The Crossroads of Crime Writing

Over a century ago, in his examination The Sensational in Modern English Fiction (1919), Walter Clarke Phillips declared, “Whatever sources of appeal may come or go, there is one which from the very structure of modern democratic society seldom bids for applause unheeded—that is, the appeal to fear” (p. 2). It is to this appeal that we owe the abundance of crime writing at our disposal—a trove of mystery that undoubtedly fascinates in its ability to entertain while safely reflecting the ugliest truths about ourselves and the societies in which we live. Thus, crime writing is the perfect vehicle for examining the origins and endurance of those societal fears which are firmly grounded in such conceptions and the perceived boundaries that perpetuate them, and it simultaneously gives us the opportunity to evaluate the full range of those characteristics that differentiate the genre, particularly in its ability to allow us to begin to pick apart social constructions in relation to its own c