Q & A Blog Series

This new Q & A blog series is focused on building community within the ICFA and sharing the love of great writing that has brought us all together. Our first contributor is gender scholar Mary Evans!

1. What first sparked your interest in crime fiction studies?

The very first detective novels I read (like many people of my generation) were by Agatha Christie. I was about 12 or 13 years old and totally amazed by stories like The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Death on the Nile. So from there on, and especially in my 20s, it was reading Simenon (including the wonderful TV programmes of Maigret), and other authors of the 'Golden Age'. Where things really got interesting, in a more academic way, and especially in a sociological sense, was the new writing of the 1970s. Those stories included generic innovations in Scandinavian noir, 'damaged/tortured' policemen (mostly men), and attempts by writers such as P. D. James, and to a certain extent Ruth Rendell, to represent the 'good' (as in conventional) policeman (again, more men).

2. What have you been reading, watching, or listening to recently? Do you notice any new emergent trends?

Recently I have come to read and admire John Banville for his brilliant management of ideas about ambiguous moralities and living in small moral spaces. At the same time, and faced with the implications of national politics in a very dangerous way, Attica Locke. I've also read a mass of other writers (Elizabeth George, Tom Billingham, Val McDermid et al) who are all excellent story tellers but not genre-shifting.

3. Which book(s) do you find yourself returning to most often?

I don't read much US detective fiction (all those guns and chasing the 'perp,' and I loathe writers such as Patricia Cornwell), but I often return to the three novels by Michael Malone set in the southern US for their brilliant characters and depictions of racial and class politics.

4. What is your best piece of advice for emerging scholars in the field?

My advice to anyone thinking of studying detective fiction: specialise and don't try to cover everything. You can't. It’s a huge field, the most read form of fiction! But look out for new characters; obviously new characters in Golden Age (women, not least Miss Marple), plus non-white, non-straight individuals Ask questions about the impact of new technologies on detective fiction. Can it survive DNA testing, Artificial Intelligence, etc?