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Genre And Loss: The Impossibility Of Restoration In 20th Century Detective Fiction, Kathryn Hendrickson

Dissertations (1934 -)

My project situates loss, rather than restoration, as the identifying trait of the detective fiction genre. I contend that instead of providing a problem-solution model that gives readers closure and reinforces simplified understandings of good and evil, detective fiction refuses to build comforting narratives that rehabilitate a corrupted world. Detective fiction, with its continual attempts to provide an unobtainable solution, ruminates on the impossibility of restoration.Genre and Loss: The Impossibility of Restoration in 20th Century Detective Fiction divides into four chapters, each addressing a perceived subdivision of the detective fiction genre in order to illuminate the unifying connections between …