Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes (International Crime Fictions)

Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes expands upon previous studies of the urban space and crime by reflecting on the treatment of the capital city, a repository of authority, national identity and culture, within crime fiction. This wide-ranging collection looks at capital cities across Europe, from the more traditional centres of power - Paris, Rome and London - to Europe's most northern capital, Stockholm, and also considers the newly devolved capitals, Dublin, Edinburgh and Cardiff. The texts under consideration span the nineteenth-century city mysteries to contemporary populist crime fiction. The collection opens with a reflective essay by Ian Rankin and aims to inaugurate a dialogue between Anglophone and European crime writing; to explore the marginalised works of Irish and Welsh writers alongside established European crime writers and to interrogate the relationship between fact and fiction, creativity and criticism, within the crime genre. -- From publisher's website Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction Edinburgh ‘The map that engenders the territory’? Rethinking Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh Corralling Crime in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay Crimes and Contradictions: the Fictional City of Dublin From National Authority to Urban Underbelly: Negotiations of Power in Stockholm Crime Fiction Streets and Squares, Quartiers and Arrondissements: Paris Crime Scenesand the Poetics of Contestation in the Novels of Jean-François Vilar The Mysteries of the Vatican: from Nineteenth-century Anti-clerical Propaganda to Dan Brown’s Religious Thrillers A Tale of Three Cities: Megalopolitan Mysteries of the 1840s Conclusion Index Crime Fiction in the Capital Crimes expands upon previous studies of urban space and crime by reflecting on the treatment of the capital citya repository of authority, national identity, and culturewithin crime fiction. The essays examine a broad array of crime writing set in capital cities, from the nineteenth-century gothic city mysteries of Paris, London, and Rome, to contemporary fiction located in newly devolved centers of power like Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Stockholm. The collection brings together academics and creative writers, including an opening reflective essay by Ian Rankin. A collection of academic essays by literary critics and writers of crime fiction - including a reflective essay by Ian Rankin on his own work - that explores the relationship between crime fiction and the urban spaces of the capital city.