Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Justice and Revenge in Contemporary American Crime Fiction
ISBN: 9781137469663
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Palgrave Macmillan UK
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Fiction; Literature;

The detective figure in contemporary American crime fiction increasingly relies on revenge to bring about justice in a society where there has been a sharp decline in moral values. This study demonstrates how the notion of the detective as a moral exemplar or heroic ideal breaks down in the works of writers such as James Ellroy and Sara Paretsky.

Stuart Sim is retired Professor of Critical Theory at Northumbria University, UK. A Fellow of the English Association, he has published widely in the fields of critical theory and the novel as social criticism. Recent works include The End of Modernity (2010), The Lyotard Dictionary (ed., 2011), and Fifty Key Thinkers in Postmodernism (2013).