{"id":1999,"date":"2011-12-31T21:34:26","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T21:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=1999"},"modified":"2012-01-06T17:38:14","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:38:14","slug":"following-the-detectives","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=1999","title":{"rendered":"Following the Detectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maxim\u00a0Jakubowski\u00a0(ed),\u00a0Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction<\/em>\u00a0(New Holland, 2010)<\/span><\/h3>\n

Lee Horsley, Lancaster University<\/p>\n

\"Following<\/a>Maxim\u00a0Jakubowski\u2019s\u00a0Introduction to\u00a0Following the Detectives<\/em>rightly argues the importance to crime fiction of a sense of place, and emphasizes the extent to which the genre\u2019s protagonists are strongly identified with \u201cthe environment they function in\u201d.<\/p>\n

With the proliferation of crime fiction in languages other than English – French, Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish, German,Argentinian, Cuban \u2013 there has been increasing critical attention paid to the contrasting environments within which crime fiction is now flourishing.\u00a0\u00a0Over the last few years, a number of conferences and proposed collections of essays have tried to address the multicultural nature of contemporary crime writing, theorizing national differences and cultural identities.\u00a0Following the Detectives<\/em>isn\u2019t attempting anything so academic or so systematic.\u00a0\u00a0But it does, in its own way, illuminate the huge diversity of an international genre.\u00a0\u00a0Following the Detectives<\/em>\u00a0is much more than entertainment for the \u201carmchair tourist\u201d \u2013 though it is certainly that as well.<\/p>\n

The maps and photographs and general liveliness of the essays will make them hugely appealing to any detective fiction enthusiast \u2013 particularly to those who want to experience the haunts and sights of a city in relation to their reading of\u00a0favourite\u00a0crime writers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s intriguing to know that you can still retrace Marlowe\u2019s footsteps and car journeys from novel to novel, \u201cfrom the lush\u00a0Sternwood\u00a0residence on Franklin Avenue and the Geiger\u00a0bookstore\u00a0\u00a0and\u00a0residences on, respectively Hollywood Boulevard and Laurel Canyon (in\u00a0The Big Sleep<\/em>) to\u00a0Florian\u2019s\u00a0Bar, where Marlowe met up with Moose Malloy in\u00a0The Little Sister\u2026<\/em>or visit the Barclay Hotel, formerly the Van Nuys, site of the ice-pick murder in\u00a0The Little Sister\u2026<\/em>\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Actual or armchair tourists will interested in the fact that V. I\u00a0Warshawski\u00a0\u201cregularly eats at the Belmont Diner in an old working-class\u00a0neighbourhood, that she drinks at the Golden Glow, a saloon in the South Loop that\u2019s been there forever\u201d, and that she\u2019s a Cubs fan and goes to games at Wrigley Field.\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019re taken on an agreeable tour of The Eagle and Child in St Giles\u2019, The Perch Inn overlooking Port Meadow, The Trout Inn by\u00a0Godstow\u00a0Bridge, and the other Oxford pubs frequented by Colin Dexter\u2019s Inspector Morse; we follow Dave\u00a0Robicheaux\u2019s\u00a0ambles through the French Quarter of New Orleans and his visits to The Pearl, \u201cjust off Canal Street\u201d to enjoy \u201ca beer and some oysters on the half shell\u201d; and we discover that you can still eat the same meal that Sam Spade ate (chops, baked potato and sliced tomato) at John\u2019s Grill, where he stopped off in\u00a0The Maltese Falcon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The culinary and recreational details are, however, balanced by equally close attention to deeper concerns, political contexts, and social issues.\u00a0\u00a0The essays make a valuable contribution to our understanding of how detective novels represent distinctive national anxieties and preoccupations, and, reading the collection as awhole,\u00a0we\u2019re led to reflect on international and cross-cultural comparisons.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In addition to following the lives of fictional characters as they track villains through the darker corners of their cities, contributors illuminate the politicization of crime novels and the extent to which fundamentally serious themes are brought to the fore.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re shown, for example, the way in which beauty of Venice is contrasted with its underlying violence, as Donna Leon plots her mysteries in \u201ca country where corruption reaches to the highest levels of government.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Paretsky\u2019s\u00a0increasingly political take on Chicago\u2019s crimes is apparent in novels that map \u201cthe gentrification of ethnic areas and the blight that modernization leaves behind, the poverty and the inequalities.\u201d Henning\u00a0Mankell\u00a0represents the widening \u201ccracks in the consensus of Scandinavian society\u201d, and\u00a0Arnaldur\u00a0Indridason, in\u00a0Arctic Chill<\/em>, examines Iceland\u2019s demography and immigration \u2013 racial issues and crimes against immigrants, immigrant children who refuse to integrate; he makes \u201ca heartfelt, humane effort\u201d to understand a changing country.\u00a0\u00a0Andrea\u00a0Camilleri\u00a0offers a rich picture of Sicily\u2019s human landscape, ranging from \u201cadroitly amoral politicians\u201d to peasants abused by the police, immigrant victims of human trafficking and African street\u00a0pedlars.<\/p>\n

Closer to home, there is the urban violence in John Harvey\u2019s Nottingham, in which territorial violence is (in\u00a0Cold in Hand<\/em>) \u201cfuelled by the rivalry between young people living on different estates\u201d, or, in\u00a0Last Rites<\/em>, by the rivalries of an escalating drug trade; and there is the way in which Declan Hughes \u201cuses the settings of the fictional suburbs of\u00a0Bayview,\u00a0Castlehill\u00a0and\u00a0Seafield\u00a0to investigate the consequences that generations of wealth have had on the moral, spiritual and psychological\u00a0fibre\u00a0of the affluent families of south County Dublin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0organisation\u00a0of\u00a0Following the Detectives<\/em>\u00a0is not that of systematic analysis or comparison.\u00a0\u00a0Entries are neither chronologically nor geographically ordered.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, there is the sense of surprise and discovery, as each new location and detective appears \u2013 a sense of dipping in and out of old\u00a0favourites\u00a0and of being tempted by new crime writing pleasures.\u00a0\u00a0We wander through a fascinating global phenomenon that will, as\u00a0Jakubowski\u00a0says \u201cencourage you to read mystery writers you might previously have overlooked or even provoke you to go out of your way and explore the real world behind the stories during the course of your travels.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Lee Horsley<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maxim\u00a0Jakubowski\u00a0(ed),\u00a0Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction\u00a0(New Holland, 2010) Lee Horsley, Lancaster University Maxim\u00a0Jakubowski\u2019s\u00a0Introduction to\u00a0Following the Detectivesrightly argues the<\/p>\n

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