Partners in Crime: Readers, Translators, Characters and the Promotion of a Genre

This article explores the hegemonic status enjoyed by the crime novel in the contemporary era, a genre which, in contrast to the literary mainstream, continues to flourish. It suggests that the development of a body of research on crime fiction has resulted in the widespread acceptance of a finite number of unassailable generic qualities. One of these, the heuristic function of the crime narrative, plays a crucial role with regard to two questions that have stimulated much interest recently among critics. These concern firstly the relative ease with which crime fiction, unlike other literary genres, seems able to migrate from one national culture to the next, and secondly its capacity to engage with notions of the real or indeed with topical issues, even in those instances where the referential aspects of the text in question are muted. With reference to the monumental Dictionnaire des littératures policières edited by Claude Mesplède, and drawing on the influential studies of Pierre Bayard and Luc Boltanski, the article offers fresh readings of the work of Poe and Vargas.