Literature Now. The Gentrification Plot : New York and the Postindustrial Crime Novel

For decades, crime novelists have set their stories in New York City, a place long famed for decay, danger, and intrigue. What happens when the mean streets of the city are no longer quite so mean? In the wake of an unprecedented drop in crime in the 1990s and the real-estate development boom in the early 2000s, a new suspect is on the scene: gentrification. Thomas Heise identifies and investigates the emerging "gentrification plot" in contemporary crime fiction. He considers recent novels that depict the sweeping transformations of five iconic neighborhoods--the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Red Hook, Harlem, and Bedford-Stuyvesant--that have been central to African American, Latinx, immigrant, and blue-collar life in the city. Heise reads works by Richard Price, Henry Chang, Gabriel Cohen, Reggie Nadelson, Ivy Pochoda, Grace Edwards, Ernesto Quiñonez, Wil Medearis, and Brian Platzer, tracking their representations of "broken-windows" policing, cultural erasure, racial conflict, class grievance, and displacement. Placing their novels in conversation with oral histories, urban planning, and policing theory, he explores crime fiction's contradictory and ambivalent portrayals of the postindustrial city's dizzying metamorphoses while underscoring the material conditions of the genre. A timely and powerful book, The Gentrification Plot reveals how today's crime writers narrate the death--or murder--of a place and a way of life "For decades, crime novelists have set their stories in New York City, a place long famed for decay, danger, and intrigue. What happens when the mean streets of the city are no longer quite so mean? In the wake of an unprecedented drop in crime in the 1990s and the real-estate development boom in the early 2000s, a new suspect is on the scene: gentrification. Thomas Heise identifies and investigates the emerging "gentrification plot" in contemporary crime fiction. He considers recent novels that depict the sweeping transformations of five iconic neighborhoods-the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Red Hook, Harlem, and Bedford-Stuyvesant-that have been central to African American, Latinx, immigrant, and blue-collar life in the city. Heise reads works by Richard Price, Henry Chang, Gabriel Cohen, Reggie Nadelson, Ivy Pochoda, Grace Edwards, Ernesto Quiñonez, Wil Medearis, and Brian Platzer, tracking their representations of "broken-windows" policing, cultural erasure, racial conflict, class grievance, and displacement. Placing their novels in conversation with oral histories, urban planning, and policing theory, he explores crime fiction's contradictory and ambivalent portrayals of the postindustrial city's dizzying metamorphoses while underscoring the material conditions of the genre. A timely and powerful book, The Gentrification Plot reveals how today's crime writers narrate the death-or murder- of a place and a way of life"-- Provided by publisher For decades, crime novelists have set their stories in New YorkCity, a place long famed for decay, danger, and intrigue. Whathappens when the mean streets of the city are no longer quite somean? In the wake of an unprecedented drop in crime in the 1990sand the real-estate development boom in the early 2000s, a newsuspect is on the scene: gentrification. Thomas Heise identifiesand investigates the emerging "gentrification plot" in contemporarycrime fiction. He considers recent novels that depict the sweepingtransformations of five iconic neighborhoods-the Lower East Side,Chinatown, Red Hook, Harlem, and Bedford-Stuyvesant-that have beencentral to African American, Latinx, immigrant, and blue-collarlife in the city. Heise reads works by Richard Price, Henry Chang,Gabriel Cohen, Reggie Nadelson, Ivy Pochoda, Grace Edwards, ErnestoQuiñonez, Wil Medearis, and Brian Platzer, tracking theirrepresentations of "broken-windows" policing, cultural erasure,racial conflict, class grievance, and displacement. Placing theirnovels in conversation with oral histories, urban planning, andpolicing theory, he explores crime fiction's contradictory andambivalent portrayals of the postindustrial city's dizzyingmetamorphoses while underscoring the material conditions of thegenre. A timely and powerful book, The Gentrification Plotreveals how today's crime writers narrate the death-or murder-of aplace and a way of life