anime-Noir, or how three key anime participate in the lasting legacy of noir, HARRIET ALLEN, Lancaster University

Being “good” in Sin City: morality, the individual and public authority, RICHARD FINN, Lancaster University