The reactionary art of murder:contemporary crime fiction,criticism and verisimilitude by Paul Cobley

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verisimilitudeThe reactionary art of murder: Contemporary crime fiction, criticism and

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The reactionary art ofmurder: Contemporarycrime fiction, criticism andverisimilitude

Paul CobleyLondon Metropolitan University, UK

AbstractOne way in which specific crime fiction texts achieve prominence is through critical discourses

which promote those texts superior realism, valorizing the texts and setting them apart from

neighbouring generic narratives. This article goes back to the 1921 analysis by Roman Jakobson

which identifies a small number of strategies by which arguments about realism proceed.Particularly important for crime fiction criticism is that approach to realism, described by

Jakobson, which focuses on contiguous details in narrative. In contrast to the claims of realism

is the analytic concept of verisimilitude, based on the rules of the genre and public opinion

or doxa. Verisimilitude, it is argued, has the capacity to address the important issue of generic

stagnation, an example of which in crime fiction is the increasing reliance on murder (serial, single

or repeated) to propel a narrative. Amidst the conformity in the genre, the article identifies

complicity in the promotion of realism and the catalytic occurrence of murder as the key

constituents of crime fiction. It also points to some exceptions to this tendency.

KeywordsBelow-the-line discourse, crime fiction, Karin Slaughter, The Killing, realism, Roman Jakobson,

Scott & Bailey, valorization, verisimilitude

When markets become saturated with a particular product, it is tempting to imagine that it

is an indication of that products good health. At present, crime fiction is ubiquitous, cer-

tainly in print and on television (although, curiously, not film). Yet, contemporary high

profile crime fiction, it will be argued, suffers from two impediments that amount to stag-

nation. The first, and principal one, is the genres adherence to an increasingly conservative

Corresponding author:

Paul Cobley, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, London Metropolitan University, 6266 Highbury

Grove, London, N5 2AD, UK.

Email: [email protected]

LAL21310.1177/0963947012444218CobleyLanguageand Literature2

Article

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Cobley 287

ideal of realism. The second, symptomatic one, is the genres fixation on the crime of

murder as the only crime of note, a strategy which actually puts a strain on claims to real-

ism. Contemporary crime fiction is short on ideas and has low expectations of what it has

to produce for its readers, while at the same time suffering from high self-esteem because,

especially through below-the-line discourses (press releases, interviews, reviews and soon), it complacently projects itself as the embodiment of a valorized ideal of realism.

The realism upon which crime fiction depends appears at first to be an open-ended

concept and, as such, serves below-the-line discourse handsomely. It provides the promise

of accuracy and objectivity with reference to such things as police procedure and, as will

be seen, serves internal competition in the genre by promising new, innovative and

superior narratives with, supposedly, a greater claim to veracity in response to real world

changes. Some time ago, however, Roman Jakobson demonstrated that, as a framework

for appraising textuality, realism was not such a moveable feast; he showed that it could

be reduced to a fairly limited number of critical gambits. In On realism in art (1987,[1921]) an essay whose influence can be discerned in the work of so many 20th-century

theorists of realism, Jakobson outlines an A to E of definitions. These are as follows:

A: Realism may refer to the aspiration and intent of the author; i.e., a work is understood to be

realistic if it is conceived by its author as a display of verisimilitude, as true to life.

B: A work may be called realistic if I, the person judging it, perceive it as true to life.

In the first case, evaluation must be made on an intrinsic basis, guessing at the authorial

intent and reconstructing the impetus in the attempt to be true to life. In the second case,the readers individual impression is the decisive criterion, (theoretically) irrespective of

what the authors intent might have been. To this, Jakobson adds two corollaries:

A1: The tendency to deform given artistic norms conceived as an approximation of reality

A2: The conservative tendency to remain within the limits of a given artistic tradition, conceived

as faithfulness to reality.

In the case of A1, realism is ascribed to forms that were never intended to be realistic.

In the case of A2, there is the idea that one tradition has staked a claim to prominence inits approximation of reality, as is commonly argued by critics, too, who identify the clas-

sic realist text (e.g. MacCabe, 1976; see also definition C, given later). Likewise, there

are corollaries for definition B:

B1: I rebel against a given artistic code and view its deformation as a more accurate rendition

of reality

B2: I am conservative and view the deformation of the artistic code, to which I subscribe, as a

distortion of reality.

These are fairly straightforward: the first is concerned with the exposing of the artifice of

artistic renditions breaking frame, Brechtian alienation, metafiction, self-referentiality

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288 Language and Literature 21(3)

and, thus, postmodern as well as modern modes; the second sees such exposure as an

assault on realistic renditions. The third position is summed up as:

C: Realism comprehends the sum total of the features characteristic of one specific artistic

current of the nineteenth century.

This is quite an established position and represents, in one sense, the triumph of 19th-

century realism as a dominant mode of representation in the novel and in contemporary

audio-visual narratives. It also represents some resignation about realism or the grounds

for resisting 19th-century modes. Similarly, a fourth position is allied to the critique or

recognition of the hegemonic status of 19th-century realism and often mistaken for C. It

is position D:

D: depiction of contiguity or the narrative act of focusing on inessential details.

Among others, Jakobson gives the example of the description of Anna Kareninas hand-

bag at the time of her suicide. Position D in realism is famously interrogated by Barthes

(1989) with reference to the reality effect and was even addressed 12 years after

Jakobsons essay when Knights (1946 [1933]) famously asked How many children had

Lady Macbeth? D is a matter of the condensation of the narrative by means of images

based on contiguity, that is, avoidance of the normal designative term in favour of meton-

ymy or synecdoche (Jakobson, 1987: 25). As will be seen below, critical lauding of

specific crime fiction texts expands this principle, fixating on details which are errone-ously meant to stand for the whole of the text and the genre, but ultimately impinging

upon issues which are more appropriately broached within the terms of verisimilitude.

Finally, Jakobson identifies:

E: the requirement of consistent motivation and realization of poetic devices.

With this, he refers to such poetic phenomena as the use of metaphor or disjointed repre-

sentation in depictions of madness, the kind of stock devices which can now be recog-

nized as symptomatic of modernism in art and literature. In summing up, Jakobson

(1987: 27) states that it is really inexcusable to confuse or conflate the different inflec-

tions of realism.

The sin against which Jakobson railed has found a particularly congenial home in the

genre of fiction about crime and detection. In this genre, stagnation and regeneration

is most frequently seen in terms of a decline and renewal of the terms of realism.

One of the most famous commentaries on crime fiction makes this clear. Raymond

Chandlers 1950 essay, The simple art of murder, took issue with the cosy artificiality

of the Mayhem Parva school of crime fiction associated with whodunits set in English

villages and connected to the name of Agatha Christie especially (Watson, 1971).

Following his demolition of a detective novel by AA Milne, author of the Winnie thePooh stories, on version D grounds of detailed procedural and factual errors, Chandler

promoted an alternative in the hard-boiled writing of Hammett and others. In a passage

which is now famous, Chandler (1950: 195) writes:




Cobley 289

Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide

a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought duelling pistols, curare, and

tropical fish. He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think

in the language they customarily used for these purposes.

The first sentence introduces social motivation framed by verisimilitude in opposition to

the artifice of other narrations of murder. The second sentence begins to invoke language,

but still for the purposes of demonstrating its fidelity to reality. Yet it also embodies a point

just between Jakobsons A1 and A2 corollaries as Hammetts language inaugurates a new

mode (deforming the old) but setting, too, a new standard (a potentially conservative artis-

tic tradition). Later, that language is posited to be the speech of ordinary common

Americans, thus pushing public opinion and the rules of the genre (Chandler [1950: 195]

later refers to meaty melodrama in addition to prose style) closer together.

Chandler affirms the motivation in Hammetts world and the objectivity of the stylethat creates it in other words, realism. Hammetts conscious attempt to bridge the gap

between pulp and literature (see, for example, McCann, 2000: 87139) make him a piv-

otal figure for those like Chandler who would laud some crime fiction and denigrate

other texts in the genre. Thus, Chandler is commonly seen as the successor to Hammett.

Yet this line of succession is not just in place because Chandler seems to have inherited

the hard-boiled, objective style and the social motivation of Hammetts characters. It is

also believed that Chandlers powerful but extremely depressing books should be read

and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art (Auden, 1963: 151). So, there is

an interesting and enduring convergence of issues around Hammett and Chandler apartfrom the formation of a hard-boiled school. Realism in the genre became synonymous

with literature or art, and realism also requires the harshness of the world to be deliv-

ered by an objective style. However, it is now well known that Chandlers objectivity

and dismal view of the polis as corrupt are somewhat of a sham. In the definitive exco-

riation of Chandlerian values, Knight (1980: 135167) demonstrates that Chandlers is

an elitist project, highly partial, romantic, based on withdrawal from society and far from

a realization of objective realism.

It is unsurprising, then, that Chandler is highly praised by university graduates of

English and people of similar tastes and needs (Knight, 1980: 138), Auden among them.

While Auden argues that crime fictions central purpose is escapism, its putatively neat

resolutions supposedly being antidotes to depression or opiates for the reading public, it

follows that Chandlerian unhappy endings, problematic denouements and lack of resolu-

tion more closely imitate life in the mode of realism or, at least, constitute good art.

This latter is a well-rehearsed argument, the most sophisticated version being the thesis

regarding open and closed texts put forward memorably by Eco (1989). Yet depress-

ing subject matter, the modernist preoccupation with existential angst and the drab feel-

ing attendant on the impossibility of reaching true meaning have established themselves

as the ontological insecurities that run through the critical favourites of the thriller

genre, from hard-boiled fiction to spy stories. Referring to Hammetts narratives, Harper(1969: 67) identifies what is arguably the leitmotif of hard-boiled realism, from The

Glass Key(1931), through Chinatown(1975) to Two-Way Split(2004): The hero him-

self is left limp and empty; there is no joy, not even satisfaction.





Combined with the tendency towards lack of resolution in some crime fiction, plus

the dreary modern experience of insecurity, another mainstay of realism for the genre has

been low-key representation: If you describe really outrageous events as though they

happen daily in your backyard, you get a critical impact which Woe Woe and Cry Havoc

do not impart (Atkins, 1964: 87). Much has been written on the flat, repetitive nature ofthe hard-boiled style (including by me. See Cobley, 2000: 5675, 2001: 107116).

Leaving Chandlers romanticism aside, the style is certainly associated with an unemo-

tional approach to narrative. This may be one reason for the current immense popularity

of Scandinavian crime fiction in the Anglophone world and beyond. That is, such fiction

embodies a version of realism that is convincing or appealing because of its low key and

contrast with the more meaty melodrama of contemporary crime narratives. Certainly,

Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson have been translated into numerous languages and

sold millions internationally, along with a host of other crime writers from Northern

Europe who have been marketed as Nordic. In both, the cold climate of the setting iscomplemented by the detached, laconic narration in a tradition of crime fiction which has

precursors in the novels of Swedes, Sjowall and Wahloo in the 1960s and 1970s, as well

as the international success of the Danish Peter Hegs novel,Miss Smillas Feeling for

Snow(1993). Scandinavian crime fiction, in this sense, therefore seems to occupy posi-

tion B in Jakobsons schema (author-based conception of realism), with a significant

element of D (focus on detail), plus a slight inclination to B1 (rebellion against former

modes of realism). Its championing by broadsheet newspapers and other upmarket

below-the-line channels, especially in the UK, suggests that its B and D credentials,

coupled with its tendency to the depressing or, at least, the emotionally flat and detached elevates it above the mass of popular crime fiction. The critical celebration of Mankell

and Larsson, especially, is indicative of a view that crime fiction can actually sometimes

be good, worthy, realistic and so on, or even that, in so being, individual texts some-

how pull themselves out of or transcend their genre.

An example of this tendency is evident in the acclaim for the Danish television crime

series The Killing(Forbrydelsen, 2007). Despite the fact that the narrative is propelled

by the painfully obvious device of a brutal rape and murder of a young woman (gender

and age of course, not being unimportant here) and follows a conventional whodunit?

arc, critical discourse sustained the TV series in the UK as a piece of exceptional realism.The Killings realism and exceptionalism are upheld by below-the-line publicity. For

example, in assessing The Killing in Radio Times, Alison Graham (2011: 20) gushes

about a drama so pared down, so compelling, so involving. She adds:

Amid the morass of risible reality shows and superannuated cop dramas such as Waking the

Dead, Midsomer Murders and Silent Witness, The Killing, with its sombre aspect, funereal

pace, and demands for absolute concentration, shouts its brilliance as it breaks every rule in the

TV crime fiction handbook.

The key tropes of much criticism (and touting) of contemporary crime fiction are here,concentrated in this short passage: the vilification of inferior crime fiction, the stress on

sombreness and slow pace, and the rule-breaking (implying that the text has managed to

escape the genre at least to have stretched it to breaking point). Sofie Grabol (quoted in




Cobley 291

Graham, 2011: 20), the lead actor in the series, states the importance of rule-breaking in

equally crude terms:

I remember the first time the writer [Soren Sveistrup] came with the idea. He wanted a

20-episode series with just one murder and everyone thought, This cant be.

When you do TV, there is this fear of boring audiences, so you tend to have car chases and love

stories just because you dont want to lose people. It was so brave of the writer to insist on the

slow pace. That is why audiences like The Killing. It challenges you to go deeper into things.

It helps this discourse to demonstrate, too, that quality is quite widely recognized.

Graham continues:

Whod have thought a sombre, European crime drama with no sex, no nudity and not muchviolence, which is shot in a series of dimly lit rooms and encompasses the complexities of

Danish town-hall politics could win so many hearts. In surveys, it scores 94 out of 100, making

it the highest-rated detective drama in terms of satisfaction

Week after week, audiences have thrilled to the adult-ness of The Killingand a story that has

made no concessions to clich or easy solutions. In frequently heartbreaking detail, we have

been made aware of the bleak and everlasting effects of the fallout of a premature, violent death

upon those who are left behind, particularly Nannas parents.

Graham (2011: 2021)

The surveys here, of course, are unnamed, their number is not given and it is not clear

whether all measures of crime fiction take place on a 1 to 100 scale. What is clear, how-

ever, is that the low key, the bleakness and the heartbreaking detail, along with the

pace, are a contribution to the rule-breaking and are considered typical of Scandinavian

crime fiction. Sue Deeks, Head of BBC acquisitions (in Graham, 2011: 2021) suggests

that an earlier broadcast of Wallander, based on Mankells novels, uncovered a taste for

crime fiction which goes beyond the run-of-the-mill, featuring bleakness, slow pace,

low-key attention to detail synonymous with realism and which circumvents the

relentless formulaic sameness and melodrama of popular narrative.

In Jakobsons terms, the realism of supposedly non-mainstream crime fiction is based

on B and D conceptions where Bs criterion of judgement is based on attention to detail

(D) into which is collapsed the cold, depressing, low-key/slow pace narration currently

associated with Scandinavia. Critical predilections and below-the-line publicity also pro-

mote D (detail) as the core of a B1 conception of realism (rebelling against previous

forms). But these principles demonstrate their strongly entrenched nature by not being

confined to discussions of Scandinavian crime fiction alone. Also from theRadio Times,

but focusing on another, non-Scandinavian, crime drama is another weak disquisition on

clich-busting. In this case, it concerns a new crime show, Scott & Bailey(2011), aired

on ITV1 in the UK. Featuring two women police operatives, the series was written by

two women ex-detective inspector, Diane Taylor, and seasoned screenwriter, Sally

Wainright. The former is quoted (in McLean, 2011: 24) as follows:





All this banging on the desk and shouting Confess! Youll feel better [in cop show

interrogations] is nonsense Shouting at people doesnt work. Youll never get anyone to

open up to you that way. When an interview is done well and when its planned by a really good

interview adviser and the planning can take days its like a ballet You dont just go

stomping in, shouting.

The article continues with its expos, Taylor criticizing cop shows where interviews are

carried out by DCIs (in reality, detective constables and sergeants do this), or where

DCIs deliver death messages (constables and sergeants are responsible again). She insists

that interviews are highly orchestrated, without any good cop, bad cop histrionics

(McLean, 2011: 24).

Yet, the article also poses a counter-argument whilst pondering why these myths per-

sist. It suggests that clichs are often assumed to contribute to meaty melodrama or

make a narration more dramatic. Nevertheless,

Scott & Baileyconfounds that logic [I]t eschews the usual clichs of cop drama and the

result is a first-rate, compelling drama with a refreshing air of authenticity Instead of shouty

interrogations, there are sober, all-the-more-powerful interactions between police officers and

suspects. Rather than multi-tasking mavericks, it focuses on a team of detectives working

together to break a case. And by attention to detail in reality, its the DCI who visits a murder

scene and not the constables (who usually only see the body in crime scene photographs)

Scott & Baileyexcels. (McLean, 2011: 24)

The crux of this below-the-line publicity for the TV series essentially, the article is aninterview with Wainright and Taylor which, in the prose sequences, replays their pro-

nouncements hook, line and sinker is the attention to detail once more. This, of course,

replays a D version of realism, setting the series apart from other series that are implicitly

referenced as well as those that are explicitly name-checked (Inspector Morse).

It is clear, then, that claims to realism and, by association, objectivity and artistic

status are insidious and harbour little explanatory power in relation to the commercial

production of crime fiction. Where below-the-line discourses promote the realism of

the genre, though, analysis has tended to focus on the concept of verisimilitude.

Elsewhere, I have argued (1998, 2000) that the specific regime of verisimilitude inthriller fiction (crime, espionage, detective narratives and so forth) gives the genre a

special status, particularly with reference to standards of fidelity to reality, since the

genre is constituted by the proximity of doxalogical verisimilitude and generic rules, a

phenomenon that has already been mentioned in relation to Hammett. The division is

taken from Todorov (1977) who identifies verisimilitude in the rules of the genre

rules which allow: people to burst into song in musicals, love at first sight in romances,

inter-galactic travel by humans in science fiction and in the shifting nature of public

opinion or doxa. There is a need to be clear about doxa: it is not a fixed entity but con-

sists of a set of expectations and understandingsof the world by readers rather than the

world as a referent. In this way the doxais a regime of verisimilitude in itself, constantly

shifting according to a complex set of checks and balances which characterize the world

of discourse in general. This is one reason why it is important to consider the critical

texts that surround this genre, the comments and public opinion on thriller texts and




Cobley 293

pronouncements on the nature of the contemporary world, as one means of gaining some

insight into public opinion in general. And while critical comment in reviews, blogs,

fan appraisals does not amount to an exact account of readers meanings, it is evidence

towards that end which should not be overlooked (cf. Gregoriou, this issue).

As a phenomenon in fictionality, verisimilitude is, contrary to conceptions of it as astable quality, rather dynamic. In crime fiction, the genres apparently stable rules have

been spectacularly contravened, one of the most celebrated cases occurring in 1926 in

Agatha Christies The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (cf. Knox, 1974; Van Dine, 1974).

Verisimilitude is also, along with genres, subject to stagnation internally: where the

genre appears atrophied to its readers. This is usually when the rules are not questioned

or when there is little promise of contravention. Commonly, this is considered by non-

consumers of a genre to be a genres norm or, when genre is viewed as a mere textual

structure, immutable and uninterested in development, with stasis taken to be its mode of

existence. When working with a concept of genre as expectations (Cobley, 2005), thesameness or repetitive nature of genre is problematized by the different ranges of

investments brought by readers to seemingly similar generic texts with the latters shift-

ing co-ordinates of verisimilitude. This is not to say, however, that when genre is con-

ceived as an expectation that a genre is not susceptible to stagnation. It is for this reason

that there are nowadays few chaste maidens in contemporary romance literature, fewer

inscrutably evil Oriental villains, fewer stories of extra-terrestrial life on proximate plan-

ets, murders committed by the butler, potential inter-racial sex curtailed by the death of

one of the participating characters and native Americans triumphantly vanquished by the

superior firepower of the US cavalry. Innovation is forced by a changing doxa. Mostimportantly, the concept of verisimilitude, unlike propagandizing about realism,

changes the terms of the argument from fidelity to reality to a more contested terrain in

which generic rules are seen to be combined with the doxato delineate what is consistent

and decorous in the generic text. Thus, assertions about which literary-artistic forms are

necessary to be closer to life are neither here nor there. Indeed, adhering to such con-

siderations, a staple of promotional discourse, is often a hindrance to understanding the

features of crime fiction with which readers expectations engage.

The concept of verisimilitude suggests there is little mileage in a close comparison of,

say, Scott & Baileys narrative with practices in the real world. The not excessively acerbicreviewer in the UK satirical magazine,Private Eye, if s/he had heard them, seemed rather

unmoved by Scott & Baileys claims to be a clich-free zone. Instead, referring to two

iconic low-key UK detectives and the preposterously long running village whodunit TV

series,Midsomer Murders, s/he saw it as justMorseorFrostorMidsomerin skirts, not-

ing that [t]he single generic innovation is that at least it avoids the scene with the laconic

pathologist cheerfully sizing up a corpse while a rookie police officer vomits in the corner

from shock (Controller, 2011: 10). Crime fiction, like every other text in a commercial

market, finds the realm of the doxato be characterized by contesting opinions. Put more

simply, there can be unfavourable reviews as well as favourable ones. Yet, there is a more

specific point here about verisimilitude that bears on genre: stagnation. The danger of stag-

nation is palpable in genre and, in crime fiction, it is clearly not a matter of fidelity to real-

ity, the constantly rediscovered philosophers stone of below-the-line discourse. In what

remains before concluding, a few words will be offered on contemporary crime fictions



http:///reader/full/the-reactionary-art-of-murdercontemporary-crime-fictioncriticism-an


starkest indication of stagnation fixation on the single or serial murder and the invoca-

tion of realism as a sticking plaster.

Of the first three stories that were thought to have inaugurated the crime genre, one

was about the theft of a letter, not a murder (Poes The Purloined Letter). In the his-

tory of the genre, one of its most admired, and lengthy novels, was about the theft ofa diamond (Wilkie Collins The Moonstone). One of the most famous Sherlock

Holmes narratives is concerned with the criminal injury of a racehorse (Conan Doyles

Silver Blaze). There is absolutely no reason in the rules of the genre or in public

opinion about crime why crime fiction should be dominated, as it is currently, by

either single murders or serial murder. Yet, the most consistently publicized contem-

porary crime fiction still seems to be dominated by the single murder or serial killing.

In the case of the latter, especially, it is easy to see how it might attract praise in terms

that have been discussed. Serial murder is fundamentally depressing. Its motiveless

nature is of a piece with modern existential angst. Serial killer narratives allow for agreat deal of focus on the minutiae of police or coroners procedure. Plus there is

space for uses of focalization or free indirect discourse of the killer, thus, in a sup-

posedly realistic way both empathetic and ironic (see Gregoriou, 2003: 4748),

revealing the voice of deviancy. This latter has a direct lineage to Hammett and

Chandlers attempt to produce a style combining demotic speech with objectivity,

continued in the writing of Higgins and Leonard in the 1970s (see Cobley, 2000:

7899) which attempted to give unfettered voice to criminals, and through the interior

monologues in the 1980s serial killer sagas of James Ellroy, to mention only those

most critically remembered toilers in the history of the genre. Audio-visual serialkiller narratives have used their own specific devices, related to interior monologue,

for concealment and exposing of deviancy for example, shots from the point of view

of the killer without revealing their identity.

Yet, what was once a fresh take within the genres verisimilitude is now very tired.

The serial killer sub-genre would have benefited from a much shorter run than it has

enjoyed. If fidelity to reality is the distinguishing feature of crime fiction, then the Rizzoli

and Isles series of novels by Tess Gerritsen (now a TV series) which has been highly

successful in the last decade would contribute to the belief that serial killers lurk round

every corner. In the USA, liberal estimates in the popular press of the number of activeserial killers gives figures between 200 and 300, although law enforcement agencies

figures are much lower (Breed, 2005; cf. Hargrove, 2011). The Grant County series of

novels by Karin Slaughter, like Gerritsens, enjoying a firm following among women,

have been criticized for their portrayal of violence toward women. They also feature a

concentration of violent deaths in a delimited locale that threatens to outstrip both the

villages of Midsomer and Mayhem Parva. Certainly, if just realism was at issue here, this

observation would be rather damning. But it is not fidelity to reality that is in question;

what is most telling for the present argument regarding murder as a symptom of generic

stagnation is the way that Slaughter, with the use of below-the-line outlets, once more

employs realism to justify what might be viewed as gender-specific torture porn.

Women can talk about these crimes in a realistic way, she claims, adding that women

show violence [against women] for what it is (quoted in Kean, 2008: 7). In addition to

this implicit criticism of male writers in the process of valorizing female purveyors of




Cobley 295

violent crime fiction, she also resorts to two familiar arguments. The first is a dismissive

over-generalization of other crime fiction, this time taking a historical angle:

If you look at crime fiction in the Eighties, women were there just to be screwed and put upon

They were either madonnas or whores. If they were sexually abused, the guy had to save her.When women write about violent crime the woman saves herself or doesnt in some cases.

(Slaughter, quoted in Kean, 2008: 7)

The second appeals to supposed fidelity to reality:

If you study crime, women are much more sadistic killers than men I have done a lot of

research into child abuse and if you talk to anyone in social services they say that they just

cringe at the thought of going out on a case where the mother is abusing her kids. Men, they

sexually abuse them and that is it, but women, its the psychological abuse. Anyone who has

been through an all-girl high school knows how sadistic women can be (Slaughter, quoted

in Kean, 2008: 7)

Slaughters counter-argument to those concerned about the murder and cruelty in her

novels is that, for all contemporary touting of advances in gender equality, violence is

still regularly visited on women. Of course, this overlooks a further argument that

through repetition there has been a routinization and banalization of murder in the media.

However, what is principally under discussion in the present article is not whether mur-

der has become normalized; nor is it whether the proliferation of murder narratives cor-

responds to the statistics for murder in the real world. It is that the rules of the genre, intheir subtle balance with public opinion about what actually happens in life, have pres-

ently rendered the representation of murder a mere cipher, on the brink of bankruptcy,

and which no amount of claims to realism, themselves based on an elitist impetus towards

valorization or sound promotional principles, is able to paper over.

None of this is to say that realism, murder, or critical comment on both, have no place

in crime fiction. Some fictional crime narratives that feature murder have been deserv-

edly praised in recent years. The Wire(20022008) in particular has been celebrated for

its (ultra-) realism, manifest in a difficult narrative that does feature murder, but not as a

simple plot catalyst. Spiral(2006), dishearteningly, begins with the violent murder of awoman, but critical comment soon recognized that the narrative delivered via steadi-

cam vrit, Hoke Moseley-style humour and grimness is truly concerned with how

people are crushed by power and the law.Damages(2007) eschews realist narrative in

favour of rapid editing, flashbacks and flashforwards, with murder occurring in the nar-

rative only as an embedded symptom of struggles in high profile legal cases which never

reach court.Damagesis remarkable as crime fiction because it embodies the complex

storytelling (Buckland, 2008) that characterizes contemporary cinema (and even some

TV series e.g. Flashforward, 2009, The Event, 2010), particularly in hybrids of the

thriller and science fiction. In print crime fiction, complex storytelling has been associ-ated in recent years with the likes of (the later) James Ellroy and David Peace, both of

whom have been pushed or have jumped along with appraisals of the literary merits

of their work. More avowedly realist, hard-boiled and original is the comparatively

unsung crime fiction where crime is omnipresent but murder does not really figure:





novels by Jerry Raine, Allan Guthrie, Bill James, Sheila Quigley and Charlie Owen.

Although critically favoured in some quarters, the works of these writers have been con-

signed to a lower place in the hierarchy of contemporary crime fiction, while the careers

of murder saga purveyors, whose lack of originality is bolstered by promotional claims

to realism, continue with their serial killers, coroners and maverick detectives.Ultimately, when critical and below-the-line discourse refers to a crime fiction narra-

tives realism, it is fidelity to reality that is the target. This is because it is the ground on

which the lauded work is separated from other texts in the genre and set on the road to

art or, at least, some superior non-generic status. Verisimilitude has no such valorizing

agenda. What is found generally credible at a given moment by an audience lies close,

instead, to that audiences expectations about the rules of the genre. Those rules, too, are

always the subject of contestation. For example, an acclaimed text like The Killing, in

spite of the hype, is frequently far from realistic not just in the obvious ways of repre-

senting some features of events (e.g. the plot-related ones) and not others, but in waysthat do not achieve the strict A, B, B1 and D Jakobsonian senses. Both The Killingand

The Killing IIbegin with a brutal murder of a woman, a McGuffin so hackneyed now in

crime fiction that it is demoralizing for reasons (presumably) other than those intended

by the narratives producers. The denouement of the first series is lifted directly, in struc-

ture if not exact theme, from the film Se7en(1995). Thus, an habitual consumer of crime

fiction will either groan at the fact that the narrative revolves around a single murder (of

a young woman) or choose to accept this and consume the narrative in a different critical

disposition. The real question, then, is not whether a crime fiction text can be demon-

strated to have qualities which guarantee fidelity to reality, thus placing it beyond itsgenre and, not coincidentally, by such means gaining an upmarket audience which is

more highly valued by advertisers but, instead, whether such a text demonstrates

generic innovation or slavish devotion to the rules.

Critical discourse is often complicit with below-the-line publicity. They both tout a

texts superiority in the face of the competitors some brand leaders, but mostly alleged

run-of-the-mill, mainstream, packaged, melodramatic, sensational,genretexts. The cur-

rent essay is also guilty of this in exposing the dominant position jadedly occupied by

murder in the hierarchy of the genre. Yet, what this essay does not assume, in contrast to

much criticism and publicity, is that when a crime fiction text innovates it becomesexceptional, more realistic or art, effecting a Reithian spiritual elevation of the unsus-

pecting crime fiction consumer. Rather, attention is drawn here to the breadth and flexi-

bility of the genre, the structure that facilitates, revealing its possibilities and, at the same

time, showing the dynamism and disposition to compete inherent in reader expectations.

With these, the question of what is stagnant and what is deemed innovative in a genre can

be addressed.

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Author biography

Paul Cobley, Professor of Semiotics and Communications at London Metropolitan University, is

the author of a number of books, including The American Thriller(2000) andNarrative(2001). He





is the editor of The Communication Theory Reader(1996), Communication Theories4 vols (2006),

The Routledge Companion to Semiotics(2009),Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader

(2009), Semiotics Continues to Astonish: Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs (2011)

among other books, co-edits two journals, Subject Mattersand Social Semiotics, and is associate

editor of Cybernetics and Human Knowing. He is the series editor of Routledge Introductions toMedia and Communications, co-series editor (with Kalevi Kull) of Semiotics, Communication and

Cognition (Mouton de Gruyter) and co-editor (with Peter J. Schulz) of the 22-volumeHandbooks

of Communication Science(de Gruyter).


The reactionary art of murder:contemporary crime fiction,criticism and verisimilitude by Paul Cobley

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