The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: crime-fiction

  • P.D. James and Louise Penny

    “Perhaps Adam Dalgliesh is an idealized version of what I’d have liked to be if I’d been born a man.” P.D. James, quoted in an interview by Julian Symons, NY Times, 5 October 1986. “Almost always the idea for a book comes to me as a reaction to a particular place and setting. Sometimes it’s…

  • Iceland Noir: Margrét Ann Thors’s First Novel

    I love this book. I’ve had a lucky streak of wonderful books: fiction and nonfiction, crime and suspense but also domestic/romantic “women’s fiction,” like Kerry Clare’s new novel, Definitely Thriving. Clare has a lot of fun with the idea of a segregated women’s literature: her protagonist, Clemence, fresh out of a marriage that she blew…

  • Brokenness and Resilience: The Aestheticization of Violence in Crime Fiction

    Resilience Discourse In several contexts over the past few weeks, references to resilience have irritated me. My re-immersion in trauma theory for a book chapter has me thinking about who is expected to be endlessly resilient, and how this call to demonstrate strength becomes an excuse to ignore pain, abuse, and systemic inequalities. Resilience discourse…