The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks PDF
Preview The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks
CRIME FILES The Detective’s Companion in Crime Fiction A Study in Sidekicks Edited by Lucy Andrew Samuel Saunders Crime Files Series Editor Clive Bloom, Middlesex University, London, UK Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never been more popular. In novels, short stories and films, on the radio, on television and now in computer games, private detectives and psychopaths, poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gang- sters and cocaine criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators a mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detec- tive fiction. Every aspect of crime writing, from detective fiction to the gangster movie, true-crime exposé, police procedural and post-colonial investigation, is explored through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoretical sophistication. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14927 · Lucy Andrew Samuel Saunders Editors The Detective’s Companion in Crime Fiction A Study in Sidekicks Editors Lucy Andrew Samuel Saunders University Centre Shrewsbury University Centre Reaseheath University of Chester University of Chester Chester, UK Chester, UK Crime Files ISBN 978-3-030-74988-0 ISBN 978-3-030-74989-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74989-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such namesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreefor general use. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinforma- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeen made.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmaps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For mum, from Lucy For Emma, from Sam Praise for TheDetectivesCompanion ’ inCrimeFiction “Thedetective’ssidekickisanintriguingandfascinatingcharacterincrime fiction. However, although this complex and evolving character raises many critical questions in regards to gender, genre and the politics of representation, the sidekick has hitherto been relatively underresearched bycritics.SamuelSaunders’andLucyAndrew’sground-breakingvolume addresses this absence, offering rich, original and highly readable chap- ters on one of crime fiction’s most well-loved yet at times elusive figures. Rangingfromhistoricalcontextualisationtothemostrecentportrayalsin thegenre,andencompassingfictionaswellasadaptation,theessaysinthis companion are certain to appeal to a wide range of readers and interests. Students, academics and researchers of crime fiction and popular culture will want to add this book to their list of essential reading.” —Charlotte Beyer, Senior Lecturer in English Studies, University of Gloucestershire, UK “The Detective’s Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks provides a welcome and long overdue corrective to the lack of high- quality and detailed scholarship on the complex and changing figure of the detective’s sidekick. With impressive breadth and scope, this collec- tionofessaysisessentialreadingforanyoneinterestedinthefigureofthe sidekickincrimewritingfromthenineteenthcenturytothepresentday.” —Clare Clarke, Assistant Professor of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland vii Contents 1 Introduction: Step Forward, Sidekicks 1 Samuel Saunders and Lucy Andrew 2 ‘One Fixed Point in a Changing Age’: Reframing the Sidekick 17 Michelle D. Miranda 3 ‘Passed by Unnoticed’: Surveillance and the Street Urchin in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone 41 Oriah Amit 4 ‘…Always with the Inspector’: The Reader as Sidekick in Mid-Victorian ‘Detective Literature’, 1845–1887 59 Samuel Saunders 5 ‘You Have a Grand Gift of Silence, Watson’: Reinventing Agency in Twenty-First-Century Adaptations of Dr. Watson 81 Annette Wren 6 ‘A Look of Doglike Devotion’: Hercule Poirot’s Stooges and Foils 101 J. C. Bernthal ix x CONTENTS 7 FindingtheFemaleSidekickintheLordPeterWimsey Novels 121 Sally Beresford-Sheridan 8 ‘Pretty, but Not so Pretty…’: Marlowe’s Female Sidekicks and the Domestication of Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction 147 Alexander N. Howe 9 The Anti-Sidekick: Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander, Double Consciousness and the Subversion of the Sidekick in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins Mysteries 167 Nathan Ashman 10 72 Votes: Theorizing the Scapegoat Sidekick in Batman: A Death in the Family 189 Kwasu Tembo 11 ‘I’m Gonna Be the Best Friend You Could Ever Hope For—And the Worst Enemy You Could Ever Imagine’: Frank Miller’s All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder and the Problem of the Boy Sidekick in the Twenty-First-Century Superhero Narrative 215 Lucy Andrew 12 ‘World’s Long on Academics, Morse, but Woeful Short of Good Detectives’: Lewis, Hathaway, and Endeavour; the Changing Roles of Colin Dexter’s Sidekicks 237 David Bishop 13 Mooncakes and Squashed Fly Biscuits: Otherness in the Wells and Wong Series 261 Alice Nuttall 14 Sherlock’s Legacy: The Case of the Extraordinary Sidekick 283 Dominique Gracia Index 305 Notes on Contributors Oriah Amit is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation examines the relationship between narrative, futurity, and the expansion of the security state in late Victorian and Edwardian novels. Lucy Andrew isaSeniorLecturerinEnglishLiteratureandProgramme Leader of B.A. (Hons) English at University Centre Shrewsbury, part of the University of Chester, where she researches children’s and young adult fiction, crime fiction, and popular culture. She is the author of The Boy Detective in Early British Children’s Literature: Patrolling the Borders Between Boyhood and Manhood (Palgrave, 2017) and co-editor of Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes (UWP, 2013) with Catherine Phelps. Nathan Ashman isaLecturerinCrimeWritingattheUniversityofEast Anglia and the author of James Ellroy and Voyeur Fiction (Lexington Books, 2018). His research spans the fields of crime fiction, contempo- raryAmericanfiction,andecocriticism,withaparticularspecialisminthe works of James Ellroy. Sally Beresford-Sheridan is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on women’s British detective fiction of theinterwaryears.Sheexamineshowthelanguageofthese‘middlebrow’ texts, in conjunction with advertising and publication history, created reading communities amenable to cultural change in Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. xi
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