Sara Paretsky: Detective Fiction As Trauma Literature (Contemporary American And Canadian Writers)

Sara Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series, which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. But Paretsky does more than this. Her novels also illustrate the extent to which detective fiction acts as a literature of trauma, allowing Paretsky to address the politics of agency in ways that go beyond the personal, for trauma always has a social and a political dimension. Paretsky's work also exploits the way detective fiction mirrors the writing of history. Here, Paretsky uses the form to expose the partiality of historical accounts - whether they be personal, institutional, or national - that authorise 'forgetting' of a particularly insidious kind. Significantly, all these issues are explored within the framework of the traditional hard-boiled detective novel. As a result, Paretsky's achievement forces us to acknowledge the deeply subversive potential of detective fiction.

• | Author: Cynthia Hamilton
• | Publisher: Manchester University Press
• | Publication Date: June 29, 2021
• | Number of Pages: 200 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1526156040
• | ISBN-13: 9781526156044