1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910483072903321

Autore

Hopkins Lisa

Titolo

Burial plots in British detective fiction / / Lisa Hopkins

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2021

ISBN

3-030-65760-4

Edizione

[1st ed. 2021.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (VII, 201 pages)

Collana

Crime Files, , 2947-8359

Disciplina

221.60901

823.087209

Soggetti

Detective and mystery stories, English - History and criticism

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

English fiction - 21st century - History and criticism

History in literature

Murder in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: The Deep Dead: Detective Fiction and Archaeology -- Chapter 3: The tongue is a fire: Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver Novels -- Chapter 4: The Body in the Library: Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, Sarah Caudwell -- Chapter 5: Cover Her Face: Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama -- Chapter 6: Historic Scotland: Val McDermid’s Cold Cases -- Chapter 7: Crime at Christmas -- Chapter 8: Detecting the Dead -- Chapter 9: Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

Burial Plots in British Detective Fiction offers an overview of the ways in which the past is brought back to the surface and influences the present in British detective fiction written between 1920 and 2020. Exploring a range of authors including Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Val McDermid, Sarah Caudwell, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, Jonathan Stroud and Ben Aaronovitch, Lisa Hopkins argues that both the literal and literary disinterment of the past use elements of the national past to interrogate the present. As such, in the texts discussed, uncovering the truth about an individual crime is also typically an uncovering of a more general connection between the present and the past. Whether detective novels explore murders on



archaeological digs, hauntings, cold crimes or killings at Christmas, Hopkins explores the underlying message that you cannot understand the present unless you understand the past.