Unwilling executioner : crime fiction and the state / Andrew Pepper. [electronic resource]

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pepper, Andrew, 1969- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Detective and mystery stories--History and criticism.

Detective and mystery stories.

Politics and literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

What gives crime fiction its distinctive shape and form? What makes it such a compelling vehicle of social and political critique? 'Unwilling Executioner' argues that the answer lies in the emerging genre's complex and intimate relationship with the bureaucratic state and modern capitalism, and the contradictions that ensue once the state assumes control of the criminal justice system.

Contents:

1. 'A life of horrid and inimitable wickedness' : crime, law and punishment in early eighteenth-century London and Paris

2. 'Let us attack injustice at its source' : crime literature in an era of revolution and reform

3. 'A mysterious power whose hand is everywhere' : imagining the state and codifying the law in the mid-nineteenth century

4. Crime, business, and liberty at the turn of the century : the individual, the state, and the emergence of modern capitalism

5. 'No good business' : states of crime in the 1920s and 1930s

6. 'On the barricades' : crime fiction and commitment in an era of radical politics

7. From sovereignty to Neoliberalism : crime fiction in the contemporary world.

Notes:

This edition previously issued in print: 2016.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on April 26, 2016).

ISBN:

0-19-178434-6