My Killer Secret and 'Literary' Crime Fiction - an Analysis

Abstract

My creative work, ‘My Killer Secret’, is a crime fiction novel that aims to use characteristics more often associated with the ‘literary’ to create a hybrid novel that contributes to both literary fiction and crime fiction. It also signifies a major departure from my established writing style as a popular crime fiction novelist of a police (FBI) procedural series. ‘My Killer Secret’ is about a reformed child killer with a new identity, who’s caught in the middle of a child abduction case. It explores use of multiple voices through multiple narrators, as well as other literary features and experimentation as outlined in Volume 1 of this thesis, ‘Literary Crime Fiction — An Analysis’. -- When comparisons between crime fiction and the ‘literary’ have been made, it is usually in the context of a dichotomy, relegating crime fiction to a generically formulaic and market-driven level. This exegesis questions this dichotomy, suggesting that some crime novels can be read as both literary novels and crime novels. This exegesis explores definitions of the ‘literary’, which represents a compiled view of characteristics other researchers have attributed to the literary but have not been presented in one body of research before. Crime fiction is also defined, before looking at the somewhat tired debate of the high-low divide and the historical context for and against a dichotomy. The exegesis posits a more open system of analysis, adapting John Frow’s work on the subjective nature of reading (reader reception), cultural and functional hybridity (as distinct from ‘purity’), and how texts can have multiple values and uses. To analyse how novels can be read as both literary and crime fiction, I focus on four characteristics usually cited as points of difference, specifically, the role of characterisation, plot and genre conventions; socio-political critique; voice, language and style; and external evaluation. By examining these areas in relation to three texts — Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls, Peter Temple’s Truth and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl — I deconstruct the dichotomy and show that some crime novels exhibit characteristics from both crime fiction and literary fiction and thus can be read in multiple ways and contribute to both literary fiction and crime fiction. The novels are also examined through the lens of noir. Finally, my PhD novel, ‘My Killer Secret’ is discussed, exploring the inclusion of literary characteristics to produce a novel that, while still being in the crime genre, employs some literary characteristics to create a novel that exhibits elements from both literary fiction and crime fiction and thus can be read in multiple ways. ‘My Killer Secret’ also signifies a major departure from my established writing style as a popular crime fiction novelist.