ABSTRACT
The definition of crime fiction is no simple matter, for it is a genre rooted in the ills of its time. It remains a genre so protean that one contemporary overview offers a glossary that opens with Armchair Detection and closes with Thriller, by way of Detective, Gothic, Pulp, Sensation and even Meta-fictions – and much more (Scaggs 2005, 144–148). Stephen Knight, prolific author of academic works on the topic, reminds readers that
a historically and socially conscious understanding of genre sees [crime fiction] as a formation that is brought into being to realise and interpret new socio-historical forces created as urban society becomes more complex […] and for many people their senses of identity and security are elided.
(Knight 2010, 223)