Investigating Crime in a Time of War: Historical Crime Fiction and the Representation of Fascism

Description

This book takes a close look at crime fiction set in the interwar period and during the reign of terror of the Nazi regime. Kniesche analyzes historical crime fiction depicting Weimar and Nazi Germany with specific questions in mind: what does the text try to accomplish in regard to transmitting historical knowledge? What history is told? How is historical knowledge represented and conveyed in crime fiction? Does the historical background provide an indispensable setting for the crime story? With consideration to the degree of self-reflexivity in the texts, Kniesche probes how open the text is to an active participation of the reader in evaluating the historical knowledge that the text itself attempts to provide. Acknowledgments Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Representation of Fascism Historical Crime Fiction and its Vicissitudes Shaping the Inquiry What Lies Ahead: A Brief Overview of the Chapters Comprising This Book Chapter 2: Trans-historical Crime Fiction as a Complement to the Historiography of the Holocaust: Christian von Ditfurth’s A Paragon of Virtue Christian von Ditfurth’s Series of Novels Featuring a Historian An Unlikely Protagonist: Josef Maria Stachelmann The Plot and the Mystery Victims and Perpetrators Historical Crime Fiction as a Revision of Historiography Continuity and Non-closure Metafictional Elements Didacticism Instead of Historiographical Metafiction Chapter 3: “Murder in a time of war”: British and German Fascists in Foyle’s War The Fascists at Home: British Nazi-Sympathizers German Fascists Referencing the Holocaust Revisionism and Beyond Chapter 4: An Odd Couple of Detectives: Fighting Crime in Nazi-Occupied France J[oseph] Robert Janes and the St-Cyr and Kohler Mysteries Mayhem or Mirage, the First Novel in the St-Cyr/Kohler Series Mapping Paris Period Detail and Historical Characters A Police Procedural, but with a Twist The Story (and Its Complications) Not-so-Transparent Minds: The Role of Narrated Monologue Chapter 5: The Rise of German Fascism: Modernist Narrative Techniques in Volker Kutscher’s Gereon Rath Novels The Gereon Rath Novels 1–6 Content Selection Narrative Strategies Variations on a Genre A Moderate Modernism Chapter 6: A Hard-Boiled Detective in Nazi Germany: Philip Kerr’s March Violets Kerr’s Adaptation of the Hard-Boiled Genre March Violets in Comparison to Traditional Hard-Boiled Novels The Power of Language Taking Hard-Boiled to the Limits Chapter 7: “But that’s in the past”: Negotiating Historical Truth in Uta-Maria Heims Feierabend Feierabend: An Unconventional Crime Novel Framing the Story: The Prologues The Return of the Repressed Memory, Narrative, History A Precarious Concept: Truth in History and Crime Fiction Chapter 8: Conclusion: Contextualization and Findings Transcending Conventional Boundaries in Historiography and Crime Fiction Historical Crime Fiction and the Culture of Memory Findings Causality and Belatedness in Crimes Metonymical Crimes The Holocaust, but only from a Distance From Historiographical Didacticism to Counter-history Works Cited Primary Texts Secondary Texts Index