English Language and Literature Commons^™

Khaled Hosseini, Keigo Higashino, And Zoe Ferraris: Social Concealment, Personal Revelation, And Community Guilt, John C. Hawley

English

Detective novels, while generally considered to be pulp fiction and therefore worthy of less academic attention, nonetheless lay bare the reader’s interest in getting to the so-called truth. Even the inclusion of “red herrings” and false leads serves to entice a deeper commitment to proving the existence of what “really” happened. They are, therefore, escapist in the sense that they tease readers to reject the underpinnings of deconstruction and poststructuralism and allow, at least for the limited duration of the reading, a comforting illusion that there are larger truths that an actual “self” can discern and pin down. This need …