Sara Paretsky

Detective fiction as trauma literature

Cynthia S Hamilton

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780719096952
• eBook ISBN: 9781526185778
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Sara Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series, which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. But Paretsky does more than this. Her novels also illustrate the extent to which detective fiction acts as a literature of trauma, allowing Paretsky to address the politics of agency in ways that go beyond the personal, for trauma always has a social and a political dimension. Paretsky's work also exploits the way detective fiction mirrors the writing of history. Here, Paretsky uses the form to expose the partiality of historical accounts – whether they be personal, institutional, or national – that authorise 'forgetting' of a particularly insidious kind. Significantly, all these issues are explored within the framework of the traditional hard-boiled detective novel. As a result, Paretsky's achievement forces us to acknowledge the deeply subversive potential of detective fiction.

Table of contents

• Sara Paretsky
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series editors’ foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Novels by Sara Paretsky in order of publication date
• Introduction
• 1 Repositioning the debate
• 2 Sexual politics and agency
• 3 Community and empowerment
• 4 Global capital and marginality
• 5 Destabilising the status quo
• Afterword
• Select bibliography
• Index