Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection

CRIME FILES
Transnational
Crime Fiction
Mobility, Borders and Detection
Edited by
Maarit Piipponen
Helen Mäntymäki
Marinella Rodi-Risberg
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
Maarit Piipponen · Helen Mäntymäki ·
Editors
Transnational Crime
Fiction
Mobility, Borders and Detection
Editors
Maarit Piipponen Helen Mäntymäki
Tampere University University of Jyväskylä
Tampere, Finland Jyväskylä, Finland
University of Jyväskylä
Jyväskylä, Finland
Crime Files
ISBN 978-3-030-53412-7 ISBN 978-3-030-53413-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53413-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks go to Eric Sandberg, who worked on the volume in its

early stages. We would also like to acknowledge the patience of all our
contributors during the rather long process of compiling this volume.
We are also grateful to Arja Nurmi, Johannes Riquet, Arja Rosenholm
and Mikko Tuhkanen for commenting on early drafts of the introduction.
Thanks must also be given to Ninni Varanka and Noora Karjalainen for
their help with indexing the volume. This volume would not have come
to fruition without the support of our colleagues, friends and families.
The editors wish to thank the Palgrave team and the external reviewer
for their comments and assistance.
v
Praise for Transnational Crime
Fiction
“This rich, illuminating and ambitious volume brilliantly demonstrates an

important truth about crime fiction—not just that mobility is written into
its DNA formally, historically and geopolitically, but also that to think
about the mobility of crime fiction is to interrogate the power dynamics
at the heart of the genre’s global circulation and its preoccupation with
the flow of people, money and goods across borders.”
—Andrew Pepper, Senior Lecturer, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
“This is an innovative and imaginative collection of fifteen distinct essays

which takes the reader across geo-political, cultural and economic borders,
and to victims, crimes, criminal networks and police in contemporary
Scandinavia, Morocco and South Africa, as well as Victorian London. The
essays are diverse and offer wide-ranging analysis and argument, while
remaining focused on globalisation, transnationalism and mobility.”
—Vivien Miller, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham, UK
vii
Contents
1 From Mobile Crimes to Crimes of Mobility 1

Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki,
and Marinella Rodi-Risberg
Part I Crime on the Move: Transnational Crime and

Global Capitalism
2 Transnational Crime in Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak

and Santiago Gamboa’s Night Prayers 45
Sam Naidu
3 Temporal, (Trans)National and Human Mobility

in María Inés Krimer’s Kosher Trilogy 63
Carolina Miranda
4 Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s Whitefly: Transnational

Crime, Globalisation and the Arabic Police Procedural 79
Colette Guldimann
ix
x CONTENTS
5 Systemic Violence in the Borderlands: Anthony J.

Quinn’s Border Angels and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s
Desert Blood 97
Eoin D. McCarney
6 Transnational Female Sex Trafficking in Naja Marie

Aidt’s “Women in Copenhagen,” Matt Johnson’s
Deadly Game and Stuart Neville’s Stolen Souls 115
Charlotte Beyer
Part II Historicising Mobility and Agency
7 The Socially Mobile Female in Victorian

and Neo-Victorian Mysteries 135
Meghan P. Nolan
8 Liminal Spaces in Laurie R. King’s Touchstone

and Keeping Watch 153
Mary Ann Gillies
9 Urban Mobility and Technology in Carlo Lucarelli’s

Almost Blue 169
Barbara Pezzotti
10 Crime and Detection in a Virtually Mobile World:

Tom Hillenbrand’s Drohnenland 185
Heike Henderson
Part III Genre Borderlands: Generic Mobility and

Hybridisation
11 Criminal/Liminal/Seminal: Nordic Border Crossings

and Crossers in Contemporary Geopolitical Television 205
Robert A. Saunders
CONTENTS xi
12 Across National, Cultural and Ethnic Borders: The

Detectives in Olivier Truc’s Reindeer Police Series 225
Andrea Hynynen
13 Splatter Horror Crime: Crossing Medial Borders in Jo

Nesbø’s The Snowman 243
Niklas Salmose
14 Affective Estrangement and Ecological Destruction

in TV Crime Series Fortitude 261
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen and Helen Mäntymäki
15 Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance as Crime Trauma

Fiction 279
Index 295
Notes on Contributors
Charlotte Beyer is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the Univer-

sity of Gloucestershire, UK. She has published widely on crime fiction
and edited the special issue of the journal American, British and Cana-
dian Studies (2017) on contemporary crime fiction and Teaching Crime
Fiction (2018). She is currently writing a monograph on crime fiction for
McFarland.
Mary Ann Gillies is Professor at the Department of English at Simon
Fraser University, Canada. Her research areas are Anglo-American and
transnational modernisms, print culture and crime fiction. She is writing
a book about Katherine Mansfield, Emily Carr and Virginia Woolf and
beginning a project on trauma and crime fiction.
Colette Guldimann is Lecturer in the English Department at the
University of Pretoria, South Africa, where she teaches literary and
cultural studies. Having lived in five countries, she has a keen interest
in transnational cultural crossings. She writes about popular genres within
postcolonial contexts, particularly crime fiction in Africa.
Heike Henderson is Professor of German and Associate Chair at the
Department of World Languages, Boise State University, USA. Her
recent publications include essays on contemporary German crime fiction,
techno-thrillers, cannibalism, and literary representations of food. She is
also a contributing editor to The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies.
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Andrea Hynynen has a Ph.D. in French literature from Åbo Akademi

University in Finland and she is a docent in French literature at the
University of Turku, Finland. Her research areas are gender, sexuality,
transgression, feminism and genre in crime fiction.
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department
of Music, Art and Culture Studies at the University of Jyväskylä,
Finland. Her latest publications include the edited collection Reconfig-
uring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture
(2019, co-edited with Sanna Karkulehto and Essi Varis).
Helen Mäntymäki is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Language
and Communication Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, where
she teaches English literature and culture. Her main research interests
include violence, gender and species in crime fiction.
Eoin D. McCarney is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at
the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City
University, Ireland. His research is focused on representations of space in
contemporary crime novels in Ireland and Mexico.
Carolina Miranda is Senior Lecturer at Victoria University, Wellington.
She has published on Argentine, New Zealand and Spanish crime fiction.
With Jean Anderson and Barbara Pezzotti, she co-edited The Foreign in
International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations (2012), Serial
Crime Fiction: Dying for More (2015), and Blood at the Table: Essays on
Food in International Crime Fiction (2018).
Sam Naidu is Professor in the Department of Literary Studies, Rhodes
University, South Africa. She co-ordinates the Intersecting Diasporas
Group. Her main area of teaching and research is transnational literature,
especially of the African, South Asian and Latin American diasporas. She
also teaches and researches crime fiction.
Meghan P. Nolan is Assistant Professor of English at Rockland Commu-
nity College, State University of New York, USA. She focuses on frag-
mented perceptions of selfhood through academic works, fiction, non-
fiction and poetry. Her essays have appeared in Persona Studies, Thread,
The 100 Greatest Detectives and Exquisite Corpse.
Barbara Pezzotti is Lecturer in Italian Studies at Monash University,
Australia. She has published widely on Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian and
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
New Zealand crime fiction. She is the author of The Importance of Place
in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction (2012) and Investigating Italy’s
Past through Crime Fiction, Film and TV Series (2016).
Maarit Piipponen is University Lecturer in English literature at Tampere
University, Finland. Her research focuses on constructions of gender and
ethnicity as well as mobility and spatiality in crime fiction. She is the co-
editor of Topographies of Popular Culture (2016, with Markku Salmela).
Marinella Rodi-Risberg is Affiliated Researcher at the Department of
Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
She has published on representations of trauma in journals and books
including Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Studies in the Novel
and Trauma and Literature, edited by J. Roger Kurtz (2018).
Niklas Salmose is Associate Professor of English and Vice-chair of
the Department of Languages, Linnaeus University, Sweden. He has
published on nostalgia, modernism, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Anthropocene
and intermediality. He has recently edited Once Upon a Time: Nostalgic
Narratives in Transition (2018), Contemporary Nostalgia (2019) and
Transmediations: Communication Across Media Borders (2019).
Robert A. Saunders is Professor of History, Politics and Geography at
Farmingdale State College, State University of New York, USA. He is the
author of five books, including Popular Geopolitics and Nation Branding
in the Post-Soviet Realm (2017) and Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an
Evolving Discipline (2018).
CHAPTER 1
From Mobile Crimes to Crimes of Mobility
Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki,

and Marinella Rodi-Risberg
During its two-hundred-year-long history, the crime genre has proved

not only persistent, but also flexible and mobile in many ways, and its
contemporary global popularity can be partly attributed to its adapt-
ability to different times, cultures and purposes. While the genre was
earlier often dismissed as “a trashy, minor genre” (Rodriguez 3), crime
fiction scholarship has during the past few decades increasingly drawn
attention to the genre’s sociocritical potential.1 In Transnational Crime
Fiction: Mobility, Borders, and Detection, the popular crime story that
incorporates entertainment into critical analyses of societies is approached
from the perspective of mobility. We suggest that many contemporary
crime narratives across the globe host a heightened interest in diverse
and ambiguous mobilities, border crossings and borderlands. As the chap-
ters in this volume show, often the representations of such mobilities and
crossings reflect on sociocultural developments on local and global levels
M. Piipponen (B)
Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
H. Mäntymäki · M. Rodi-Risberg
Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä,
Jyväskylä, Finland
© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Piipponen et al. (eds.), Transnational Crime Fiction,
Crime Files, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53413-4_1
2 M. PIIPPONEN ET AL.
and communicate specific geopolitical anxieties. The contributors offer

analyses of mobilities present in today’s crime texts that range from trans-
border crimes such as human trafficking to postmodern urban mobility,
travels of television crime dramas across national borders and the mobili-
sation of affect through genre hybridisation and blending. The focus on
mobility places the volume within the framework of mobilities research,
which has gained significant critical momentum during the past couple of
decades. In this volume, mobility is not only an “object of study” but also
“an analytical lens” (Salazar, “Theorizing Mobility” 155) through which
contemporary crime fiction can be examined.
This book thus first understands mobilities research to explore specific
types, practices and representations of mobility, and second, to offer a
perspective from which to study local, global and geopolitical transfor-
mations. As a term, mobility is not identical with movement, as Tim
Cresswell’s seminal mobilities research book On the Move: Mobility in the
Modern Western World makes clear: while movement can be defined as
“mobility abstracted from contexts of power,” mobility refers to motion
that is socially produced (2; 3). The social and cultural constructedness
of mobility also means that it is characterised by its historicity. As a theo-
retical concept, mobility can be applied to a wide range of phenomena.
Current mobilities research understands it in both concrete and abstract
senses: mobility can refer to the traffic and flow of people, goods, capital
and information; to embodied experiences of mobility; or to the mobility
of ideas, texts, images, affects and ideologies. Accordingly, research on
mobilities is highly flexible when it comes to its objects of study: it not
only studies global flows and mobilities, but also more local, everyday
practices and lived experiences, aiming to identify and explain connections
between them.
Unlike Cresswell, whose book focuses on mobility in the Western
world, we employ the concept of mobility in a global context. The narra-
tives examined here feature various (trans)national crime locations and
represent different countries of origin, including Argentina, Colombia,
Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Norway,
South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA. By underlining the contem-
porary global mobility of the crime genre, the volume invites compar-
isons between texts, crimes, settings and mobilities in a geographically
and geopolitically diverse context. The volume’s geographical diversity
evidences not only the genre’s journeys across the globe and subsequent
1 FROM MOBILE CRIMES TO CRIMES OF MOBILITY 3
changes in its generic conventions, but also the dislocation of Anglo-

American texts from their central position in the field of crime production.
The latter aspect is imbued with geopolitical significance, especially if we
consider the spread of non-Anglophone crime texts in the global market.
That is, popular narratives are “doubly geographical” (Dittmer xvii), if
they are produced in one place and consumed in another, which facili-
tates the circulation of ideas about and images of places. This is worthy
of consideration, because popular texts not only represent and position
places, nations and people in specific ways, but also shape our attitudes
to them. Jason Dittmer understands the mediation of the world through
popular culture as geopolitical, for “it occurs in ways that associate values
and behaviors with various parts of the world, which in turn influ-
ences the ways in which people interact” (16). In this volume, then, we
consider contemporary crime narratives as constructive of what also David
Atkinson and Klaus Dodds refer to as “popular” geopolitics (10). Narra-
tives published in the Global South may promote different imaginaries
of mobility and geopolitics compared to those published in the Global
North, thereby questioning established notions of “us” and “them,” and
challenging the association of crime or the “evil” with specific nations,
regions or groups of people.2
This volume argues that through engaging with a broad selection
of mobilities, contemporary crime narratives comment on sociocultural
transformations in a globalised and interconnected world. We propose
that globalisation and transnationalism—and the social, economic, polit-
ical and technological developments linked with them—have had an
influence on how and what kind of social criticism crime narratives offer
in the contemporary era. These developments include the acceleration
of human mobility and travel within and beyond national borders, the
impact of global flows of goods, capital and information, cross-cultural
exchanges as well as (digital) network systems affecting policing and
surveillance across borders. Crime narratives no longer conceive crime
as a locally, spatially and temporally limited event that only concerns the
victims, the detective agency and the criminal; crime is now increasingly
conceptualised as networked and embedded in historical and transcultural
contexts.
If the restoration of the established social order was a central goal
of the detective in the past,3 now “this goal is elusive in communities
whose populations are dispersed or migratory and where there is little
consensus about shared beliefs and values” (Adams 269). Discussing reso-
lution in crime texts, Bill Phillips makes a somewhat similar claim when
he observes how crime narratives have recently become ethically “much
more challenging” to their readers (103). A case in point is Alicia Gaspar
de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005), which comments on
poverty, femicide, the flow of capital and corrupt government institu-
tions on each side of the geopolitical US-Mexico border. For the author
herself, Desert Blood is an “anti-detective novel” ([Un]Framing 182), as
the El Paso-born amateur sleuth and Women’s Studies professor, Ivon
Villa, never solves the crime of who kills “las hijas de Juárez,” Juárez’s
daughters. Not only does this novel contribute to what Theresa Márquez
has indicated is the “reshaping [of] the mystery genre for specific cultural,
political, and social purposes” by contemporary Chicana/o crime fiction
(qtd. in [Un]Framing 183), but it also illustrates that there are often
no apparent or simple solutions for today’s problems and no justice
for victims of current crimes. Consequently, novels such as Desert Blood
that lack a dénouement frequently aim to reveal injustices in an increas-
ingly globalised and mobile world; this is a way of social protestation,
an effort to question the established social order that has enabled the
crimes to continue in the first place ([Un]framing 182).4 Unlike Golden
Age detective fiction where violence is typically contained (Horsley 38),
contemporary socially conscious crime narratives point to the opposite
direction, because crimes and violence are not necessarily committed by
single individuals; instead, these fictions propose that violence is endemic
in local and global sociopolitical and economic systems that affect people’s
lives. Truth may be discovered by the detective, but there might be no
justice for the victims or release from abusive systems and institutions.
It follows, then, that the lack of a neat resolution in today’s texts also
challenges the traditional understanding of crime texts’ cathartic value for
readers (see also Platten 15).
In combining crime and mobility—or, rather, mobilities—in this
volume, we first aim to redirect crime fiction scholarship focused on glob-
alisation, transnationalism5 and social critique, and second, to strengthen
the study of popular texts within mobilities research. Mobilities research,
which emerged in the 1990s and was later named as a “new mobility
paradigm” by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, is an interdisciplinary field
of study that has gradually drawn together scholars working in different
academic disciplines such as sociology, geography, archaeology, ethnog-
raphy, transport studies and cultural studies. For this new paradigm,
“the social was being reconfigured as mobile” (Adey et al. 3). Mobilities
research includes the study of the mobility of texts, images and represen-
tations, and literary and cultural scholars have recently begun to adopt a
mobilities research framework in their analyses of texts and genres. The
study of local and global transformations and mobilities is thus no longer
limited to social sciences where the paradigm shift was first introduced,
as the new mobilities research has offered fresh theoretical perspectives to
other fields of research, including the study of literary and visual culture.
This is part of the “broader shifts” made possible by the new paradigm.6
As an object of study and an analytical lens, mobility incorporates
potential for a multidisciplinary analysis of literary and visual narratives, as,
for example, Julia Leyda has shown in her monograph American Mobil-
ities, where she traces transformations in American social space through
examining representations of social, economic and geographic mobility in
textual and cinematic spaces from the Depression era to the Cold War. In
recent years, studies that directly explore aspects of mobility in literary-
cultural contexts have focused, among other things, on women’s travel or
“wandering” across time and genre, and normative spatialities (Horrocks;
Averis and Hollis-Touré; Ganser), transpatriation and transcultural iden-
tity (Arapoglou et al.; Dagnino), transportation and the emergence of
the novel (Ewers), globalisation and diasporic narratives (Nyman), and
mobile bodies and practices in the context of the nation state and global
space (Mathieson). Mobilities, Literature, Culture by Marian Aguiar et al.,
published in 2019, specifically highlights the “humanities turn” in mobil-
ities research and, in fact, offers an alternative history of the field that
traces how “literary and cultural studies has already played a significant
role in developing a field often identified with the social sciences” (2).
Analyses of migrant identities, cross-cultural connections and move-
ment across diverse borders have already featured prominently not only in
postcolonial crime fiction scholarship, but also in scholarship informed by
the so-called transnational turn; this turn has encouraged the denation-
alisation of literary study and explored the interaction and connections
between national traditions and wider global contexts. Despite evident
connections between these scholarly approaches and mobilities research,
the framework of mobilities research has so far been notably absent in
crime fiction scholarship, as only a handful of (short) studies has been
published (see Breen; Goulet, “Burma’s Bagnoles ”; Huck; Riquet and
Zdrenyk). Even if crime fiction scholars have not yet fully tapped into the
potential offered by the new paradigm, they have adopted various theo-
retical and methodological approaches that enrich both mobilities and
crime fiction research. For example, Christiana Gregoriou’s Crime Fiction
Migration: Crossing Languages, Cultures and Media closely connects
with mobility and employs cognitive stylistics as its theoretical lens in
studying crime fiction’s journeys “in the form of translation, adaptation
and remaking across media, cultures and languages worldwide” (3). As
our volume entered its final editing phase, Jesper Gulddal et al. published
the first study that directly combines mobility and crime narratives. Their
goal, similar to the present volume, is to redirect crime fiction schol-
arship towards examining the dynamic border-crossing nature of the
genre. However, unlike this volume, they especially focus on the British-
American tradition to analyse “the mobility that lies at the centre of the
genre” (4). Their threefold (metacritical) interest in mobility and crime
could be characterised as drawing attention to the inner workings of the
genre: exploring the mobility of meaning and processes of signification,
criticising static understandings of the genre and stressing its mobility
and dynamism, and acknowledging the genre’s transnational nature and
critiquing national-focused readings of the genre. Notably, Gregoriou
and Gulddal et al. do not situate their studies within current mobili-
ties research, even if the latter briefly refers to “mobile criticism” (19).
However, we understand their studies as not only expanding the current
research on mobilities and popular crime narratives, but also as intro-
ducing humanities perspectives into mobilities research. This is also the
general aim of the present volume.
While our volume explores mobility’s dimensions in contemporary
crime texts, mobility has always been a central constituent of popular
crime stories. According to a familiar pattern in past and present crime
narratives, the initiatory crime—be it murder, kidnapping or any other
breach of legal and ethical norms—disturbs a settled sociocultural order
and sets events in motion. In Golden Age detective stories, such as Agatha
Christie’s or Dorothy L. Sayers’s novels, mobility appears not just in
the disturbance of the placid surface of middle- or upper-class social life
through murder or in upwardly mobile criminal figures. Mobility also
manifests in various transportation technologies (travelling by car, train,
aeroplane), in movements across various boundaries (from indoors to
outdoors, from the city to the countryside, from England to the Orient),
in entering closed or otherwise restricted spaces such as manors or archae-
ological sites—or the proverbial locked room. Moreover, in the stories,
new mass communication technologies link people and distant phys-

ical spaces and facilitate the detection of crime.7 Trains, boats, cars and
telephones were—and still are—standard devices in propelling the narra-
tive forward and attaching crime fiction to modernity’s ideal of constant
movement, visible in technological advancement and scientific progress.
In American hard-boiled, the borders between the criminal world, big
business and government are shown to be permeable, as the physical
movements of the private eye like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe
through the modern metropolis reveal the illicit commerce between the
criminal gang and the government. Already in these crime tales of popular
modernism, mobility’s meanings are often ambiguous: for example, while
women might equate their mobility in public space with freedom, for the
rigid social order it is deviance (cf. film noir’s femme fatales or Christie’s
tales with socially mobile women).8
John Urry and Tim Cresswell note that “mobility issues” have become
a main focus of attention in the twenty-first century (Urry 18; see Cress-
well, On the Move 46–47). This is also the case with, for example, the
Swedish-Danish TV production Bron/Broen (The Bridge, 2011–18). This
crime series exemplifies the thematisation of mobility and the move-
ment of popular narratives from a national to global consciousness. Social
critique, nowadays part and parcel of Nordic Noir, is in the series framed
by and entwined with multiple forms and layers of mobility. The first
season of Bron/Broen begins with the discovery of a bisected body on
the bridge connecting Malmö and Copenhagen, which form the transna-
tional, cross-border Öresund region. Crime thus becomes graphically
embodied as a transnational phenomenon which exceeds by definition
the demarcations that structure and maintain culture, society and poli-
tics. As the investigation develops, further layers of mobility are revealed.
An intercultural detective duo begins to collaborate on the case, travel-
ling back and forth between the two metropolitan areas, employing two
different languages, and relying on physical clues, digital databases and
mobile technologies in their detection work. Moreover, the protagonists’
professional and personal lives become intertwined as the case proceeds.
The series Bron/Broen foregrounds the mobility of not only crimes
but also humans across national borders. While it thematises human
mobility, it also emphasises its curtailment in the contemporary era. The
final season finds police detective Saga Norén incarcerated and convicted
for having murdered her mother. The first episode highlights Norén’s
limited mobility within the women’s prison in Ystad in stark contrast
to the open spaces and many crossings of a multitude of borders that

viewers have become accustomed to over the previous seasons. Norén’s
inability to freely move between Sweden and Denmark resonates with the
murder mystery with which the final season begins: a body found near
the Öresund Bridge connecting the two countries turns out to be that
of the director of the Migration Agency in Copenhagen. The consequent
storyline elaborates on illegal immigration through an Iranian immigrant
and dissident, Taariq, whose fate and eventual suicide embody modern
Europe’s struggle to control and come to terms with the (il)legal flows of
immigrants across its borders. While the reasons for Norén’s incarceration
emerge from family tragedy, the fate of Taariq illuminates larger constel-
lations of human mobility and power in the context of transnational
agreements and migration patterns. That is, his fate speaks of attempts
at harmonising mobility and controlling the flow of people through the
specific legal, economic and political system that the EU has created for
itself to secure its borders and create a sense of European identity. His fate
in Bron/Broen also reflects on the geopolitics of human rights and refugee
rights in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. Taariq, a gay
Iranian man and a refugee, is a “queer alien” who can be accommodated
neither in white European space nor in his domestic environment.
Bron/Broen cemented the global success of Nordic Noir with its
skilful combination of unnerving storylines, grim landscapes and the
troubled detective duo constantly on the move between two countries,
chasing clues, criminals and their own inner demons. Its commercial
success demonstrates the international and economic mobility of the
crime genre today in terms of consumption and production; as a transna-
tional television drama series, Bron/Broen exemplifies changes in the
global (digital) market and media geography. The series was remade
into an Anglo-French (The Tunnel, 2013–18), US (The Bridge, 2013–
14) and Russian version (The Bridge, MOCT , 2018). It also inspired
a Finnish (Bordertown, 2016) and German (Pagan Peak, 2018) series.
Similar to other Nordic Noir series, Bron/Broen challenges the domi-
nance of Anglo-American crime texts through introducing new kinds of
narratives, settings, detectives and crimes that promote critique of local
societies and global networks (see also Gregoriou 15–16 on Nordic Noir).
If the world was reduced into “self-contained, enclosed, manage-
able proportions and dimensions” in the locked room mystery, as John
Scaggs suggests (52), this is rarely the case in today’s crime narratives.
With the focus on border crossings and permeable national borders,

Bron/Broen and similar narratives communicate social—often geopolit-
ical—anxieties, creating an image of networked and transnational societies
where crime is not easily contained. The fact that the more narrow,
traditional settings of the crime genre (the country house, the locked
room, the small town or the corrupt urban environment) have, to a
certain degree, been replaced by wider social environments becomes
understandable, if we consider post-World War II spatio-political trans-
formations shaping people’s everyday lives and local communities. The
twentieth century witnessed decolonisation, the dismantling of imperial
powers and redrawing of national borders as well as the reorganisation
of economy and geopolitical systems across the globe in the aftermath
of the war. The post-war era also resulted in the establishment of the
United Nations, the emergence of the Cold War with two political blocks
and new superpowers, contested borders or divided nations (e.g. Cyprus,
Israel, Vietnam, Korea) as well as economic expansion and the forma-
tion of transnational economic treaties, the acceleration of capitalism
and consumer culture and changes in transportation technologies. More
recent developments include the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, the War on Terror and a new multipolar world order in
addition to the rapid development of digital communication technologies.
To make a long story short, these developments have created increasingly
multicultural, transnational, networked and digital societies, and they have
had a profound effect on why and how cultural narratives are more and
more engaged with mobility, border, space and the interaction between
the local and the global.
The next section of this chapter positions this volume within existing
crime fiction scholarship, especially within the so-called transnational
turn and the gradually emerging spatial and global turns. Then, we
briefly outline some of the main observations of the so-called new
mobility paradigm, highlighting how mobility intersects with the work-
ings of power. The final section of the chapter introduces the individual
contributions of the volume, which are concerned with the following
clusters of phenomena where crime texts reflect on mobility, globalisa-
tion and transnationalism in contemporary societies: crimes across borders
and flows of capital; expanding and curtailing human mobility; and
generic exchange and the mobilisation of affects and emotions for global
audiences.
The Globalisation and Remapping

of the Crime Genre
This volume is preoccupied with contemporary mobilities and the global-
isation of crime in a broad sense; in this, it partly aligns itself with recent
paradigm shifts in crime fiction scholarship. Following from developments
in crime fiction itself and informed by the so-called transnational, spatial
and global turns in literary and cultural theory, scholars have become
engaged with diverse global and transnational dimensions of and within
the crime genre. These issues include the proliferation of settings and the
interaction between the local and global in crime narratives, the interna-
tionalisation of the crime fiction market and increasing hybridity within
the genre.
The setting, which gives a sense of “where” and “when” events take
place, is of course one of the basic constituents of narratives (see also
Tally; Leane 31). The crime genre has been marked by specific settings
and spatial characteristics from the very beginning: white, mostly Anglo-
American writers introduced certain settings to the public imaginary, such
as the locked room, the (semi-)rural setting with its country house and
the (corrupt) urban environment. They also thematised links between
wider geographic—often foreign—settings such as the Orient or the
colonies and transgression. The genre has “operated as a sort of imag-
inative travel agency, taking customers across borders and introducing
them to unknown cultures” (Lawson), a trend which has continued until
today with the genre’s many different cultural and geographic settings.
For the Israeli crime writer Dror Mishani, readers of crime narratives are
“probably the least ‘nationalistic’ and the most ‘universal’ of all read-
ers” because they love reading crime narratives from different parts of the
world (Karim). As a consequence, we might argue, the touristic gaze now
directed at Ystad (Inspector Wallander), Sicily (Inspector Montalbano),
Edinburgh (Inspector Rebus) or Shanghai (Inspector Chen) is shaped by
crime narratives (cf. Geherin 5). In fact, crime location tourism has added
a new immersive and mobile experience to the pleasure of consuming
crime and crime locations, cementing them in our collective conscious-
ness (see Välisalo et al. on crime texts and mobile apps); such tourism
speaks of a heightened spatial awareness and emphasis on location within
crime production and consumption. This phenomenon can be placed
under “dark tourism,” which broadly refers to the touristic consumption
of sites of crime and death (see Dalton; Waade on the creative tourism
industry). Since its beginning, and continuing until the digital era, the
crime genre has thus contributed to its readers’ spatial awareness of the
world and their own place in it, their understanding of the domestic and
the foreign, and where crime originates and what borders it crosses.
The term setting, the where and when, no longer appears as an
adequate critical term to address the meanings of crime narratives’
spatiotemporal scales and dimensions—the sites, scenes, places, locations,
landscapes and milieus of crime and the texts’ cross-border connections.
Especially because of the paradigmatic changes in crime fiction scholarship
and the rapid increase of crime fiction settings in recent decades, setting
is now argued to be more than a neutral backdrop for plot and action.
A fascination with temporality and movement in time towards resolution
might partly explain why it has taken so long for scholars to combine
crime fiction studies with spatiotemporal explorations and spatiality (see
Schmid 7); Robert Tally Jr. makes a similar claim on the primacy of
temporality in general literary scholarship (16–17). Focusing on detection
and closure, the crime narrative is typically teleologically oriented, and its
primary temporal thrust lies in its dual narrative structure consisting of
the crime and its investigation (see Todorov).
Wishing to reorient crime fiction scholarship towards studies of space
and spatiality, David Schmid recently suggested we look at the genre
through spatiality, proposing that the genre is not only a temporal one
“reconstructing … who did what … when,” but also a “profoundly
spatial” one because of the need to find out where a crime took place in
order to identify its location and circumstances (7; see also Goulet, Lega-
cies 13). This approach understands space “as a dynamic, strategic and
historical category” in contrast to earlier scholarship’s “relatively passive”
treatment of space (8). For Schmid, a spatial approach facilitates the
exploration of closure and ambiguity, locales of crime, detective mobility
across diverse spaces and especially the workings of power; Schmid
thus highlights the “literal and metaphorical” movements leading to the
crime’s solution instead of the solution itself (11). Analysing landscapes
in television crime dramas, Stijn Reijnders proposes in a rather similar
vein that because landscapes contain secrets, they will have to be “passed
through and investigated” and that investigation seems “an unending
movement through the narrative space,” detectives being “always on the
go” (40).
Such focus on both space and movement encourages further inves-
tigation of setting, spatiality and, we argue, mobility in crime stories.
Far from being a given—fixed, static and immutable—space, as posited
by spatially oriented critics, is socially produced and social relations are

spatially organised. Thus, instead of being seen as a neutral backdrop for
action, settings in crime texts could be approached as spaces produced
by the interaction between people and their physical, cultural and social
environment. There are, of course, predecessors to this kind of theorising
of space in crime scholarship even before Schmid and the spatial turn.
For example, from early on, feminist crime scholarship has drawn atten-
tion to the gendering and sexualisation of space, arguing that feminist
crime fiction thematises women’s domestic confinement and spatial segre-
gation, which then limit their agency, mobility and participation in wider
sociopolitical affairs in the masculine public sphere (see Reddy, Sisters;
Munt; Klein; Gates; in this volume Beyer; Nolan; Rodi-Risberg). Ethnic,
postcolonial and critical race studies indicated a paradigm shift with their
focus on imaginative geographies and discursive practices, analysing not
only how the genre has helped contain and immobilise colonised subjects
through representational strategies, but also how ethnic and postcolo-
nial crime writing has subverted these strategies, inserted the experience
of colonised subjects and regions into the genre and offered alterna-
tive visions of justice (see Soitos; Gosselin; Christian; Fischer-Hornung
and Mueller; Reddy, Traces; Rodriguez; Gruesser; in this volume Naidu;
Hynynen). Walter Mosley’s historical Easy Rawlins series exemplifies such
challenges to dominant views and shows how postcolonialism encom-
passes experiences that are both spatial and mobile: it looks at the corrupt
urban environment of Los Angeles through an (upwardly mobile) African
American perspective and also reclaims and mobilises the literary space of
the hard-boiled novel for African American oppositional discourse.9
Motivated by a desire to challenge hegemonic views and by rewriting
established genre settings, crime writers have thus created new geogra-
phies and landscapes of crime. The increasing diversity in the genre’s
settings also speaks of more recent sociocultural developments, evidencing
growing interaction between the local and global in the genre. The role
and growing importance of localities for the contemporary crime story is
discernible in the titles of a number of recent television crime dramas such
as Bron/Broen, Shetland, Hinterland and Four Seasons in Havana, in the
detailed descriptions of scenes and locations of crime, and in transborder
thematics.
Analyses of the genre’s diverse settings reflect the changing tides in
scholarship.10 In 2000, Andrew Pepper’s cynical observation on how
“Publishers … tout difference with evangelical zeal, pointing excitedly to
the range of geographic settings and the myriad of racial, ethnic, class and
gender identities at play in the contemporary crime novel” (5) took note
of the growing commodification of social and cultural difference in the
genre.11 Andreas Hedberg, on the other hand, has explained the genre’s
flexibility towards diverse cultural settings by noting that the genre is a
mould that “can be set anywhere and everywhere and can be filled with
whatever readers’ interests are” (20).
Critics have also identified globalisation as a key reason for the prolif-
eration of specifically local settings for crime, with the descriptions
communicating the centrality of place and location to the construction of
individual and collective identity. Commenting on the genre’s contempo-
rary international nature, Eva Erdmann argues that crime texts’ inclusion
of what she calls cultural investigation is a major “shift within the genre”
in the globalised world (25). In fact, she proposes that the main focus
of crime texts has moved onto the setting and surroundings of the
investigation, the “locus criminalis ” (12), and the genre’s “topographic
proportions … reflect the globalization process of the late twentieth
century” (13) According to her, such local settings may also contribute
to the international appeal of crime narratives (25). Lynn M. Kutch and
Todd Herzog suggest that detailed descriptions of locations allow social
critique (see “Introduction”); similarly, for Suradech Chotiudompant, the
glocalisation of crime fiction—using borrowed forms and techniques in
local contexts—allows for the examination of local matters such as anxi-
eties about ethnic alterity (207).12 Louise Nilsson et al. claim that, as a
“‘glocal’ mode of literary production and circulation” (4), crime fiction
allows for “creative transformations of transnational plots and motifs” in
diverse local settings (2).13 For Slavoj Žižek, today’s global citizen is “pre-
cisely the one who (re)discovers or returns to (or identifies with) some
particular roots, some specific substantial communal identity” (Žižek),
and certain spaces such as home can be “empowering” in a globalising
world (see Birkle).
Some of the crime series’ titles above (e.g. Bron/Broen) attest to
certain geopolitical concerns in a globalised world, transborder human
trafficking or crimes in contested areas being obvious examples, indi-
cating that (geographic) locations may give rise to specific crimes. The
mobility of texts, crimes and detectives across borders has been recognised
in postcolonial and transnational criticism, which has strongly contributed
to the analysis of the genre’s cross-border exchanges and connections.
Among others, Nels Pearson and Marc Singer argue that detective narra-
tives have been involved, from the very beginning, with epistemological
formations created through “encounters between nations, between races
and cultures” (3). Christine Matzke and Susanne Mühleisen propose that,
instead of representing “‘cultures’ … as separate entities located in partic-
ular geographic terrains,” postcolonial narratives depict an interconnected
world, where migrant or transcultural detectives solve crimes “across
countries or continents” (3; 8). Considering such postcolonial, transna-
tional and transcultural dimensions of crime narratives and the genre’s
“globalized and hybridized” nature (Nilsson et al. 4), it is no surprise
that critics have recently called for a denationalisation of crime fiction
scholarship. According to Stewart King (9–10) and Nilsson et al. (3),
crime scholars have so far underlined the national contexts where crime
texts have been produced. While not wishing to fully discard such nation-
centric approaches, King nevertheless recommends the denationalisation
of crime scholarship in order “to gain greater insights into the global
reach of the genre” (10; Saunders in this volume). Nilsson et al.’s Crime
Fiction As World Literature even argues for the inclusion of crime fiction
in the study of world literature as it proposes to examine “the transna-
tional flow of literature in the globalized mediascape of contemporary
popular culture” (2).
The remapping of the crime genre examined in this volume relates
not only to the meaning of crime settings in a globalised world, but
also to the presence of crime narratives as commodities in the global
market. In Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction: A
World of Crime, Pepper and Schmid offer a multifaceted analysis of the
globalisation of crime. With their focus on the interaction between the
national and the international and the role of neoliberal capitalism in the
globalisation of crime and the crime market, Pepper and Schmid repre-
sent a global turn in crime scholarship. Their thought-provoking volume
investigates how crime fiction responds to “an ever-changing global
landscape” (18), and it describes and critiques the relationship between
crime, globalisation and the state, where the latter is seen as “mediating
between the local and global realms” (4). Pepper and Schmid identify
inequalities relating to class and race as aspects of state violence, but are
quick to note that crime writers also explore state violence that is “not
specifically located or locatable,” that is, “within the bounded territory
of discrete states” (6). This is one crucial aspect of the globalisation of
crime, present in transnational crimes across porous borders. For Schmid
and Pepper, globalised crime does not only consist of crimes across
borders (or various crime settings across the globe), but it also translates
into crime fiction’s generic hybridisation, claimed to be a response to
“the globalization of crime that characterizes the modern era of neolib-
eralism” (16; see Miller and Oakley 1). While the crime genre has been
characterised by generic hybridity since the very beginning, this hybridi-
sation now takes new forms precisely because of globalisation, capitalism
and the rhizomatic interconnectedness of cultures and societies.
The globalisation of the crime market is evident in the mobility of
crime narratives across cultures, languages and media and in their inter-
national readership. Crime fiction is “a product of the mass market”
(Hedberg 13) and profoundly connected to the emergence of contem-
porary consumer society (Nilsson et al. 2). Through the erosion of
economic barriers and the free flow of goods across borders, neoliberal
capitalism has strengthened the status of crime texts as mobile objects in
the commodity market.14 Capitalism is “inherently globalizing” (Barker
180), and the transformations of the media and publishing industry
are now visible in company mergers and multinational concentrations,
which search for new markets with foreign translations and sales rights.
The internationalisation of the market also includes book promotions
and book fairs, the social media presence of writers and publishers, and
the diverse formats and platforms of electronic publishing. Crime fiction
covers approximately twenty-five per cent of the sales of all popular fiction
(Simon 4); as an example, Agatha Christie’s combined and continuing
sales in English and translations into over 100 languages have already
reached the height of 2 billion (King 11). If we took multimedia and
transmedia adaptations into account, the figures would be much higher.
The effect of global capital flows, multinational corporations and tech-
nological advances on the crime genre’s mobility is thus tangible. As
the global marketplace mobilises cultural flows, crime fiction inevitably
becomes part of the “meeting and mixing” (Barker 158) of different
cultures. Miller and Oakley observe that the internationalisation of the
market has not only provided crime writers with access to very different
“generic trends,” but also resulted in “a wider global audience” (1).
Bron/Broen exemplifies well the internationalisation of the crime
market, both the economic reach of contemporary crime narratives and
their wider social, cultural and geopolitical significance. Crime narratives
published in the Nordic countries, like those in Asia, Africa and South
America, were peripheral in the global market until recently, at least
compared to the international reach and success of Anglo-American narra-

tives. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen suggests that “In an age of globalisation,
the Nordic noir phenomenon demonstrates that crime fiction is a particu-
larly mobile and adaptable genre able to spread and take root throughout
the world by adapting internationally recognisable literary forms to local
circumstances, languages and traditions” (Stougaard-Nielsen). The domi-
nance of Anglo-American crime fiction has decreased because of the
steady growth of texts produced in Scandinavia, Asia and Africa. This
remapping of crime has dislocated Anglo-American texts from their
central and often canonised position, increased the geographic diver-
sification of and worldwide interest in the genre and highlighted the
movement between the local and global within crime narratives.
This volume, then, exhibits an interest in the remapping and
mobility of crime (texts) across multiple borders, and genre renewal
and mixing. Several chapters in this volume focus on texts from
South America and South and North Africa, regions which have gone
through (de)colonisation, restrictions on human mobility and sociopo-
litical restructuring, and which have experienced a high degree of social
inequality and political instability (see Naidu; Miranda; Guldimann in this
volume). For instance, in terms of crime novels written in postcolonial and
transnational contexts, ratiocination might not play as crucial a part in
solving crimes as it does in classic crime narratives which are usually set in
enduring democracies. As Sam Naidu explains in this volume, the idea of
restoring social order after the individual crime has been solved through
logical reasoning is challenged in the former. This is because in newly
established democracies (such as South Africa) or unstable ones (such as
Colombia) mobile criminal webs of human and drug trafficking affect
and destabilise the nation state itself—the state whose very institutions or
officials might facilitate those criminal acts.15 The focus on Nordic Noir
in our volume (see Beyer; Saunders; Salmose) offers an opportunity to
contrast contemporary mobilities present in crime narratives emerging out
of Nordic welfare states with those created in other sociocultural contexts.
With texts from the Global South, the chapters aim at decentralising the
study of crime texts and mobility, making scholarship less Anglo- and
Eurocentric.16 Thereby they question what might be defined as crimes
of mobility, or acceptable and dangerous mobilities, since mobility often
looks different on the other side of the border. Indeed, Peter Adey points
out that mobility’s meanings are shifting, because “the way it is given
meaning is dependent upon the context in which it occurs and who

decides upon the significance it is given” (66).
Our volume’s geographically diverse approach is thus necessitated by
the fact that nations, regions and geographic locations produce different
mobilities and may facilitate different crimes. In the age of globalisation,
crimes are often also transnational, take place in borderlands or are deter-
ritorialised. The analysis of mobilities calls for a wide lens, given that
mobility’s meanings are context-specific and may vary from one region to
another. For example, in the history of the USA, mobility has been, and
still is, connected with nationhood: mobility, geography and social differ-
entiation were intertwined from the early colonial settlements onwards,
as white national(ist) imaginaries constructed American national identity
through westward expansion and the immobilisation of Native Americans
and other ethnic minorities. This history of spatial expansion, nation-
building and white mobile Americans has given rise to numerous popular
culture genres ranging from the Western to crime fiction. These genres,
featuring cowboys, vigilante heroes and crime fighters, disseminate and
sometimes challenge this view on identity. In British expatriate/migrant
writer Lee Child’s crime series on Jack Reacher, a white ex-military
policeman and nomadic detective, a new novel always takes place in a new
town. As a hard-boiled detective figure, Reacher is a product of the Amer-
ican social and literary context, and through his on-the-road-mobility and
vigilantist character, the series offers a landscape of sociopolitical corrup-
tion in small-town America. Describing his fists as big as “the size of a
supermarket chicken” (The Midnight Line), the novels allude to Reacher’s
physical and symbolic spatial dimensions in his mobile search for and
deliverance of justice. Reacher’s perspective is not that of a detective who
is permanently part of a local community; instead, as writer John Lanch-
ester puts is, “Child is a poet of diners and motels, venues that capture an
itinerant’s view of America” (Lanchester). While such a mobile perspec-
tive is quintessentially an American one, Reacher’s background also speaks
of a more migrant and hybrid identity: he was born in Berlin in a French-
American family and grew up on US military bases in different parts of the
world. A mobile detective like Reacher would be implausible in a North
Korean setting, because in real life and the global imaginary, North Korea
rigidly curtails the mobility of its citizens.17
As a final point in this section, we briefly discuss the crime genre as an
affective genre in a globalised world. This volume is not only concerned
with where our journeys in the world of crime take us and what they make
us feel about the globalised world where we live in, but also with what
textual strategies they accomplish this. We suggest that how crime narra-
tives mobilise affects and emotions through narrative and cinematic tools,
generic exchange or thematic content is an underexplored area of study.
The affective component is worth studying, considering the global reach
of the genre today and the fact that the genre deals with transgression,
which typically evokes a range of conflicting reactions in readers.
It has become commonplace to argue that specific popular genres
evoke certain affects and emotions such as fear, horror or disgust (e.g.
horror fiction or the psychological thriller). A key element of crime
fiction is “the positioning of the reader through emotional involvement
(suspense, thrill or fear)” (Seago). Established genre conventions thus
engage readers emotionally, “move” them, as suggested by the etymology
of the word emotion, “Movement from one place to another; a migra-
tion” (OED); this engagement partly explains the genre’s continuing mass
appeal (Platten 12). However, the chapters in this volume also suggest
that genre hybridisation and blending play a role in how crime texts
mobilise affects. As we will later see, such hybridisation produces different
affects compared to the more conventional crime story.
What the crime narratives then make us feel about the world connects
in this volume with social critique: emotional engagement is central in
a socially conscious crime narrative which is compelled by a desire to
critique present circumstances and change the status quo that is seen
as destructive (see Rodi-Risberg in this volume). It further relates to
the geopolitics and geography of affects (see Sharp; Pain and Smith; see
Koistinen and Mäntymäki in this volume). Readers are moved affectively
when crime texts take them to near and far places where they can identify
with and imagine the lives of close and distant others; as noted earlier,
the settings and locations of these journeys are now more heterogeneous
than ever before. Jean Anderson et al. ask whether the journeys to unfa-
miliar places readers embark on through crime narratives grant them
opportunities “to better define themselves” and whether writers with
their chosen narrative strategies help maintain or question “stereotypes of
Otherness” (2). Robert A. Saunders refers to a type of world-building, an
aesthetic-affective process which, through the depiction in popular culture
of distant and diverse areas, influences social perceptions and thereby aids
consumers in situating themselves within a globalised, neoliberal envi-
ronment (see “Geopolitical Television”). Jason Dittmer highlights the
geopolitical significance of popular culture, emphasising its importance
in teaching us who “we” are in comparison with those seen as different

(16; 21); it thus mobilises a sense of group identity. Going a step further,
David Palumbo-Liu suggests we might all now be “living the same global
‘situation’” and asks whether it is possible that “people share a common
register and repertoire in the realm of feelings, feelings that are touched
and produced by worldwide representations of contemporary lives” (2).
In contrast to the above, focusing on deterritorialisation, Arjun
Appadurai sets afloat the consumer in Modernity at Large: Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization, where he identifies a specific relation
between mediation and motion, especially mass migration. Imagining a
scene where Turkish guest workers watch Turkish films “in their German
flats,” he suggests that “we see moving images meet deterritorialized
viewers” (4). The position of the guest worker watching Turkish films is
drastically different from those who consume stories from across the globe
but do not migrate themselves. As Appadurai succinctly puts it, “Neither
images nor viewers fit into circuits or audiences that are easily bound
within local, national, or regional spaces” (4). When crime texts from
different parts of the world and with diverse cultural settings mobilise
affects and are consumed by local, global, de- or reterritorialised audi-
ences, we might ask who or what becomes an object of fear or sympathy,
for whom and how.
In the following section, we introduce mobilities research, the mean-
ings that “mobility” has been given in contemporary society, and establish
connections between mobility, society and power, which are crucial
concerns in this volume.
Researching Mobilities
The study of mobility has gained momentum in several academic fields
since the last decades of the twentieth century. Mobilities research has
drawn from and furthered the theorisation of space after the so-called
spatial turn (evident in disciplines ranging from critical geography to soci-
ology and beyond), which granted new social, material and ideological
importance to space and spatiality and underlined the social production
of space. Doreen Massey’s now-classic study, Space, Place, and Gender,
especially stressed the interconnectedness of space and power, “since
social relations are inevitably everywhere imbued with power and meaning
and symbolism, [and] this view of the spatial is an ever-shifting social
geometry of power and signification” (3). Especially from the 1970s
onwards and through the contributions of Massey, Michel Foucault,

Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Edward W. Soja, Nigel Thrift, Manuel
Castells and many others, the study of space and spatiality has effectively
reoriented critical and cultural theory.
Sociologist Mimi Sheller highlights the importance of the spatial turn
for the formation of new ways of approaching mobility and movement.
She points out how the mobility turn in the 1990s emerged out “of
relational understandings of space and spatial processes” (“From Spatial
Turn” 11).18 In 2006, Sheller and John Urry published their intro-
duction to the so-called new mobility paradigm, which questioned the
“a-mobility” of contemporary social science research. They argued that
it had failed to integrate the study of spatialities, social life and move-
ment in ways that would construct a view of processes of mobility
based on “a set of questions, theories and methodologies” that redi-
rect attention from static structures; however, they did not wish to
create “‘a new grand narrative’ of mobility, fluidity, or liquidity” (210).19
Taking into account mobilities, they proposed, would challenge social
science to rethink both its objects of study and research methodolo-
gies, and thus its ability to adequately analyse transformations of and
in social relations, human mobility and migration, physical and virtual
forms of travel, mobile identities, global catastrophes, new information
and communication technologies and the global marketplace.20
The newness of the paradigm shift has been debated, and Adey
observes that it could ironically be seen as recognising the already existing
body of work on mobility, as suggested by Sheller (23; see Merriman).
A concern with mobility certainly existed in anthropology, archaeology,
geography and sociology even before the mobility turn, and, for example,
the interest of feminist scholarship in women and mobility “is arguably
one of the intellectual and political antecedents that shaped early formu-
lations of the new mobilities paradigm and led to its emergence at a
particular historical moment” (Clarsen 95; see Adey 27–45; Cresswell,
“Towards” 18). Similarly, postcolonial studies had already asserted the
importance of examining diasporic, migrant and displaced groups and
identities created by colonial trade and conquer. Yet, it is obvious that
there are differences between studies of mobility and movement before
and after the mobilities turn. Since the shift, to highlight some key areas of
discussion pertaining to the present volume, mobilities research has drawn
attention to the interdependence of mobilities, the relationship between
mobility and modernity, and to mobility as an instrument of power.
As noted earlier, the new paradigm distinguished between movement

and mobility. According to Cresswell, socially produced mobility consists
of three “relational moments” (On the Move 3), which we could illustrate
with Saga Norén and human mobility by car in Bron/Broen: mobility is
part of an empirical reality (Norén drives from Malmö to Copenhagen);
specific meanings are attached to specific mobilities in representation and
by various representational strategies (mobility by car has traditionally
signified freedom); and mobility is also an embodied experience (for
Norén, driving is one way of being in the world). Discussions on mobility
were earlier often restricted to social mobility—mobility on a social
ladder—and only some mobilities were examined, while others (such as
tourism mobilities) were being marginalised in scholarship (Adey et al. 2;
3). Presently, mobility scholars posit that different mobilities should not
be studied in isolation from each other. For example, people’s mobility
manifests itself in physical and digital spaces, from dancing to virtual
travel, and books travel as physical objects in the marketplace, but also
through adaptations in digital platforms. Sheller and Urry contend that
mobilities have to be analysed “in their fluid interdependence and not in
their separate spheres (such as driving, travelling virtually, writing letters,
flying, and walking)” (“New Mobilities Paradigm” 212; see Urry 48).
Mobilities are thus seen in relation to one another and to larger socio-
cultural developments. Consequently, mobilities research has become
transdisciplinary (Adey et al. 3), or, as Sheller and Urry put it, the field
is post-disciplinary and its methods are on the move (“New Mobili-
ties Paradigm” 214; 217). Such moving methods sometimes take very
concrete forms, as when research subjects are accompanied by the person
researching them (see Merriman, “Introduction”).
Mobility has also gained some rather specific and also contradictory
meanings in recent Western imaginaries. Cresswell identifies an associ-
ation between mobility and modernity, noting that mobility has been
conceived of as freedom, opportunity and progress, and “as modernity.”
Yet, modern Western societies have viewed mobility also “as shiftless-
ness, as deviance, and as resistance” (Cresswell, On the Move 1–2), having
the potential to destabilise the established social—and spatial—order (see
also Greenblatt 252). On the one hand, these opposite ideas speak of
the fluidity of meanings attached to mobility in the West; on the other,
identifying a linkage between mobility and Western modernity runs the
risk of ignoring national or regional histories outside the West. That
is, observations based on the Global North’s “(heterogeneous) experi-
ence of the relationship between mobilization and modernization” might
not satisfactorily account for events in other regions, such as the Global
South (Divall 39; see also Matereke). Another (geographic) perspective
might thus challenge (Western) understandings of mobility, or even the
discourse of modernity and modernisation.21
One of the key insights of mobilities research emphasises the dynamics
between mobility and immobility. Immobility is present in waiting and
stillness, and people experience temporary immobility in cafés, airports
or lounges (Urry 42). While Cresswell astutely points to stillness’
omnipresence (“Mobilities” 648), stillness has also acquired many nega-
tive connotations, being regarded as “[a] moment of emptiness or missed
productivity” (Bissell and Fuller 3). More importantly, David Bissell and
Gillian Fuller link mobility, immobility and power geometries when they
observe that mobility for some might be dependent on others being stilled
(4). In other words, mobility produces or reinscribes power because it is
unevenly distributed in society. Natalie Oswin goes as far as to claim that
much of today’s mobilities research prioritises the study of “the differ-
entiated politics of movement” (85); this aspect is strongly present in
this volume, too. Already in Space, Place, and Gender, Massey spoke of
differential mobility and the factors determining the degrees of human
mobility, concluding that power is reflected in and reinforced by mobility
and its control (150). Philip Kretsedemas continues along similar lines
when he defines mobility as a tool “of power that can be used to struc-
ture movement” (40), in the sense that people might be denied, forced
into or made desire for mobility. If immobility is seen to “constitute and
pattern” the mobilities in the world (Adey 12), it is an active constituent
and part of mobility. Considering this, the image of a tourist in an airport
lounge might be counterpoised by the enforced stillness of the refugee in
a detention centre in a bordertown (see Beyer in this volume).
Borders are instruments of power used to restrict mobility, and
mobility is productive of borders and immobility, which explains the
emphasis on mobility and border in our volume. Mobilities and immo-
bilities, as the chapters here contend, are determined and distributed
by power regimes and geometries. While globalisation has been defined
through or as “the erosion of borders” (Cox 3), borders appear to grow
in number as well as “becom[e] more dispersed” (Cresswell, “Mobilities”
650). William Walters observes that borders have traditionally differ-
entiated one sovereign territory from another and served as sites of
regulating commerce. Referring to the work of Adey, he further argues
that diverse “actors, objects and processes whose common denominator
is their ‘mobility’” are now increasingly policed through borders (188).

He suggests that borders currently distinguish between “the good and
the bad, the useful and the dangerous, the licit and the illicit,” where
the latter are immobilised and taken away to allow speedy mobility for
the former (197). In today’s world, as proposed by Walters, the bad, the
dangerous and the illicit include such groups as terrorists, undocumented
immigrants and members of criminal organisations, which represent “dan-
gerous mobilities” (199). The mobility of certain people or groups
thus (re-)establishes the need for borders—and border guards, fences,
surveillance cameras (Adey 12).
Borders have become a significant trope of inclusion and exclusion,
freedom and captivity, and a trope through which social and geopo-
litical anxieties are projected in crime narratives—and in real life, as
recent debates on the US-Mexico border show. In the USA, for Maya
Socolovsky, “the mainstream’s rhetoric depends specifically on geopolitics
not only because the attention to place and border enforcement actu-
ally determines illegality and citizenship but also because it establishes
the cultural otherness of all Latinos/as—no matter their legal status—
as a potentially criminal or threatening presence” (28). The implication
here is that a racist legislation is part of a mainstream discourse that crimi-
nalises Latinos/as in the USA, an idea that can be stretched to encompass
border(lands) debates elsewhere.
In approaching crime narratives through mobility and mobilities
research, we are aware of recent criticism aimed at the field. This criticism
has asked, among other things, whether mobilities research marginalises
certain perspectives of mobility, such as the experiences of the poor
(Salazar and Schiller 186; see also Merriman). In contrast, Adam Doering
and Tara Duncan wonder whether the field offers global mobility as
“the defining feature” of the present-day experience, noting that while
mobility scholars warn against interpreting the mobilities turn “as a new
grand narrative of the contemporary global condition,” their “language
implies otherwise.” They also comment on the paradigmatic stabilisation
of the field in recent years, pondering whether it might become fixed
and programmatic as a framework. In a similar vein, Peter Merriman’s
Mobility, Space and Culture notes how mobilities studies’ emphasis on
certain innovative mobile methods has prioritised the methods of social
sciences and ignored methodologies used, for example, in the humani-
ties. For Merriman, such an emphasis might narrow down methodological
innovation instead of diversifying it. Our volume takes notice of this criti-
cism and shies away from celebrations of mobility; instead, in introducing
a mobility framework to the study of crime texts and social critique, it
illuminates the heterogeneity of practices and experiences of mobility in
different parts of the world. In the next section, then, we introduce and
situate the mobilities that the contributing chapters analyse.
Tracing Mobilities
in Contemporary Crime Narratives
This volume focuses on three key areas where today’s crime narratives
engage with mobility and social critique, with a linkage to globalisa-
tion and transnationalism: flows of capital and human mobility across
borders, the expansion and curtailment of human mobility and agency,
and generic mobility and hybridisation. Part I calls attention to the victims
of global neoliberal capitalism and transnational crime, especially those of
human trafficking, (il)legal international migration and drug smuggling.
Forced and involuntary mobility in the form of human trafficking (and
the consequent stripping of human agency) is one of the most apparent
themes of mobility in contemporary socially conscious crime narratives.
Part II adopts a more transhistorical approach to mobility. Its chapters
both emphasise how (human) mobility is produced differently during
different time periods and examine the means of curtailing or expanding
human mobility and agency across time and space. Part III explores the
impact of globalisation on popular genres, specifically the changing spaces
of production and consumption, crime texts’ increasing generic hybridis-
ation and the production and mobilisation of affects. In these three parts,
the contributions also combine mobilities research perspectives with other
theoretical approaches, such as postcolonial, surveillance or affect studies.
Part I: Crime on the Move: Transnational Crime and Global

Capitalism
The flow and regulation of human mobility across borders (whether
voluntary or forced) associated with globalisation is a major topic in
mobilities research. It has also given rise to numerous fictional accounts
about transnational crimes such as human trafficking, which is often inter-
twined with limited mobility, as criminals render their victims immobile
through confining them in brothels or sweatshops. The victims, familiar
to readers and viewers from both real-world and fictional (con)texts, now
exist alongside other “types of ‘movers’” that Salazar has identified in
today’s society—tourists, pilgrims, diplomats, businesspeople, mission-
aries, NGO workers, students, teachers, researchers, athletes, artists,
soldiers and journalists (“Keywords” 2).
The movers in Salazar’s list mostly exhibit privileged, voluntary mobil-
ities and stand in stark contrast to the victims of trafficking and border-
lands’ crimes studied in Part I. Such victims highlight the dark underbelly
of contemporary mobility in terms of global neoliberal capitalism and
geopolitical concerns deriving from the Western colonial legacy. The
“winners” in the crime stories are transnational criminal networks, multi-
national corporations, corrupted politicians and police officials: they use
institutions and regimes of power to abuse and profit from vulnerable
people who, fleeing war, conflict, persecution or dire economic situa-
tions, fall prey to the corrupt networks. Alternatively, these people simply
wish to gain access to what the more privileged groups already have—the
freedom to move, which is an aspect of human agency and what global-
isation would appear to promise but ultimately distributes in an unequal
fashion. Thus, mobility comes to signify how power works on intra- and
international levels.
In the narratives examined in Part I, the transnational criminal
networks that respect neither laws nor national borders stand for what
could initially be called “dangerous mobilities.” We deliberately use the
word “initially” to avoid simple readings of causality. While drug smug-
gling and human trafficking can be characterised as illegal activities,
contemporary crime narratives communicate an ambiguous relation-
ship between crime, capitalism, Western colonial legacy and imperial
world order. As several chapters argue, the crimes and criminal organ-
isations depicted in contemporary narratives often have their roots
in (neo)colonial and neoliberal capitalist practices that produce social
inequality as well as in the “regulation vacuum” produced by globali-
sation, as a recent UN study on transnational organised crime reported
(Globalization 29).
While crime texts detail the global reach of transnational crime organi-
sations, they highlight the victims whose desire for social mobility renders
them vulnerable to exploitation. Rather than moralising or demonising
the desire for (social) mobility, the texts raise sympathy towards vulner-
able groups in contrast to how certain types of mobile people have been
depicted as a threat to public safety in Western media and fiction. That is,
such “figures of mobile threat” as “[t]he drifter, the shiftless, the refugee
and the asylum seeker have been inscribed with immoral intent” (Cress-
well, On the Move 26). In the chapters in Part I, this group is extended to
include contemporary figures of mobility who occupy our imaginations—
the abused victims of human traffickers and drug dealers. However, the
crime texts studied here not only critique conditions and institutions
producing inequality, but also point towards acts of resistance.
Sam Naidu situates a South African crime thriller, Devil’s Peak (2007)
by Deon Meyer, and a Colombian literary detective novel, Night Prayers
(2016) by Santiago Gamboa, as postcolonial crime novels, and investi-
gates how transnational criminal organisations cause widespread destruc-
tion on global, national and personal levels. Naidu suggests that both
novels offer effective commentaries from a postcolonial viewpoint: they
comment on how their postcolonial contexts, marked by political dysfunc-
tion and instability, are permeated by global webs of prostitution and drug
trafficking, ultimately leading to endemic corruption and social malaise.
Carolina Miranda centres on organised crime, female trafficking and drug
smuggling initiated by socioeconomic factors. In a significant counter-
point to the first chapter, Miranda examines these themes in the Kosher
trilogy by writer María Inés Krimer, part of a new wave of crime authors
emerging in Argentina in the 2000s that relocates crime writing exclu-
sively to Argentinian soil. Miranda explores how the trilogy reflects on
Argentina’s national history and crimes across borders through three
kinds of mobility: temporal, (trans)national and human.
Colette Guldimann analyses the geopolitics of illegal immigration
and hrig —the burning of identification papers to avoid repatriation—in
Moroccan writer Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s police novel Whitefly (2016).
In the narrative, crime is situated as a transnational occurrence that is not
confined by nation state borders or criminal justice systems. Guldimann
argues that the hrig becomes a means for reconsidering the relationship
between the past and the present, as it raises questions of migration and
displacement. The real crime in the novel is not illegal immigration but,
as the chapter suggests, can be located within global neoliberal capitalist
and (neo)colonial ideologies and practices.
In the next chapter, Eoin D. McCarney examines how globalised
capitalism and transnational criminality are intertwined with legal busi-
nesses such as the property industry and the maquiladora business around
the geopolitical borders between Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland and between Mexico and the USA, respectively. McCarney argues
that globalised capitalism is played out in the Irish writer Anthony J.

Quinn’s Border Angels (2015) and the Chicana author Alicia Gaspar de
Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005) through the violence
of human trafficking and femicide. Employing a broadly geocritical and
spatial approach, McCarney shows that depictions of borders and border-
land communities in crime fiction can illuminate the injustices intrinsic to
globalised capitalism by exploring how the cracks that occur in the inter-
face between globalised nations can generate inequality, exploitation and
crime.
In the final chapter of Part I, Charlotte Beyer analyses representa-
tions of transnational female sex trafficking in post-2000 Scandinavian and
British crime fictions with an emphasis on victimhood and transgressive
crime. Beyer argues that although familiar stereotypes of female trafficking
victims from former East Bloc countries and the Global South are often
reiterated in crime texts, such images are also challenged. She further
claims that, as transnational crime, human trafficking by its very nature
complicates ideas of socially, culturally and linguistically mobile selves,
elucidating how mobility comes to indicate privilege and agency. The
detailed portrayal of victims and their emotional responses to and expe-
riences of trauma, she concludes, offers socially and politically significant
themes to contemporary crime fiction.
Part II: Historicising Mobility and Agency

The starting point of Part II is the historicisation of mobility, and
the texts studied in this part range from historical crime fiction to
futuristic dystopia. Mobility, as argued earlier, is socially constructed,
and certain historical conditions produce specific means of domination
and specific (im)mobilities. “Mobility,” as Sheller stresses, is “relative”;
or, to rephrase Marc Augé, acknowledging movement in time, as this
part of the volume does, “is to educate one’s view on the present”
(8). Historical developments and changing power regimes explain why
contemporary crime narratives depict the expansion and curtailment of
human mobility and agency in diverse ways. Power asymmetries often lead
to an unequal distribution of mobility, as the established social order and
institutions exercising power determine who can be mobile and whose
mobility should be limited. In the latter case, also human agency becomes
curtailed.
Part II begins with analyses of mobility in historical crime fiction.

Through historical settings, narratives may not only examine real or
fictional crimes to correct past wrongdoings, but also comment on the
state of affairs in the reader’s present. The contributions by Meghan P.
Nolan and Mary Ann Gillies discuss detectives in fictions set or published
in the past and address the spatial constraints and dispossession of agency
that the characters experience. Nolan examines detective agency and the
meaning of social mobility for Victorian women within and beyond the
confines of the domestic setting. She compares past and present represen-
tations by juxtaposing mobile female characters in Anne Perry’s William
Monk series (1990–) and C.S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr series (2005–)
with those in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1852–53), Arthur Conan
Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891) and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret
Agent (1906). Nolan argues that changing perceptions of marriage have
had the greatest impact on the representation of the Victorian woman
in contemporary historical detective fiction: the female characters created
today resist their spatial confinement and are granted more agency than
their historical counterparts. This, she concludes, is “indicative of a
post-second-wave feminist re-envisioning of women’s social roles.”
Mary Ann Gillies, on her part, investigates contemporary versions
of Golden Age detective fiction and war noir. Drawing on such ideas
as border crossings, social expectations and liminal subjectivities, she
explores American writer Laurie R. King’s Touchstone (2007) and Keeping
Watch (2003); she understands border crossings in the novels through a
notion of mobility created and constrained by war. Her chapter focuses
on the representation of traumatised war veterans who exist in liminal
spaces because of geopolitics, their countries’ military actions on foreign
ground. Ultimately, Gillies places importance on how readers of historical
fiction move back and forth in time, thus identifying links between past
and present societies and their conflicts.
While Nolan and Gillies examine links between prevalent sociocul-
tural norms and the (im)mobilities of the past and the present, Barbara
Pezzotti and Heike Henderson offer glimpses into the present and the
future. Their chapters illuminate how increasing digitalisation and mobile
technologies operate as modern means of expanding, constraining or
monitoring human mobility and (detective) agency. Pezzotti analyses how
human mobility, mobile technologies and the urban environment are
represented and how they intersect with discourses of gender discrimi-
nation and disability in Carlo Lucarelli’s crime novel Almost Blue (2001).
The narrative features a female inspector, who is discriminated against

in a male-dominated environment, and a blind man, whose interaction
with the world occurs mainly through technology. Pezzotti argues that
(emerging new) technology is not only an important element and means
of investigation in Almost Blue, but it also makes women and people with
disabilities more agentive as it helps them move in the urban environment
and master the postmodern city.
While the use of technology is viewed as expanding human mobility
in Almost Blue, Tom Hillenbrand’s post-9/11 dystopian crime novel
Drohnenland (2014) presents an opposite view. Heike Henderson looks
closely into the future of policing and the consequences of crime preven-
tion taken to its limits. In contrast to Almost Blue, Drohnenland considers
anxieties concerning personal freedom in a surveillance culture and the
policing of human mobility in a post-national Europe; this surveillance
culture is geopolitical in nature, as territorial borders are also surveilled.
Detection and crime prevention that rely on computers and digital data
could solve many problems that police forces currently face within and
beyond national borders, but digitalisation can create new ones, too,
primarily when it comes to personal agency, or, rather, the lack thereof.
Yet, Henderson also thinks through the possibilities of resistance, which
she paradoxically feels should begin locally precisely because of the global
scope of digital surveillance.
Part III: Genre Borderlands: Generic Mobility and Hybridisation

Part III seeks to understand how the production and consumption of
crime texts have been altered by the spread of neoliberal global capi-
talism, technological advances and the meeting and mixing of cultures
and people. Global capital flows and the international crime fiction market
guarantee that today’s crime narratives reach global audiences through
digital distribution, effective marketing, translations and adaptations. As
the example of Bron/Broen shows, through their travels, crime texts
become the property of global audiences, and their journeys make them
open for reinterpretation in the transnational space they also help create.
The crime genre’s migrations across the globe have also increased its
generic hybridisation, which is an important means through which social
critique is delivered in contemporary crime narratives; another means is
the affective engagement of the audience. The contributions in the final
part of the volume thus approach the globalisation of the genre through
examining transnational and diasporic spaces of production and consump-

tion, generic hybridisation and blending, and the creation of affective
space through genre hybridisation.
Robert A. Saunders focuses on the global consumption of televised
crime in the Nordic Noir genre. He first employs the concept of the
geopolitics of television drama, or the way that Scandinoir television
drama “travels” via transnational digital distribution platforms so that the
Nordic detective achieves global status. Second, he approaches geopo-
litical drama as a televisual genre in terms of the increasingly geopoliti-
cised content of contemporary television series—specifically Bron/Broen
(2011–), Dicte (2013–16), Ófærð/ Trapped (2015), Nobel (2016–) and
Sorjonen/Bordertown (2016–). Saunders argues that a feedback loop
of worldviews is created when the reception of geopoliticised content
combines with television production, and that this feedback loop affects
everyday perceptions of “how the world works, particularly given the
genre’s well-documented ‘anxious gaze’ when it comes to the state and
society.”
Next, Andrea Hynynen studies the transnational character of French
writer Olivier Truc’s novels Le Dernier Lapon (2012), Le Détroit du Loup
(2014) and La Montagne rouge (2016) about the Reindeer Police investi-
gators Klemet Nango and Nina Nansen; she examines the novels’ setting,
place of publication and original language in relation to the author’s
personal trajectory. Addressing border crossing through social and ethnic
mobility, cultural identity and the notion of the nation state, Hynynen
demonstrates that the novels first challenge national genre traditions;
second, they question established ideas of national, cultural and ethnic
authenticity with their depiction of a contested (geopolitical) region like
the Sami territory.
Niklas Salmose investigates how a filmic form and style are used in
Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman (2007), part of the Harry
Hole series, to produce a cinematic feel in readers. More specifically,
Salmose examines this intermedial mobility in terms of the influence of
splatter horror cinema on The Snowman—how the novel navigates the
film genre and creates a prosaic equivalent. In this way, the novel transi-
tions from a traditional police procedural to what Salmose calls “splatter
horror crime.” Salmose explores how this cinematic style affects the read-
er’s experience and whether it may account for the global success of the
series.
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen and Helen Mäntymäki analyse the interplay

between generic mobility, graphic violence and affect in the context of
global warming in the British-produced speculative TV crime series Forti-
tude (2015–17). They explore the ways in which graphic violence evokes
affect when combined with the threat and reality of global ecological
destruction through mobile organisms and diseases that have no respect
for humanly made borders. They argue that a strong cautionary element
is attributed to the narrative through generic blurring that evokes affect.
Informed both by the stark materiality of Nordic Noir and the uncanny
horror of science fiction, Fortitude engages viewers affectively in a discus-
sion of global warming, thereby offering an entry into social, ecological
and (geo)political commentary.
As the chapters of Part III show, emotional experiences travel across
generic borders. However, despite the fact that crime fiction often depicts
the experience of trauma and its destructive consequences, crime narra-
tives have received only scant critical attention in trauma fiction studies.
In the final chapter, Marinella Rodi-Risberg claims that Sophie Hannah’s
socially conscious crime thriller Hurting Distance (2007), a narrative
of sexual trauma and emotional abuse, represents crime trauma fiction
because it incorporates and blends features of both genres. She argues that
the novel not only questions societal attitudes about rape, the categorisa-
tion of victim and victim-blaming, but that with its focus on speakability
it also challenges the understanding of trauma as an aporia of represen-
tation. Rodi-Risberg concludes that the novel mobilises affect through
the themes of sexual violence and emotional abuse; therefore, contem-
porary crime narratives such as Hannah’s are an important locus for
representing trauma and offering a productive space for acknowledging
suffering through the ethical witnessing and politically engaged reading
of scenes of violence.
The chapters of Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders, and
Detection propose that the impact of globalisation and transnationalism
on the themes and mobility of the crime genre has been profound. Glob-
alisation, as Palumbo-Liu observes, has “delivered to us far more distant
spaces and peoples than ever before, with greater regularity and integra-
tion on multiple fronts—economic, political, social, cultural, ecological,
epidemiological, and so on” (3); his words suggest that globalisation is a
multidimensional phenomenon that stretches into the past. Thus, while
we highlighted the contemporary nature of Bron/Broen in the beginning,
the series and its mobilities speak of developments that have their origin
in past decades or even centuries. In this context, it is worth noting

how one of the first crime narratives, Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in
the Rue Morgue” (1841), is shot through with mobilities of all kinds:
it was written by an American writer but set in France, combined Gothic
elements with a novel story about crime and detection, presented down-
ward social mobility with Dupin, investigated entrance to and exit from a
locked room, depicted Paris as a multiethnic and multilingual metropolis,
evoked imperial anxieties with the story’s killer, an orangutan brought to
Paris from Borneo by a sailor, and introduced a dual narrative structure
that moves towards closure.
Our volume seeks to initiate discussion on and explore how crime
narratives not only engage with historical and contemporary mobilities
in diverse ways, but also shape current debates on different mobili-
ties on local, national and global levels. When Inspector Montalbano
commented on the illegal immigration over the Mediterranean in the
television crime series episode aired on 10 February 2019, his words
divided the Italian audience of 11 million people and aroused the anger of
the far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s supporters (Tondo).
Montalbano’s short line, “Enough with the tale of Isis terrorists travel-
ling on a migrants’ boat,” made visible current geopolitical tensions in
a provocative way and showed how the crime genre can function as a
powerful political force in commenting on current mobilities.
Notes
1. See Adams 269; Matzke and Mühleisen 2–5; Nilsson et al. 4; Gruesser 7;
Gregoriou 3.
2. To speak of the Global North and South may also partake in a spatial
(b)ordering of the world. In and of itself, such divisions can “often act as
tacit valorizations (‘civilized’/‘savage’, for example, or ‘wild’/‘safe’) that
derive not only from the cognitive operations of reason but also from
structures of feeling and the operation of affect” (Gregory et al. 282).
3. See Lee Horsley’s (17–20; 37–52) discussion on resolution in classic
(Golden Age) detective fiction and the genre’s alleged conservatism and
limitations when it comes to explicitly examining contemporary sociopo-
litical issues. Horsley emphasises that critics have recently offered more
nuanced interpretations of the presence of social critique in this subgenre.
4. British crime writer Val McDermid recently noted on the sociopolitical
significance of the genre that “As my compatriot Ian Rankin pointed out,
the current preoccupations of the crime novel, the roman noir, the krimi
lean to the left. It’s critical of the status quo, sometimes overtly, sometimes
more subtly. It often gives a voice to characters who are not comfortably
established in the world—immigrants, sex workers, the poor, the old. The
dispossessed and the people who don’t vote” (McDermid).
5. Globalisation is a debated concept and phenomenon in academic
discourse. On the one hand, it has been defined as extending across
centuries and connected to “the rise of the West and the development of
modernity” (Holton 31). On the other, it is also seen to refer to develop-
ments during the past hundred years, or as “characteris[ing] the present”
(Hutchings 16). In this volume, globalisation is understood as “a set of
processes” and not as a single, homogeneous phenomenon (Holton 54).
Here, it broadly “refers to processes through which economic, techno-
logical, cultural, political and social processes, structures, institutions and
actors transcend territorial boundaries in the scope of their origins and/or
effects” (Hutchings 16). Transnationalism is a related phenomenon, here
viewed in a general sense as consisting of “sustained cross-border rela-
tionships, patterns of exchange, affiliations and social formations spanning
nation-states” (Vertovec 2).
6. Sheller 6; Adey 29; Cresswell, “Towards a Politics of Mobility” 17–19 on
the scholarship inspired by the mobilities turn.
7. Franco Moretti argues that the use of mechanisms of transportation and
communication “always live[s] up to expectations” already in the Sherlock
Holmes stories. These mechanisms offer reassurance to readers that crimes
can be solved, but they also establish “a framework of control, a network
of relationships” (143). This dual-use of such mechanisms as a means of
both detection and social control is visible in contemporary texts, too (see
Henderson in this volume).
8. Despite the presence of various mobilities and their sometimes ambivalent
meanings in the classic and hard-boiled stories, these stories often priori-
tise the crime mystery above sociocritical analysis. For example, Hercule
Poirot takes the train or boat in order to reach a distant destination, but
the crimes he encounters are acts by individuals triggered by their personal
circumstances and judged as such.
9. Also “zero-settings” which exclude references to “clear localisation” can
communicate postcolonial anxieties about identity as Stephen Knight
argues of older Australian crime fiction (18–19).
10. Note that the genre’s canonical stories with their urban settings attracted
the interest of geographers already early on (for overviews, see Brosseau
and Le Bel; Brosseau). It is also worth pointing out here that critics gener-
ally employ different terms in their analyses of narrative settings: setting,
location, locality, landscape, place, space, et cetera.
11. The crime genre has also foregrounded questions of “consumerism and
commercialization” as its subject matter (Horsley 161; also 183–95).
The commodification of difference transcends the boundaries of popular

fiction; see Graham Huggan’s provocative study on postcolonial fiction
and the “alterity industry,” The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins
(see also Horsley 199–200).
12. Translations might affect the examination of such local matters in funda-
mental ways. For example, Chinese-born writer Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector
Chen series is written in English but translated into his native language.
However, the English and Chinese versions of the novels foster a different
sense of and attachment to place to their readers: in Chinese, the novels
are set in “H city” instead of Shanghai, and even the street names have
been changed (Jones). In contrast, American author Donna Leon has
set her Guido Brunetti series in Venice, but she has refused to let her
books be translated into Italian, thereby limiting the engagement of Italian
readers with her series and its setting but allowing space for consumers in
other languages and regions.
13. The genre’s travels and subsequent changes in its generic conventions also
make visible the spatial nature of the very idea of genre: “individual genres
have boundaries, which are policed by the stakeholders who draw or map
them” (Fletcher 3).
14. In our volume, the term neoliberal capitalism generally refers to the
unregulation—or minimal state regulation—of the market system, a free-
market type of capitalism of the recent decades. That is, commodities are
produced on a global scale, often by a cheap labour force which is sourced
for profit; in this way, globally operating financial and governance systems
exert power over national institutions and have far-reaching transnational
repercussions.
15. Ratiocination, in the sense of “strict reasoning,” is also a product of the
Western Enlightenment (Chotiudompant 200) and might contradict local
and indigenous traditions in postcolonial cultures.
16. See Adey 45–56 on the domination of English-language or Global North
perspectives in mobility studies.
17. At times, political ideology disallows the very production of crime narra-
tives. For example, the production of crime fiction in China came to a
halt with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,
since “reading for entertainment and writing that did not criticize capi-
talism greatly” were no longer viewed favourably (Kinkley 80). The lack
of crime texts might also be due to the presence of violence in contested
areas that discourages writers from employing the crime genre: for Pales-
tinian writer Mahmoud Shugair, “writing a crime novel that is written for
the mere purpose of entertainment … seem[s] like a luxury under” the
conditions where Palestinian people live (Alghureiby 159).
18. Sheller has even suggested that, in certain ways, the mobilities turn has
“swept through and incorporated the spatial turn within sociology but
also within other disciplines” (“From Spatial Turn” 2).
19. As these terms suggest, the transformations in the private and public
realms brought about by globalisation have been conceptualised in writ-
ings across various academic disciplines through different frameworks by
such authors as Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Manuel Castells
and Rosi Braidotti.
20. Many of the fields examined by mobilities research, such as transporta-
tion and communication technologies, span centuries and have their own
specific historical developments. It is not our intention to ignore these
developments, and, in fact, the contributing chapters address them when
relevant.
21. Note that Chris Barker, among others, refers to modernity as “a western
project” (160).
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PART I
Crime on the Move: Transnational Crime

and Global Capitalism
CHAPTER 2
Transnational Crime in Deon Meyer’s Devil’s

Peak and Santiago Gamboa’s Night Prayers
Sam Naidu
Introduction
Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak (2007)1 and Santiago Gamboa’s Night
Prayers (2016)2 are postcolonial crime novels which explore the complex
relationship between a colonial legacy of sociopolitical instability and the
present incidence of transnational crime in South Africa and Colombia,
respectively. Both novels have garnered national and international literary
awards and have received critical and academic acclaim. There are striking
similarities between the sociopolitical contexts of both novels, but signif-
icant differences in style, genre and affect. Devil’s Peak is a crime
thriller in the hard-boiled tradition which offers the reader the “thrill”
of the chase, a heady pace, a climactic, violent showdown, followed by
emotional or psychological catharsis. On the other hand, Night Prayers
is a literary detective novel which proceeds at a sedate, meditative pace,
offering the reader a deep historical perspective, philosophical rumina-
tions, explorations of urban spaces and a series of perplexing existential
and meta-narrative questions by way of conclusion.
S. Naidu (B)
Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

46 S. NAIDU
Both are postcolonial crime novels because, in their content and form,
they demonstrate that ratiocination, central to classic crime fiction, can
play only a minor role in the interpretation of crime in the postcolony.
This is mainly because the notion of social order in classic crime fiction,
which depicts settings of long-standing stable democracies, is reinstated
after the process of logical reasoning is complete and the individual crime
is solved. This established social order exists neither in South Africa nor
in Colombia. Since South Africa is a fledgling democracy, and Colombia
an established, but volatile, democracy, of great concern to both novels is
how the respective nation state is destabilised by crime, unemployment,
economic vulnerability, poor infrastructure and varying forms of social
injustice.
Significant here is how both novels creatively imagine the impact of
mobility, and mobile criminal networks specifically, on the “nation,” as
well as on individual lives, echoing Ann-Marie Fortier’s view that the
“migration imaginary shapes understanding of identity and difference, of
borders and boundaries, of our relationship to others ‘here’ and ‘else-
where’” (69). In crime fiction more generally, the trend of invoking
“the migration imaginary” by addressing issues of transnational subjec-
tivity, human trafficking, the drug trade and different border-crossings
has become increasingly prevalent and popular. Perhaps most telling in
recent times has been the spate of television crime narratives (e.g. the
Nordic Noir series Bron/Broen or the UK post-Brexit, political thriller
Collateral ), which deal with the figure of the migrant and the various
and complex ways in which mobility shapes and influences the social as
well as the political.
In addition, Devil’s Peak and Night Prayers, as postcolonial crime
novels which contain new forms of “the migration imaginary,” constitute
a rising diversity and experimentation in crime fiction as it proliferates
in wide-ranging geo-cultural locations and mutates into a transnational
literary phenomenon; that is, the novels themselves emerge as tools to
understand social, economic and cultural mobility in colonial as well as
contemporary times. With their inclusion of mobile criminal networks
and protagonists who are mobile in varying ways, these two novels invite
a reading which is informed by mobility studies, particularly by the notion
that “mobilities are changing the world in complex, subtle and powerful
ways” (Adey et al. 2). Evident in both novels is the awareness that the
nation or the state is under threat due to the mobility of economic systems
based on the increasingly global policies and ideologies of neoliberalism.
2 TRANSNATIONAL CRIME IN DEON MEYER’S DEVIL’S PEAK … 47
In this way, the novels echo a notable expansion in contemporary crime

fiction, which, as observed by Andrew Pepper, “with its historical affilia-
tions with and to the state, explores not just the nature but also the limits
of state sovereignty—in an era marked by the encroaching power of global
capital and the encroaching logic of neoliberalism” (44; see also Pezzotti).
The texts examine how South Africa and Colombia, as postcolonies, are
impacted by “illicit mobilities” (Adey et al. 2), and how individual char-
acters are either enabled or crippled, but certainly profoundly shaped, by
increasing physical and technological mobilities.
Whilst Devil’s Peak examines South Africa’s post-apartheid society in
the mid-2000s about a decade into the inception of formal democracy,
which is still riven by racial inequalities, corruption and high levels of
crime leading to vigilantism, Night Prayers is concerned with Colombia
at a time of human rights abuses, counter-insurgency and the war against
drug cartels. What emerges are portraits of both countries as “the nation-
in-crisis” (Goodman 120). Writing about the civil war in Colombia,
Robin Goodman points to how “a crisis in democracy, a weakening of the
public sphere of democratic practice and agency [is] caused by a recon-
figuration of the nation-state and its institutions on a global scale” (118).
Goodman’s comment applies to both South Africa and Colombia, and,
as evidenced in the novels, the causal relationship described by Goodman
can be reversed—the global ties of the nation may be determined by an
internal crisis in democracy.
Devil’s Peak is set in South Africa, and most of the action takes
place in Cape Town. In terms of spatial mobility, it is the less complex
of the two novels yet it demonstrates, as Pepper argues in another
context, how “the state’s claim to territorial boundedness, and its pursuit
of a policing mandate within clearly demarcated jurisdictional limits, is
called into question by the growing transnationalization of crime” (2).
Devil’s Peak is a postcolonial crime thriller which utilises some of the
key elements of the thriller subgenre,3 derived from the American hard-
boiled tradition, such as fast-paced action, little ratiocinative detection
and a climactic chase and showdown. Coincidentally, the foreign crim-
inal element depicted in Devil’s Peak is a Colombian drug cartel. On the
other hand, Night Prayers, more in line with the Latin American post-
modernist anti-detective tradition made famous by such writers as Jorge
Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, is a postcolonial literary detec-
tive novel, which moves fluidly from Bogotá to various major capitals of
the world such as Delhi, Bangkok and Tokyo, and is set at the time of
48 S. NAIDU
Álvaro Uribe’s accession to the presidency, a term he held from 2002

to 2010. It advances at a staid pace, contains intrepid, intelligent and
yet seemingly fruitless detection, detailed and evocative descriptions of
varying urban landscapes, and closes with a distinctly postmodernist
gesture of self-reflection. Offering quite differing reading experiences,
these novels both provide cogent critiques of how global webs of drug
trafficking and prostitution have infiltrated their respective postcolonial
contexts. In this way, the illegitimacy of both mobile crime networks and
the crimes of the state are explored. Also, in both novels, the mobility of
central characters results in either their liberation and empowerment or a
tragic fate of criminality, alienation and death.
Thus, as subversive literary heirs of a tradition of crime and detec-
tive fiction originating in the “Western” metropole, and because they
both examine the colonial history of their respective locales, Devil’s Peak
and Night Prayers are categorised in this chapter as postcolonial crime
novels. Just as intent on interrogating the crimes of colonialism and neo-
colonialism as they are on investigating individual crimes in the present,
in both novels individual “crime comes to be seen as a symptom of,
result of, or reaction to basic flaws in the political, social, and industrial
systems” (Christian 2). Further, in both novels the transnational crim-
inal networks are seen as parasitic, feeding off the ailing nation state and
representing what Anderson et al. describe as the “exotic and the foreign
… ‘Other’—and the ‘Unknown’” (1). Indeed, these foreign criminals
“arouse feelings of curiosity and fear. They demand to be encountered,
investigated, decoded and, possibly, rejected” (1), but as both these
novels demonstrate, and as postcolonial theorists have generally argued, in
all encounters with the “Other,” it is actually the “self” that is ultimately
illuminated, and the complex, non-binary relationship between the two
which is probed.
The main argument in this chapter, therefore, is that Meyer and
Gamboa, despite differences in style and genre, recognise the transna-
tional nature of these criminal networks which “follow and are facilitated
by infrastructures that carry or mediate mobile subjects and things” (Adey
et al. 10), and both appreciate that these current breaches of the law are a
result of increased mobility in contemporary times and of turbulent and
unjust histories which hark back to the mobility of the colonial era. Tragic,
hapless victims, sociopolitical analysis, hero-detectives intent on coun-
tering the destruction of organised crime, and heroines who overcome
sexual exploitation and denigration through canny mobility are common
to both novels.
Criminal Pasts, Present Plots

In Devil’s Peak, police detective Benny Griessel has to track down a
serial killer, Thobela Mpayipheli, a former Mkhonto We Sizwe operative,
who is hunting and killing alleged child abusers. Griessel’s investigation
involves him in the case of a kidnapped child, the daughter of a pros-
titute, Christine van Rooyen, whose main client is Carlos Sangrenegra,
a Colombian drug smuggler. The lives of Griessel, Mpayipheli and van
Rooyen become intertwined when Sangrenegra is accused of kidnapping
van Rooyen’s child and thus becomes the victim of Mpayipheli’s vigi-
lantism. In retaliation, the Sangrenegra cartel kidnaps Griessel’s teenage
daughter, Carla. This riposte by the Colombian criminals compels the
formation of a detective duo comprised of a white, Afrikaner, apartheid-
era policeman and a black, Xhosa, anti-apartheid struggle hero who is
a fugitive. The novel ends when Griessel and Mpayipheli confront and
defeat the pernicious interlopers. In this instance, the foreign “Other” is
confronted and eradicated, whilst race relations of the present, which hark
back to colonial times, are placed under scrutiny.
Evident in this novel is “the instrumental use of the foreign ‘bad-
die’ to shape public perceptions for military and/or political purposes
at crucial moments in history” (Anderson et al. 3). By means of perhaps
too simplistic a binary, Meyer utilises the Colombian criminals to make a
nationalistic comment at a moment of volatile political and cultural transi-
tion in South Africa. Devil’s Peak is set at a point in South Africa’s history
when the euphoria of 1994 was on the wane and the reality of imple-
menting and sustaining a working democracy became stark. The nation,
according to Benedict Anderson, is “imagined as a community, because,
regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in
each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (16).
Meyer’s fictionalised account of camaraderie and detailed representation
of the inequalities and divisions which separate Griessel and Mpayipheli is
based on such an imagined, communal concept of nation. In Devil’s Peak,
the “Other” symbolised by transnational crime, then, is instrumental in
conceiving of a new South African nation whilst also facilitating a critique
of that infant nation and its antecedents.
In various ways, the role of the transnational organised crime syndi-
cate run by the Sangrenegra family is pivotal to the plot of Devil’s Peak.
As mentioned, an adversarial binary is created by casting the Colom-
bians as the foreign “baddies” and the detective duo as the local heroes.
50 S. NAIDU
It is this simple plot element that results in a cross-country chase and

the climactic confrontation between the heroes and the villains. There is,
however, a degree of complexity in the structure of the text. There are
three narrative strands, one for each “investigator,” and one for Chris-
tine van Rooyen, who succeeds in outsmarting both Carlos and corrupt
policemen who are in cahoots with each other. Giving each protagonist a
narrative strand allows for their cultural or social histories to be related.
In this way, Meyer is able to draw links between crimes in the present
and the colonial and apartheid crimes of the past. For example, knowing
that in the apartheid era Mpayipheli was a political exile in Europe, where
he was trained by Soviets and East Germans during the Cold War and
worked as a KGB hit man, helps the reader understand the frustration and
desperation he feels when he returns to South Africa to find a disturbing
rate of child abuse and a dysfunctional judicial system. For many readers,
Mpayipheli is a struggle hero who migrated to a cold and foreign place
to undergo ruthless training in order to serve his country. Infusing his
backstory with this element of mobility adds international intrigue to
the character and moral ambiguity to the narrative. In this way, readers’
shock or horror at Mpayipheli’s rampage of vigilante murder, including
the execution of the Colombians, is thus partly ameliorated. As the plot
gains momentum, the three narrative strands of the novel are increas-
ingly imbricated, resulting in the novel’s climax—the bloody showdown
between the cross-racial detective duo and members of the Colombian
drug cartel. Griessel executes each one of the henchmen with the help of
Mpayipheli, who murders with his totemic traditional weapon, the assegai,
and then mysteriously disappears.
Interestingly, Sangrenegra, although fitting the “figure of the foreigner
as villain” (Anderson et al. 2), is portrayed as a somewhat witless, arrogant
outlaw whose pride and indiscretion lead to his downfall. Using his pidgin
“Spanglish” and referring to himself in the third person, Sangrenegra
discloses to Christine the structure, methods and global extent of the
cartel, and the fact that his older brother, Javier, controls its worldwide
distribution of heroin and cocaine:
“You know who they are, conchita? You know? They are banditos. They
are shit. They make money with drugs. Mexicans!” He spat out the word.
“They are nothing. They are burros, mulas for the Yankees. Cubans. What
are they? And the Afghans? Peasants, I tell you.”
“Afghans?”
“Sí. Those arse holes in the dresses. Conchas !”
So the Arabs were Afghans. “Oh.”
“And the China and the Thai, and the Vietnam, what are they? They are
mierda, Carlos tell you, they have nothing but chickens and bananas and
heroin. They fuck their mothers. But they come to Carlos, to this beautiful
house and they have no manners. You know who they are conchita? They
are drugs. The Afghans and the Vietnam and the Thai, they bring heroin.
They bring here, because here is safe, no police here. They take cocaine
back. Then Sangrenegra brothers take heroin to America and to Europe.
And the South Americans, they help supply, but little, because Sangrenegra
brothers control supply. That is Carlos and Javier. My big brother is Javier.
He is biggest man in drugs. Everybody know him. We take heroin, we
give cocaine, we give money … we distribuya. We take to whole world.”
(Meyer 170; ellipsis in original)
With this pejorative characterisation of Carlos, and the symbolic

vanquishing of the foreign “baddie,” Meyer makes a compelling and
complex statement about South Africa as a “nation-in-crisis.” Ironically,
the critique is simultaneously of the transnational web of drug traf-
ficking which has exploited South Africa’s post-apartheid instability, and
of the country’s police laxity and corruption. By depicting Griessel and
Mpayipheli as allies with such divergent histories, Meyer also traces the
country’s colonial and apartheid history, and imagines a nation whose
citizens cross racial and cultural borders when confronted with a common
enemy. Through detailed personal histories for the protagonists and
history lessons about battles fought by colonisers and indigenous peoples
interwoven into the narrative, Meyer is at pains to portray that breaches in
the law are a result of a turbulent and unjust history. The novel also posits
that law enforcement and justice do exist, albeit in the unlikely form of a
renegade detective duo and an extremely astute sex worker. This concept
of an alternative justice, however contentious, is effective in challenging
established or hegemonic notions of social order and justice which may be
defunct or inappropriate, whilst imagining new configurations of power
and authority.
The structure of Night Prayers is not entirely dissimilar to that of
Devil’s Peak. Night Prayers too has three protagonists. The detective
52 S. NAIDU
figure, who remains unnamed, is a diplomatic consul in the Colombian

government stationed in Delhi. He is tasked with providing assistance
to a Colombian national, Manuel Manrique, who has been apprehended
by Thai authorities in Bangkok for drug smuggling. The plot is shaped
mainly by the consul’s attempt to help Manuel, which results in a transna-
tional journey in search of Manuel’s sister, Juana, a sex worker and
political activist who had to flee Colombia because of her anti-government
stance. Step by step, we follow the consul on his journey in pursuit
of the elusive Juana only to find that he is too late. Manuel commits
suicide before being reunited with his sister, and Juana disappears. Like
the conclusion of Devil’s Peak, at the end of Night Prayers the solving
of the mystery is partial and provisional; there is tragedy and loss, and,
finally, a disappearance or an absence. Each protagonist is afforded a
narrative strand: the consul, an author and a diplomat, narrates his story
of mystery, detection and futility in the first person, littering it with an
inordinate number of literary allusions; Manuel writes long, confessional
letters to the consul; and Juana is extremely mobile in heterogeneous
ways, allowing her to be multiply and obscurely located, assume various
personas and author a blog of lyrical, philosophical commentaries on a
range of subjects including transnationalism and transsexuality. Just as in
Devil’s Peak, this tri-partite narrative situation complicates the plot and
adds depth to the context. The combined effect of these three strands is
an excoriating critique of Colombia’s political history and the civil war of
the 1990s.
In particular, Manuel’s strand is enlightening in this way because his
angst-ridden descriptions of an economically depressed Bogotá evoke
an urban dystopia and his account of his unhappy childhood is filled
with resentment and revulsion for the stratification and repression of
Colombian society. However, on the topic of the “nation-in-crisis,” the
most strident voice in the novel is Juana’s. In response to her moth-
er’s comment about pre-Independence Colombia being “more foolish”
(Gamboa 73) than the status quo and her father’s claim that he has never
known such security, peace and well-being Juana retorts:
A Mafioso president, an army that murders and tortures, half the Congress
in jail for complicity with the paramilitaries, more displaced people than
Liberia or Zaire, millions of acres stolen at gunpoint, shall I go on? This
country maintains itself on massacres and mass graves. You dig in the
ground and you find bones. What can be more foolish than this brainless
and insane little republic? (73)
Juana’s diatribe against the state of Colombia and its sham democracy lists
atrocities and violations of various kinds committed by diverse factions.
This deep despair and disillusionment with their milieu unite the siblings
who, like the characters in the Martin Scorsese movies they love watching,
“had a desire to escape and a great fragility” (78). Unfortunately, this
combined desire and fragility is also why they both become embroiled
with transnational crime organisations.
In Night Prayers, the criminal “Other,” represented by the organised
crime syndicates which stretch from Colombia to Thailand, and beyond to
Japan, are not so much “Other” as they are illustrative of a local sociopo-
litical malaise. Manuel’s desperate and naïve attempts to find Juana lead
him to one such local-global criminal figure, a former Miss Colombia.
Exploiting Manuel’s love for his sister, she succeeds in recruiting him as
a drug mule. It is by these means that Manuel overcomes his enervating
immobility and finally leaves Colombia to embark on his transnational
quest for Juana. Tragically, his attempts to evade the criminal network in
Bangkok are futile and his repudiation of Colombia and its bloody history
are in vain. At the start of his journey, he says
I felt a strange pleasure and a second later saw my hated city from above.
Poor, wretched Bogotá, I thought, I’m never going to see you again….
I crossed the world. I flew over the Amazon and the Atlantic. I passed over
Africa and reached the Persian Gulf. Then Asia Minor, India, and finally,
the Malay Peninsula and my first destination, Thailand. (147)
The elation of this new-found mobility is short-lived. In fact, Manuel does

not see Bogotá again, and despite his crossing of many borders, the taint
of Colombia’s corruption and crime infestation follows him to Thailand,
where the combined Colombian and Thai crime syndicates orchestrate
his incarceration and eventual suicide. Here binaries of self and “Other,”
or local and foreign “baddies,” collapse or are shown to be complicit,
and the hapless Manuel, in resisting a national identity by embracing
an illicit mobility, falls victim to an even more iniquitous and powerful
transnational force.
54 S. NAIDU
Gamboa uses the form of the literary detective novel to tell a story
about love and war. As Manuel warns the consul, his account of how he
ended up imprisoned in Bangkok “isn’t going to be a crime story, it’s
going to be a love story” (151). Manuel and Juana are caught up in a
civil war and the dissolution of a society, and descriptions of Bogotá are
saturated with images of inertia and immobility. The siblings’ desperate
attempts to escape the bleakness of war-torn Bogotá, and their extraor-
dinary love for each other, render them vulnerable prey to powerful
transnational syndicates. On every level, the instability and violence of
the factional conflicts between the government of Colombia led by
Uribe, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the United
Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the National Liberation Army
(ELN), and various other parastatal organisations, insurgent and counter-
insurgent groups, as well as the intervention of the USA, are shown in
the novel to wreak havoc. This havoc is understood as having a long
and turbulent history. In his book The FARC: The Longest Insurgency,
Gary Leech traces the colonial roots of FARC, describing that the peasant
members who formed FARC in the mid-twentieth century were actu-
ally reacting to “an oligarchy comprising Spanish-descended Colombians
serving their own political and economic interests” (5). Members of this
new ruling elite were “primarily white descendants of Spanish colonial
rulers [who] held political and economic sway throughout Colombia and
retained control of the country’s prime agricultural land” (5). Although
not explicitly referred to in the novel in the way that Devil’s Peak does
directly reference similar colonial histories, this form of neo-colonialism is
understood to be at the heart of Colombia’s bloody civil wars.
In this climate of extreme volatility, the drug cartels began to take root.
Goodman describes the milieu Gamboa captures in the novel as “street-
level narco-economy” (122). For the Manrique siblings, this disorder
becomes untenable and the novel is a tragic account of their attempts
to escape it. The plot is therefore mainly about their respective jour-
neys and the consul’s journey of detection in pursuit of them. Colombia’s
connection to a network of transnational crime makes it possible for Juana
to find a position as a sex worker in Tokyo (Gamboa 162). Manuel’s
planned route is Bogotá to Dubai to Bangkok to Tokyo, to eventually
be reunited with Juana, but he gets only as far as Bang Kwang Prison in
Bangkok. Whilst it may be true that “foreign victims, foreign sleuths,
foreign settings or foreign criminals can provide a fertile ground for
tackling issues of belonging, difference and national and regional iden-

tities” (Anderson et al. 1), as is apparent in Devil’s Peak, Night Prayers
shows that conditions in Colombia are what prompt Juana and Manuel
to question and repudiate their national identities, and it is the connection
between foreign and local that is the catalyst, the means and the foil of
their journeys.
Postcolonial (Anti) Detectives4

Griessel and the consul are strikingly similar postcolonial detective figures.
Both men are dedicated to their work; they are loners, heavy drinkers,
men of conscience in whom people in trouble can confide, and both
are only partly successful as detectives. In addition, both “can be seen
to reflect the social, political or cultural anxieties of the community”
they belong to, “either conforming to the rules or by subverting them”
(Anderson et al. 2). As a member of the Serious and Violent Crimes
Unit of the South African Police Service, Griessel is privy to the nation’s
worst fears and anxieties and his alcoholism can be read as a symptom of
his trauma. Paradoxically, Griessel, as a policeman, conforms to the rules
generally but as a member of a vigilante duo, he radically subverts them.
The consul reflects Colombia’s anxieties by being an exilic figure who
prefers a solitary life far from his homeland. Inherent in his character is the
contradiction between his rejection of a national identity and his service
to the concept of “nation” through his work at the Colombian Embassy
in India. Similar to Griessel’s transgressions, the consul’s pursuit of Juana
causes him to stray beyond the remit of his job and break the rules of
international diplomacy. Both figures can be regarded as anti-detectives
because their epistemological quests fail and because the narratives of their
detection pose ontological questions in a world of increased and diverse
mobilities.
However, Griessel and the consul are also extremely different char-
acters that reflect the subgenres of crime fiction to which they belong.
Griessel is a policeman who is motivated by his own sense of justice
within a corrupt police service. Like most hard-boiled detectives, he is
tortured by inner demons which manifest as substance abuse. He is char-
acterised as an impulsive man of action rather than a highly intelligent
detective who uses methods of logical reasoning. He is disenchanted with
South Africa as a “nation-in-crisis” and is critical of the cronyism and
corruption. Yet, he is ultimately a patriot who is committed to fighting
56 S. NAIDU
on the side of the violated and the downtrodden. He therefore breaks

the official law when he teams up with the vigilante killer, Mpayipheli, to
defend the nation against the Colombian drug cartel. Rather than solving
an individual crime, Griessel addresses the broader, historical misdeeds
of colonialism and apartheid by allowing Mpayipheli to escape and by
claiming to be “a witness to his death” (405).
Night Prayers is a literary detective novel containing an urbane detec-
tive figure who is also the intellectual narrating consciousness. The consul
declares at the outset that this novel is the product of his intentions to
remember and to construct a story:
I want to reconstruct a story in order to tell it.
Something—I don’t know what, of course: perhaps an impulse, a creative

élan, or simply an old sadness, I can’t be more specific—made me feel that
I had to go over all this in writing: the events that brought me to Bangkok
that first time, and their consequences. An old story trapped inside a city,
which opens up onto others….
Let’s see now. Where to begin? (18)
More about the art of storytelling than the art of detection, Night Prayers
is a work of fiction which questions its own ontological and epistemo-
logical worth. With the above enigmatic words, the consul launches the
mystery surrounding the disappearance of Juana and the death of her
brother, but they also draw attention to his own role, intentions and
motivations in these events. Unlike Griessel, arguably a more static figure,
who is immersed in his local environment, the consul is deliberately a
transnational character who detects across many borders, what Goodman
calls the “de-nationalized detective-hero” (120). In contrast, Griessel is
an “insider” (Anderson et al. 3), a partisan detective whose quest is to
defend the nation and participate in its rehabilitation. An insider-outsider
now, the contrastingly mobile consul lives the life of an expatriate figure
who travels to various cities and who seems to constantly negotiate “the
often shifting configuration of ‘abroad’ and ‘home’, ‘self’ and ‘foreign
Other’ within the nostalgic international environment” (Anderson et al.
3). It is perhaps this grappling with home and homeland which explains
the consul’s obsession with Manuel and Juana, two young Colombians,
who, like him, blur boundaries between local and foreign, who become
“unhomed,” caught in a perpetual limbo between the national and the

transnational.
In contrast to clever, classic detectives, both these detective figures fail
spectacularly. Griessel fails because his teenage daughter Carla is gang-
raped by the drug smugglers, and he and Mpayipheli commit murder;
such gross violence is the result of Griessel’s detecting efforts. For the
consul, failure takes the form of Manuel’s suicide and the second disap-
pearance of Juana. In Devil’s Peak, transnational crime is symbolically
defeated, although it is understood that only one tentacle has been
severed. However, in Night Prayers, transnational crime is shown to be
extremely powerful and labyrinthine, its many paths extending across the
globe, leaving its bewildered and bemused detective with the repeated
question: “have I, in fact, understood anything?” (313). With failure so
dramatically foregrounded in both novels, it can be argued that these two
detective figures are indeed anti-detectives.
Disappearing Heroines
Christine and Juana are heroines who overcome sexual exploitation,
defeat, evade and cheat the transnational criminals who employ and
brutalise them, and who then eventually disappear, seemingly triumphant.
They both disappear due to various forms of mobility, but in Juana’s case
the mobilities are extreme and diverse. In keeping with Meyer’s nation-
alistic theme, Christine’s success in framing Carlos, the “foreign” villain,
for the kidnap of her daughter thus leading to his death, and her inge-
nious plan to steal Carlos’s money and escape to a remote town in the
Free State, constitutes more than a feminist victory. Like Griessel and
Mpayipheli, Christine expels the contaminant foreign “Other” which had
exploited her vulnerability and leeched off of the country’s malaise. More-
over, she is equally disdainful of the policemen she hoodwinks, suggesting
that her victory is over both the transnational and the local criminal
elements. However, when Christine “disappears” at the end of the novel,
the reader is left questioning whether her crimes, despite the personal
victory, are the panacea required to heal the nation.
Even more sensationally, Juana Manrique deploys various forms of
mobility to eventually liberate herself. She uses the local prostitution
industry to infiltrate the Secret Service and to gain access to high-ranking
government officials, including advisers to President Uribe. Juana’s quest,
like Christine’s, becomes with time more a pursuit for power and personal
58 S. NAIDU
liberation than one born of specific political conviction. Deeply influenced

by a mentor, Echenoz, whose reactionary views on democracy left an
indelible impression, Juana is determined to exploit the nation’s politi-
cians for her own ends. Echenoz advises Juana to use her sexuality to gain
independence from men: “Sex is the most powerful weapon on earth….
Infiltrate the world of those criminals and destroy them from within,
if you really do hate them. It’s a world of men, of brute, unscrupu-
lous males. If you manage to get close to it, they’ll eat out of your
hand” (231). Echenoz also plants a seed of political dissent by asking
“Do you know the contemporary name for perversity? It’s democracy”
(222). Realising that postcolonial Colombian democracy is a sham, Juana
begins to plan an escape route. A heroine such as Juana functions to draw
attention to the various links in a chain of oppression. In her analysis
of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, Katarina Gregersdotter focuses on
the fictional depiction of Sweden as no longer being a welfare state, and
claims that “a global patriarchy has led to a growing sex industry where,
for instance, sex trafficking can be viewed in the light of a globalized
economy, and where free trade accordingly includes the commodification
of human bodies” (1). Juana embodies a critique of not just Colombia as
a democratic nation, but also of patriarchy, capitalism, globalisation and
neoliberalism more generally, thus problematising the simplistic notion
of the self-Other dialectic. This critique of democracy and the machi-
nations of the nation, as well as of more global/mobile systemic forms
of power, shape Juana’s future actions and culminate in her becoming a
transnational figure, a figure who perpetually crosses borders in search of
freedom and independence.
Juana, whose identity becomes increasingly imbricated with her
mobility, disappears for the first time when her entanglement with politi-
cians and government officials endangers her life and she, ironically,
utilises the transnational human trafficking network run by the former
Miss Colombia to “escape.” Reminiscent of Larsson’s notorious heroine
of the Millennium trilogy, Lisbeth Salander, Juana goes on to elude the
Japanese mafia, then her Iranian husband, and, finally, the voyeuristic
consul, before disappearing for a second time. She alleges to the consul
that she threatened to “write a book about her brother’s case and file a
lawsuit at the court in the Hague” (307), and in this way receives four
million dollars in compensation from the Thai Ministry of Justice and the
Royal Palace. However, after the consul’s last conversation with Juana,
her fate is unclear and she disappears without a trace.
Sharing also Lisbeth’s (and Christine’s) ability to melt away into invis-
ibility after acts of great ingenuity and audacity, Juana is an intersectional
character that Gamboa deploys to critique Colombian nationalist politics,
as well as transnational crime syndicates and every other complicitous
institution which operates against her. As also Gregersdotter concludes:
“Via the character of Salander, Larsson openly links government and
bureaucracy to capitalist powers and patriarchy and provides a feminist
critique of power and institutions” (95). However dubious or flawed
Juana’s brand of feminism and philosophy of personal freedom might be,
she is an effective tool in Night Prayers for exposing various oppressive
power structures and, more pointedly, in complicating the links between
the local and foreign criminals.
Conclusion
Mainly, this comparison has yielded that Meyer and Gamboa, despite
differences in style, genre and affect, recognise the pervasive, transnational
nature of criminal syndicates, and both appreciate that these pervasive
breaches of the law are a result of turbulent and unjust histories in the
national context. Contrary to Anderson et al. who conclude in their
introduction that if “the crime in mystery fiction is a breaching of the
established order, then in the crime fiction of the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries, we apparently can, and do, still blame foreigners for that
infraction” (6), these two postcolonial crime novels suggest that it is
local conditions which are first and foremost to blame. However, when
subjected to an analysis informed by mobilities, these novels yield that the
borders between “local” and “foreign” are murky. Both novels suggest
that the sociopolitical turmoil which exists in South Africa and Colombia
facilitates the infiltration of transnational crime cartels. Yet, the novels
demonstrate that the current sociopolitical turmoil is a result of colonial
mobility, processes which led to the “foreign” taking root and becoming
local over time.
In the novels, the representations of South Africa and Colombia are
bleak national portraits chronicling a history of endemic corruption,
dysfunctional societies, gross violence and a fearful public. A chain of
brutality and oppression is depicted, harking back to colonial times, which
questions the sovereignty of the postcolonial nation. What can we learn
from this comparison? In both literary representations from the Global
South, readers are compelled to engage with visions of social disorder as
60 S. NAIDU
a result of beleaguered histories, urban dystopias and increasingly imbri-

cated transnational criminal organisations which wreak havoc on global,
national and personal levels. Chronologically and spatially, connections
are made between different macro and micro crimes, and between foreign
figures or “Others” and local, familiar criminal elements. The result is
that the binary of self and “Other” in crime fiction is confuted and a
more nuanced understanding of the dialectic between nationalism and
transnationalism is propounded.
Although Gamboa ends his novel with a postmodernist twist about
meaning and stories, and Meyer creates a prosaic conclusion which ties
up the loose ends of the plot, both novels close with a smidgeon of
ironic hope by gesturing to the future. The consul, restlessly and anxiously
mobile, will continue to search for Juana in a “new city at dawn or
before nightfall” (313) and Griessel gazes at his recovering daughter,
Carla, “with a tenderness that might just overwhelm him” (406). Even
more significantly, optimism is embodied in the flawed postcolonial anti-
detective figures and disappearing feminist heroines who attempt to resist
the corrosive effects of national and transnational crimes in their lives
and in their communities. Ultimately, the foreign and the local blur in
these novels and the mobility of crime, be it colonial or contemporary, is
spotlighted.
Notes
1. First published in 2004 in Afrikaans.
2. First published in 2012 in Spanish.
3. For a detailed review of this novel and for more comment on these
subgenres, see Sam Naidu, “Fears and Desires in South African Crime
Fiction.”
4. Laura Marcus explains that anti-detective fiction is described generally in
terms of “negative hermeneutics” (245). By this, Marcus means that in
postmodernist crime fiction “the quest for knowledge is doomed to failure”
and there is a tendency to focus on ontology and “not on the problematics
of knowledge (as in the epistemological field) but on world-making” (246).
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Anderson, Jean, et al., editors. “Introduction: The Foreign in International
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Christian, Ed, editor. “Introducing the Post-Colonial Detective: Putting
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CHAPTER 3
Temporal, (Trans)National and Human

Mobility in María Inés Krimer’s Kosher Trilogy
Carolina Miranda
Introduction
Mobility, Aihwa Ong tells us, “has become a new code for grasping the
global” (121). For Peter Adey, mobility is a fundamentally important
practice underpinning “social, political, economic and cultural processes
operating in the world today and past” (20). As crime narratives offer
social critiques across space and time, literal and figurative mobility
sustains the genre. From the way in which the hard-boiled maps the
modern metropolis with the private eye “trailing suspects through the
city” and attending to its complexity (Highmore 91), to contemporary
crime narratives that focus on physical border crossing as a transnational
phenomenon, mobility is essential in crime fiction. According to Jude
McCulloch and Sharon Pickering, “The border, policed both internal
and external to the nation-state, has come to be played out in dynam-
ically temporal, spatial and individualized ways” (1). In crime narratives,
one key function of moving across time is to recover “memory from
silence” which often serves to challenge official versions (Lukács 36).
Furthermore, human and transnational mobility, be that the “desired
C. Miranda (B)
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

64 C. MIRANDA
movement of people such as tourists,” the circulation of migrant workers,

“the illicit movement of undesired people through trafficking and smug-
gling,” or the “use of people moving between countries to smuggle illicit
goods” (McCulloch and Pickering 4), play an important part in modern
crime fiction concerned with mass movement within and across national
borders.
This chapter explores the various ways in which three types of
mobility intersect in a trilogy by Argentine writer María Inés Krimer
comprising Sangre kosher (“Kosher Blood,” 2010), Siliconas express (“Sil-
icones Express,” 2013) and Sangre fashion (“Fashion Blood,” 2015).1 In
general, the novels problematise the social, political and cultural anxieties
of the modern Buenos Aires seen through the eyes of the first and only
woman private detective in the Argentine tradition, Ruth Epelbaum. The
three different types of mobility offered by the saga are closely related and
at times overlap: temporal (across both distant and close past and present),
(trans)national, and human mobility. Bringing up the distant past and
more recent episodes of national history (the turn of the twentieth
century and the 1980s and 1990s respectively), temporal mobility inter-
acts with the present as past crimes are seen through the lens of present
ones. Throughout the series (trans)national mobility is also important as,
while the crimes are set in Buenos Aires and they appear to address that
city specifically, they reference crimes outside the capital, as well as outside
of Argentina. Thus, the series epitomises the capacity of local crime fiction
to reflect broader preoccupations that transcend national borders. Like-
wise, an underlying concern of the series is human mobility in terms
of Jewish immigration to Argentina and also the more recent migration
waves from neighbouring countries (Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru).
Overall, mobility is at the heart of the saga as Ruth travels in more than
one sense. An urban detective, she represents “a kind of active flaneur able
to conquer the physical and epistemological anxieties of the city” (Howell
361). First, she moves around the metropolis, coming in and out of the
geographical boundaries of the Jewish community she sets out to investi-
gate (namely the areas of Once and Villa Crespo in the capital).2 In doing
so, Ruth offers what Ben Highmore describes as “an optic for refracting
themes around mobility, movement and access within the city;” and being
a female private investigator, she articulates “a different mobility within
the” metropolis (93). Similarly, her cases take her to other areas of the
capital and the nearby provinces. Figuratively, she also moves between the
past and the present as flashbacks usually reveal aspects of her personal
3 TEMPORAL, (TRANS)NATIONAL AND HUMAN MOBILITY … 65
(fictional) history, as well as the real history of Jewish migration into

Argentina, a strategy that creates suspense and advances the plot. When
we first meet her, Ruth has lived in Buenos Aires for ten years, and there-
fore, she retains the inquisitive eye of someone who is still discovering
the capital, which allows her to expose issues both at the heart of her
community and the wider amorality of the city. She takes cases which
start as private affairs pertaining to members of the Kehilá (the Jewish
collectivity) but later involve people outside the community, extending to
other areas in the city and the country and even transcending national
borders. A tight network becomes indispensable in her investigations: her
part-time maid and sharp sidekick Gladys; her chatty cousin Lea; and Lola,
a streetwise transvestite and loyal friend. Also part of her web of unoffi-
cial collaborators is Gladys’ husband, a forensic police sergeant who often
provides useful insights into the official investigations of the cases Ruth
takes.
The present chapter argues that the historical backdrop of Krimer’s
trilogy constitutes an important aspect highlighting the sociocultural
significance of human, temporal and (trans)national mobility at the heart
of Ruth’s investigations. A retired archivist, she often draws parallels with
the distant past. In doing so, the novels weave history and fiction, as
her obsession with criminal episodes involving human mobility reveals
the darker side of immigration in a country that has been the recipient
of various migratory floods. As a “dynamic detective,” which for Karin
Molander Danielsson is one who ages, one who changes through time
and thus reflects changes in society (45–46), Ruth highlights how the
past, present and future are not that different; her quests for finding
the truth function as a vehicle for re-examining the relationship between
the past, present and future. Furthermore, the recent past constitutes an
equally important setting to her later cases as these resonate with the
contemporary reader. Overall, as the private detective looks back, she
invites the reader to critique both past and present institutions.
Moving Between the Distant Past

and the Present: Ruth Epelbaum Investigates
Read against the background of a new wave of crime authors who came to
the fore in the 2000s and changed the locus of crime writing by relocating
the action to Argentine soil, Krimer’s saga reflects the ways in which the
past interacts with the present by scrutinising a particular community. The
66 C. MIRANDA
trilogy was written for the Negro Absoluto (“Absolute Noir”) collection
which published its first title in 2008 and is edited by the prestigious
author and critic Juan Sasturain. With over twenty novels to date, Negro
Absoluto contributors must follow a strict set of rules: they have to be
national, they must write a three-novel series, and the crimes are to be
exclusively set in Buenos Aires. Adhering to the rules, contributors have
exploited these restrictions to offer alternative readings of domestic issues,
thus underscoring concerns with sociocultural rather than criminal inves-
tigation. Arguably, the most salient characteristic of the trilogies published
under Negro Absoluto is the fact that, while many novels are not set in the
past, most of them revisit it in one way or another, “thus encouraging a
critical review of some of the most problematic periods of local history”
(Miranda 87). In the case of the trilogy in question, while the novels
are set in contemporary Buenos Aires, Ruth’s frequent flashbacks (often
triggered by newspaper cuttings and documents she finds in her personal
document collection or in the Jewish Archives she visits) reveal snippets of
personal history relevant to the story. Furthermore, as her personal history
mirrors that of many Jewish immigrants, her recollections are historically
accurate.3
More specifically, one of the driving forces of the detective is her fixa-
tion with the infamous Zwi Migdal—a real-life organised crime group
trafficking Jewish women from Eastern Europe.4 Bringing past crimes to
the fore through the lens of present ones, the trilogy exploits the privi-
leged relationship enjoyed by crime fiction and history, as it functions as a
platform for commenting on various social and political episodes relevant
to the nation. From the outset, Ruth’s interaction between the past and
the present defines her: she is a well-known archivist whose reputation for
giving lectures on the Zwi Migdal mafia, as her first client puts it, precedes
her (Sangre kosher 19). Having worked for the Israelite Society Archive
for thirty years, she knows the collectivity like the palm of her hand and
is often invited to tour the country and lecture on the Jewish history
in Argentina. Ruth becomes a detective by chance, when her cousin Lea
recommends her services to an influential member of the Jewish commu-
nity, José Gold. Known as “Chiquito” Gold (“little Gold”) despite being
described as chubby and fat (Sangre kosher 18), he wants her to find his
missing daughter, Debora. Risking a scandal in the run-up to the local
Kehilá elections, Gold would rather keep the police out of this matter
and turns to one of their own for help. It later becomes apparent that
Gold had other reasons for wanting to keep this matter quiet.
While Ruth’s obsession with the Zwi Migdal is more evident in the
first novel—a fixation her former boss at the Archive is keen for her
to let go of—that preoccupation drives her investigations throughout
the trilogy. She often recalls how when she was invited to talk about
Menorah candelabras, photographs and spittoons brought over from
Europe by their Jewish ancestors, “a mí sólo me interesaba hablar de
los prostíbulos” (“I was only interested in talking about the brothels”;
Siliconas express 14). Reading about current national and international
cases concerning people smuggling and forced labour, Ruth often draws
parallels between the real and fictional cases she is investigating, thus
weaving historical fact and fiction (see Sangre kosher 15, 56, 138; Sangre
fashion 60, 72). Consequently, “the detective’s enquiries” move between
“the past of the investigation and the present of the reader to comment
upon contemporaneous events” (Pezzotti 5).
It is indeed worth noting that the historical milieu evoked by bringing
the Zwi Migdal to the fore is a fundamental aspect of the trilogy.
In the early twentieth century, Argentina was internationally infamous
for being the biggest human flesh market in the world, with Buenos
Aires “swarming with brothels, and the traffickers dealing in that market
enjoyed multiple privileges” (Glickman 2). While historians agree that
prostitution was not primarily a Jewish business (the French dominated
the wealthier end of the market, followed by the Polish, the Italians and
the Creoles), Nora Glickman points out that “the recurrent reference to
Jewish pimps and prostitutes became a sign of religious depravity” (2).
Arguably, the most notorious trafficking organisation was the Warsaw
Society, which became the Zwi Migdal in 1926 after the Polish Ambas-
sador, who found the association with his country offensive, forced it
to change its name. By 1929, the Zwi Migdal had 500 members and
controlled 2000 brothels throughout the country where 30,000 women
worked (Goldar 240). The organisation “imported” Jewish women of low
economic status by sending Alfonsos (traffickers) to their native villages;
they also performed shtile hoopes (silent weddings), allowing traffickers to
“legally” smuggle women they would later sell in private auctions. These
ceremonies were not presided by a civil marriage, which the Argentine
law prescribed (Mirelman, En busca 166). A wide network of corrup-
tion extending to customs officers, the police and high-ranking judges,
facilitated the illegal activities of the organisation, ensuring they remained
lucrative and unpunished for decades.
68 C. MIRANDA
Long after Ruth left the Archive, her desire to keep alive the memory
of those women her community has tried to forget drives her inves-
tigations. Indeed, this insistence eventually cost her the job at the
Archive:
Mirá Ruti, siento mucha simpatía por vos y me parece que te estás
metiendo en camisa de once varas. Quiero decirte que una cosa es el
trabajo del archivo, de importancia fundamental para conservar la historia
de nuestra comunidad, y otra andar por ahí ventilando nuestros schmates
hablando de una organización que, en el mejor de los casos, no ves en el
marco de la época.
(Look, Ruti, I really like you, and I think you are out of your depth
here. I have to tell you that one thing is the work you do in the Archive,
which is of fundamental importance to preserve the history of our commu-
nity, but a different thing altogether is to go about airing our schmates and
talking about an organisation which, at best, you are not seeing in the right
context; Sangre kosher 56.)
Discussing the interaction between Italian crime fiction and history,

Barbara Pezzotti points out that “being free from the constraints of
historiography, fiction writers are able to penetrate ‘the interstices of
history’…” thus recovering memories and pieces left out in official history
(1). Crime narratives, Pezzotti goes on, focus especially “on justice and
the law and relate to the hot topic of personal and collective responsibil-
ities in the past and in the present” (4). In this respect, Krimer’s series
exploits temporal mobility as it invites readers to critically reflect upon
official versions of events by recalling specific episodes of history.
Furthermore, highlighting the failure of justice in the past by pointing
at the lack of culprits in the present cases Ruth investigates, the trilogy
engages in issues of memory, human rights violations and collective
responsibility. One of the characteristics of the Latin American novela
negra in general, and of Argentine in particular, is that of the failure of
justice; Sangre kosher exposes such lack of resolution typical of the genre.
We learn that Gold’s daughter was only a diversion. Having been hiding
since she accidentally discovered a prestigious judge was part of a ring
of influential men sexually exploiting women of humble origins (one of
whom is found dead, drifting in the river early in the novel), Debora turns
up of her own accord. Ruth’s intuition had not failed her as it comes to
light that Gold was part of an organisation which “reiteraba el modus
operandi de la Swi Migdal, sólo que en vez de importar polacas ahora
eran chicas del interior y del gran Buenos Aires” (“emulated the modus
operandi of the Zwi Migdal, only that this time instead of importing
Polish women, they brought girls from Buenos Aires conurbation and the
interior”; Sangre kosher 176). These women were subsequently trapped
in a prostitution network. While the accidental deaths of Gold and his
partner—a judge who was at the top of the ring—cause the organisation
to collapse, they are not punished by the law, nor are the rest of the traf-
fickers involved. Ruth’s quest for exposing similar crimes continues in the
next instalments.
In many ways, Krimer’s saga epitomises Argentine’s contemporary
novela negra,5 which for critics such as Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz is synony-
mous with “the new political novel” (129). As the saga moves between
the present and the past, it portrays covert and overt critiques of institu-
tions; thus, it aligns with the género negro tradition, which has become
a natural vehicle to denounce official wrongdoing. By dealing with the
investigations of private crimes that have disrupted the Kehilá commu-
nity, travelling to the past allows the trilogy to problematise other issues
pertaining to the social and political reality of the wider national setting.
As Schmidt-Cruz highlights, the género negro works “in tandem with”
memory narratives “to reveal and denounce” the state (131). While the
novels are set in a democratic period, the series engages with memory
narratives as temporal mobility also allows Ruth to piece together the
past by refusing to forget. Since she is an archivist, she can be read as a
metaphor for memory: she cannot forget; most importantly, she does not
want to. Additionally, as well as reflecting upon the history of the Jewish
community in Argentina, Ruth’s personal history echoes Krimer’s own:
“Abro una caja con el archivo de la Swi Migdal y saco el recorte de la
tía Malke. Como tantas polacas fue traída de Polonia…. Ni bien llegó a
Buenos Aires la tía fue encerrada en un prostíbulo” (“I open a box with
the file of the Zwi Migdal and I take the newspaper cut of auntie Malke.
Like so many other Polish women she was brought from Poland…. As she
arrived in Buenos Aires she was locked up in a brothel”; Sangre fashion
19). In various interviews, Krimer mentions that only as an adult did
she learn about a mysterious woman in her family. It was her grand-
father’s sister, Malke, who had been “imported” to Buenos Aires from
Lodz, Poland, and had been “encerrada en un lugar donde, según mi tía
‘ganó mucha plata’” (“locked up in a place where, according to my aunt,
‘she made a lot of money’”; Krimer, “El cuento”). Several decades later,
Ruth points out, women could still be bought for three to five thousand
70 C. MIRANDA
pesos: since the time of the Zwi Migdal, things had not changed much
in matters of human trafficking (Sangre kosher 56). Thus, in recalling the
distant past, Krimer problematises the present.
Revisiting the Recent Past:

Human Mobility Across Borders
According to Ray B. Browne, historical crime fiction has become the
fastest-growing type of crime fiction as “the reader gets the same kind
of thrill at a safe distance that he or she gets from more contemporary
and directly threatening true crime literature” (230). While this may be
true for crime narratives set in a distant past, in Pezzotti’s words, “the
success of crime narratives set in the near past speaks rather of the interest
in making sense of the present” (3). Enacting the connection between
the past and the present, the last two novels of Krimer’s trilogy exemplify
the capacity the genre has to engage with recent history and politics in
the light of present-day episodes of human mobility. Stephen Greenblatt
et al. consider that certain forms of movement such as “migration, labor-
market border crossing, smuggling and the like” are considered “serious,
while others such as tourism … are rendered virtually invisible” (251).
This section examines the ways in which recent conspicuous and subtle
types of human mobility are problematised in Siliconas express and Sangre
fashion.
Human mobility has played a pivotal role in the construction of
Argentina as migration has been a practice encouraged by the state in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Horacio Vázquez-Rial
points out that the perception that the country was rather underpop-
ulated turned it into one of the major immigration destinations in the
West.6 This situation lasted at least half a century, resulting in the arrival
of huge currents of migration, mainly from Spain and Italy, but also from
a considerable number of Eastern European countries (Vázquez-Rial 21–
28). Siliconas express and Sangre fashion explore more recent episodes of
migration triggered in the late 1990s by socioeconomic factors: the plastic
surgery boom “cemented in early 2002 in the wake of the rapid depre-
ciation of the Argentine peso after the financial crisis of 2001” (Levin),7
and the clandestine textile workshop culture coming to the fore in 2006,
after a tragic fire killed several Bolivian migrants.
Indeed, the second novel of the saga explores human mobility vis-
à-vis the plastic surgery boom brought about by the financial crisis of
2001. As the domestic plastic surgery industry thrives in Buenos Aires,

fostered by the short-lived prosperity of the 1990s and the national
obsession with style and looks, Argentina’s reputation as an international
mecca of medical tourism destination is consolidated. Since 2001, the
domestic plastic surgery industry has been going strong, not only among
the locals—“the population is the most operated on in the world after the
US and Mexico” with 1 in 30 Argentineans having gone under the plastic
surgeon’s knife—but the wave of tourists pulled by affordable procedures
has also fuelled it (Balch). Soon after the currency was devalued in 2002,
the clinics of Buenos Aires began filling up with foreigners, particularly
from the UK and the USA, “the demand for medical tourism rising
steadily, reaching 200 percent” in 2016 (Levin).8 Karina Canan, commer-
cial director of the Neuroscience Institute of Buenos Aires, points out that
in the last few decades, more clinics and sanatoriums have been “inaugu-
rated with top quality hotels and state-of-the-art technology to compete
with any country in the world” (Levin), a trend that shows no sign of
slowing down.
Ruth’s second case is brought by a Jewish doctor who dies in suspi-
cious circumstances soon after he hired her. Ruth becomes curious and
later finds out that her former client was linked to the underground activ-
ities of another plastic surgeon, the flamboyant Dr. Vidal. In the course
of her investigation, she exposes the surgeon-cum-TV presenter who has
made his name and fortune benefitting from medical tourism; the famous
doctor is the leader of a cocaine smuggling ring. Human mobility is at the
heart of Ruth’s case, and reality and fiction intertwine once more. With
the real surge of medical tourism in view, the fictional doctor exploits
the increasing demand for plastic surgery to cover up his illegal activities:
during the day, his clinic is a legitimate and prosperous business. Policies
on free movement in place since the early 1990s, which support open
borders for countries in the region (Alfonso 17), facilitate Vidal’s illegal
activities as he uses Bolivian, Paraguayan and Peruvian women to smuggle
drugs in and out of the country. At night, the exclusive centre removes
implants filled with liquid cocaine carried by the women who have been
recruited as “drug mules” (Siliconas express 122). As citizens from neigh-
bouring countries, these women can, by law, migrate to Argentina freely.
Most of them, however, are from low socioeconomic background and
have been lured to the Argentine capital under false promises. With breast
augmentation becoming increasingly more common—60,000 mammo-
plasties are carried out annually, “ranking the country number four in the
72 C. MIRANDA
world” (InvestBA)—smuggling cocaine using breast implants is becoming

a recurrent modus operandi in the South Cone region, something that has
been the subject of various local newspaper exposé reports (Robinson).
Echoing the lack of resolution typical of the novela negra genre, in
the end justice is not done as no one is held accountable. While Vidal is
confronted and his clinic is shut down, he manages to escape to Uruguay.
As in the first novel of the saga, the lack of institutional punishment invites
a critical reading of the justice system participating in the absolution of
those who break the law and exploit others. Commenting upon contem-
porary preoccupations by making present-day conflicts visible, Siliconas
express allows readers to draw parallels between the historical setting and
Ruth’s current investigations.
For her last case, Ruth is hired in Sangre fashion by the head of
a model agency to find a model who went into hiding after her twin
was murdered. Ruth ends up exposing the high-end fashion community,
including a textile impresario, a clothes designer and the owner of the
model agency herself: her lucrative brand was sustained by a garment
sweatshop exploiting illegal Bolivian citizens, and the agency also offered
an escort business on the side.
A recent episode of human mobility constitutes the backdrop of
Sangre fashion: in the 1980s, Argentina started to receive a further influx
of immigration, this time from its neighbouring countries. Arriving in
Buenos Aires in smaller but constant waves, mainly motivated by employ-
ment opportunities, this phenomenon peaked during the economic boom
of the 1990s. In 1991, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay signed
the Mercosur agreement, a treaty that transformed the migration regime
in the region (Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname
signed it later as associate countries). “Unlike the European Union, the
driving force of the Mercosur agreement was to find a solution to irreg-
ular migration” as it provided migrants with the rights to equal working
conditions, family reunification, access to education and permanent resi-
dency after two years of arrival (Acosta). However, the influx was such
that in 2006 the Argentine government launched a plan called Patria
Grande (“Great Homeland”) in order to legalise the situation of undoc-
umented migrants coming from countries under the Mercosur treaty.
The extraordinary measure came after a wave of public indignation and
protests due to a fire that broke out in a Buenos Aires sweatshop in
which three people died; the incident revealed the widespread utilisation
of illegal Bolivian immigrants under a regime of debt slavery (Cartonera).
Known as the “Luis Viale” scandal, the case constitutes the setting to
Sangre fashion. Ruth’s sidekick, Gladys, tells Ruth stories she has heard
in her working-class neighbourhood about entire Bolivian families who
had been trapped by a sweatshop ring operating between the two coun-
tries. Once more, the case investigated reflects real issues at the heart of
an industry that costs people’s lives: in Buenos Aires alone, “there are an
estimated 25,000 illegal immigrants working 16 hours a day in inhumane,
unsanitary and crowded conditions in over 4,000 clandestine textile work-
shops” which fabricate clothes for the majority of Argentina’s high-street
labels (Holloway). In conversation with Gladys, Ruth compares modern
slave work to the Zwi Migdal: this time they do not arrive by boat or from
Poland, but by bus, to the Retiro Station, and they come from Bolivia.
International incidents are equally echoed in the novel: in the course
of her investigation Ruth consults a journalist friend, Ariel Meyer, who
is researching another real clothes workshop scandal, the Rana Plaza fire
in Bangladesh which killed 1127 workers in 2013 (Sangre fashion 24,
80). Ruth further explores the underworld of the local fashion busi-
ness as she embarks on a nightly excursion to La Salada black market.
“[R]ecognized as the largest informal market in Latin America” (Sassen),
it was organised in the 1990s by disenfranchised Bolivian immigrants
seeking better working conditions. Ruth’s investigation exposes an exclu-
sive fashion label replicating what many brands do: buy in bulk in the
clandestine market (often exploiting illegal sweatshops) to later relabel
the items for retail at the most exclusive boutiques of the high street.
As mentioned earlier, throughout the series Ruth personifies what
Molander Danielsson terms a “dynamic detective”: a woman who ages
and who reflects social changes. This makes an interesting contrast to how
the novel ends as, similar to the other instalments, nothing much changes
and resolution is only partial: while the owner of the model agency is
apprehended and her business and the sweatshop she ran are disman-
tled, no one higher up on the ring is brought to justice. This echoes the
real case of the Luis Viale incident: ten years after the tragic fire, only the
foremen of the workshop had been brought to justice; they received a ten-
year sentence in 2016 (Erbetta). Like the rest of the pieces in the saga, by
reflecting upon recent history, the last instalment denounces fundamental
questions of human exploitation and the issue of the recurrent failure of
justice.
74 C. MIRANDA
Conclusion
Overall, three different but related types of mobility intertwine in the
series: using temporal and human mobility allows the novels not only to
piece the past together, but also to comment on the present as Ruth’s
fictional investigations echo recent real cases; (trans)national mobility is
also at the heart of the saga since the crimes investigated are not restricted
to Buenos Aires, but open up to the rest of the country as well as
outside Argentina. The lack of resolution typical of the novela negra genre
resonates throughout: emulating the outcomes of the real cases evoked
in the saga, there is either no justice or justice is only partially achieved,
which constitutes a critique of the institutions responsible for enforcing
law and order.
For Georgine Clarsen, looking at different patterns and types of
mobility serves “to investigate the historical entanglements between
modes of movement and modes of representation” (120). Indeed,
according to Pezzotti, “the representation of the past can create impor-
tant imagined spaces in which national anxieties are played out” (238). As
a series constantly moving between the distant past and recent historical
milieus, Krimer’s trilogy problematises various concerns of contemporary
Argentina, highlighting important episodes that altered the physiognomy
of the country. While for Krimer crime fiction does not necessarily mirror
reality, it does provide a space to reflect upon it (see Romero). Moreover,
if, as Stewart King highlights, “Crime novels … provide a means of under-
standing the relationship between crime and community in the popular
imagination” (14), the series makes use of different types of mobility to
do so. Thus, it ponders upon one of the foundational principles of the
nation: the fact that Argentina is a country that welcomes immigrants.
Looking back as Ruth does, the question remains: To what extent has
this project failed?
Ultimately, through employing different types of mobility the Kosher
trilogy interrogates problematic historical junctures and engages the
reader. In doing so, the series invites us to revisit the past in order to
provide a space to make sense of the present.
Notes
1. The novels have not been translated into English; all translations are my
own.
2. In Buenos Aires, the neighbourhoods of Once and Villa Crespo have epito-
mised orthodox and bohemian Jewish culture, respectively (Fingueret 306).
With their own institutions, synagogues and cemeteries, both areas have
retained their traditionally Jewish heritage.
3. Argentina has the biggest Jewish community of South America: 262,300
people, according to the Jewish People Policy Institute. There were two
major waves of Jewish immigrants: the first came from Russia in 1889
and the second from Eastern Europe in the 1920s (Fingueret 302–09).
The autobiographical connection between some of the characters’ fictional
history and Krimer’s own ancestry has been acknowledged (Krimer, “El
cuento”).
4. Mainly Polish but based in Argentina, the gang operated from the 1860s to
the 1940s. The organisation was brought down by the detailed testimony
given by former Ukrainian worker Raquel Liberman (1900–1935). The trial
started in 1930; 108 pimps were eventually convicted, but corrupt senior
Justice Ministry officials released all but three. Most of the ring leaders
were deported to Uruguay and Brazil, many returning later to Argentina
(Glickman 45–46).
5. While several Argentine critics use a broader term ficción policial, which
translates as “detective fiction,” I am using género negro and novela negra
(usually translated as “crime fiction”), following the predominant under-
standing that the term includes “a broad generic category encompassing
both detective-centered and criminal-centered subgenres” (Close 62).
6. See also Martín Sagrera’s Argentina superpoblada (“Overpopulated
Argentina”).
7. In 1989, Carlos S. Menem took office inheriting a crisis which, by
the end of the decade, had pushed inflation out of control reaching
5000%. Domingo Cavallo was appointed Minister of Economy in 1991;
in February, a law was passed pegging the value of the local peso to the
US dollar. Initially, this favoured the economy as foreign investors poured
in, but prosperity was short-lived as people withdrawing large sums of US
dollars from their accounts resulted in a bank run. In December that year,
the government implemented a freezing of all bank accounts, only allowing
minor sums of cash to be withdrawn, and only in the local currency. The
measure was known as the corralito, or playpen. The fixed exchange rate
was abandoned in January 2002 causing the peso to plummet in the unreg-
ulated market. The exchange rate favoured stronger currencies such as the
British pound, the Euro and the US dollar.
8. An estimated 14,000 people travelled to Argentina exclusively to have
medical procedures in 2016 (Costa).
76 C. MIRANDA
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CHAPTER 4
Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s Whitefly:

Transnational Crime, Globalisation
and the Arabic Police Procedural
Colette Guldimann
Introduction
“We would rather die than stay there”: an article published in The
Guardian newspaper in August 2017 takes these words of a Moroccan
migrant who made the dangerous illegal crossing from Morocco to Spain
as its title (Kamali Dehghan). Abdou was one of the nearly six hundred
migrants rescued in a single day, 23 August 2017, from fifteen different
vessels off the coast of Tarifa in Spain (Kamali Dehghan). His words both
indicate an implicit critique of life in Morocco and communicate the
desperation felt by those who undertake the treacherous journey across
the Mediterranean, which has claimed the lives of an estimated 20,000
people since 2014 (InfoMigrants). In 2017, the number of migrants
risking the sea journey between Morocco and Spain rose sharply, espe-
cially after the clampdown on the routes to Europe via Libya and,
in 2018, the Western Mediterranean became the most frequently used
C. Guldimann (B)
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

80 C. GULDIMANN
route into Europe with migrant numbers doubling for a second consec-
utive year to a record high of 57,034 (Frontex 6). Departures from
Morocco increased fivefold, making it the main exit point (Frontex 6).
The Mediterranean Sea with its alluring potential for crossing into Europe
continues to “dominate much of the cultural production of the Maghreb”
(Head 39).
The genre that is best suited to connect the complexities of mobility—
migration, borders, the transnational—to globalisation and criminality
is itself a border-crossing form: the global crime novel. Abdelilah
Hamdouchi’s Whitefly, published in Arabic in 2000 and translated into
English in 2016, is a result of the global reach of the crime genre and
the new emphasis on translation due to the globalisation of the literary
marketplace (Pepper and Schmid 1). Published in Morocco at a time
of crucial political transition, Whitefly is also an example of “indigenous
crime fiction cultures [that] are now emerging from, and speaking to,
their own sites of production” (Pepper and Schmid 1). Discussing the
internationalisation of crime fiction, Andrew Pepper and David Schmid
warn against celebratory accounts and the exoticisation of the genre. They
respond to the concept of crime fiction as the new world literature par
excellence by arguing that such facile descriptions do little to reveal the
“capacities of crime fiction to reflect, in critical and imaginative ways, on
the processes of globalization in general, or on the growing transnation-
alization of crime and policing networks in the contemporary era” (2).
These capacities are precisely what Hamdouchi’s novel reveals. Rather
than focusing on it as an example of the proliferation of crime fiction
across the globe, I will show how Hamdouchi’s text illustrates Pepper and
Schmid’s point that “the global implications of the crimes being depicted
(e.g. the link between individual or collective criminal acts and exigencies
of global capitalism) require new forms and new strategies of representa-
tion in order to do justice to a changed and changing world” (3).
One of Whitefly’s strategies of representation is to combine two newly
emergent genres in Morocco, the Arabic police novel and the novel of
illegal immigration, by placing immigration at the centre of an investiga-
tion. This combination allows Hamdouchi to investigate the relationship
between borders, immigration, the mobility of people and the transna-
tionalisation of crime and policing. The novel begins with an investigation
of illegal immigration, but ultimately locates the criminal element within
neoliberal capitalism and globalisation.
4 ABDELILAH HAMDOUCHI’S WHITEFLY : TRANSNATIONAL CRIME … 81
Crime Fiction and the State in Morocco

While critics have recently identified the novel of clandestine migration
(Head 38) or illegal immigration literature as a new genre (Smolin,
“Burning” 75), the modern Arabic police novel is also a recent occur-
rence in contemporary Morocco. The emergence of these genres is linked
to changing circumstances in the country. While Morocco became inde-
pendent in 1956, the period between 1956 and the early 1990s was
known as the “years of lead,” a time of political repression, human rights
violations and extremely limited freedom of speech. According to one
commentator, “criticism of Moroccan society was barely tolerated,” while
the mass media portrayed an extremely “idealised” view of the country
(Smolin, “Burning” 75). Any Moroccans engaged in “activities deemed
subversive or dangerous to the state” were arrested and “police abducted,
tortured, and jailed thousands of political activists in secret detention
centres” (Smolin, “Anxious” 285). Trials, if held at all, were mass trials,
which reinforced a lack of civil rights. Political activists were imprisoned in
the notorious desert prison, Tazmamart, in “inhuman living conditions”
(Smolin, “Anxious” 285).
Muhammad Ibn al-Tuhami published an early police novel in 1963,
Dahaya hubb (“Victims of love”), the third novel to be published after
independence (Smolin, “Anxious” 285); yet, the police novel disappeared
from Morocco during the “years of lead,” because “it was impossible to
depict a cop as a sympathetic character” (Smolin, “Political” 82). The
mid-1990s in Morocco gave rise to political transformation, increasing
human rights and freedom of speech in the media. After more than three
decades of authoritarian rule, King Hassan II launched a long-awaited
political change. Writers experienced greater freedom of expression and
subjects such as “political imprisonment, torture and the police were no
longer considered taboo”; it was in this atmosphere that novels and films
began to portray the subject of illegal immigration from North Africa to
Europe (Smolin, “Burning” 75). After King Hassan II’s death in 1999,
Mohamed VI became king and the pace of reforms increased. This period
of “heady optimism” gave rise to new forms of cultural production,
including the Arabic police novel (Smolin, “Political” 82). The Moroccan
police novel thus emerged out of a period of political transformation as a
means to critique the state and the status quo.
Abdelilah Hamdouchi is one of the founders of the modern Arabic
police procedural in Morocco. The genre emerged in 1997 with the
82 C. GULDIMANN
publication, in Arabic, of The Blind Whale 1 by Miloudi Hamdouchi and

Abdelilah Hamdouchi2 (Smolin, “Anxious” 287). The authors co-wrote
another thirteen police novels between 1997 and 2003, while Abdelilah
Hamdouchi has written five as a sole author (Smolin, “Anxious” 287).
To date, three of these have been translated into English: The Final Bet
(2000) was the first Arabic detective novel to be translated into English
in 2008. Whitefly (2000) was translated in 2016, and a third novel,
Bled Dry, in 2017. These novels adapt the police procedural form to
use “crime fiction for ‘social’ rather than ‘criminal’ detection” and, thus,
social critique (Matzke and Mühleisen 8).
Whitefly: Illegal Immigration,

Borders and Mobility
Whitefly is set in Tangier, a port city on the Strait of Gibraltar, histor-
ically a strategic gateway between Africa and Europe, an appropriate
choice for a novel investigating mobility across borders. Due to its “inter-
national zone” status prior to Moroccan independence, Tangier gained
a reputation for “loose morals and cosmopolitanism” and was gener-
ally ignored by King Hassan II, leaving it largely ungoverned; it was
“treated primarily as a space of transit, a place to pass through on trips to
Europe, legal or otherwise” (Powers 133). In 1991, it was designated as a
“free trade zone” to encourage foreign investment in Morocco, perpetu-
ating its cosmopolitan character (Powers 130). Globalisation and mobility
are tangibly connected in Morocco: its border with Europe was effec-
tively closed in 1991, when Spain joined the Schengen visa agreement,
at precisely the same time that “Europe gained an increasingly visible
presence in Morocco” (Powers 130) through the introduction of satel-
lite television projecting “fantastic images of Europe” (Smolin, “Burning”
74). As a free trade zone, Tangier had to negotiate the contradictions of
being open towards international investment, with the visibility of Europe
in the media and the simultaneous closing of the border (Powers 130).
Tangier’s location is emphasised on the first page of the novel in the
view from Detective Laafrit’s window in the Criminal Investigations Unit
in the police station: the “glimpse of the port always enticed him to
follow the boats setting out from Tangier to the other side” (Hamdouchi
ch. 1). Europe is only seven and half nautical miles away at the strait’s
narrowest point. Reminders of the narrow gulf that connects Morocco to
Europe occur throughout the novel in a way that is reminiscent of visual
scenes of transnational connection in recent television crime dramas like

the Nordic Noir series Bron/Broen (The Bridge), with its panoramic shots
of the Öresund strait and the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark.
Hamdouchi uses these images of connection to question the border
between Africa and Europe.
Laafrit is introduced to the reader as a typical police detective: “his eyes
were melancholic and troubled, with that provocative look you’d expect
to find on a cop” (ch. 1). The initial events in the opening chapter bear no
obvious connection to the plot of illegal immigration. Laafrit is called to
the scene of a protest march by “hundreds of unemployed university grad-
uates” (ch. 1), and the narrative shifts to the investigation only after he
has successfully diffused the crowd. This opening, I argue, introduces two
important contexts. It presents Laafrit as a reformed cop, sympathetic to
the cause of the unemployed graduates despite the fact that their protest is
illegal; this differentiates him from the police of the “years of lead.” When
one of the demonstrators questions Laafrit about his identity, he replies:
“Who do you think I am? … One of the cops who tortures protestors?”
(ch. 1). Laafrit’s act of distancing himself from past police practices is
registered in the demonstrator’s response, as the “guy had never heard
anything like this from the police before” (ch. 1). Laafrit addresses the
demonstrators as brothers, revealing that he has an unemployed brother
in another city. Readers learn, later, that Laafrit was a student activist at
university, protesting against police torture of Marxist students. Creating
a sympathetic cop was a conscious decision by Hamdouchi: the detective
is a “person others can understand, with whom the reader can self-identify
and create a friendship” (Smolin, Moroccan Noir 89).
Secondly, the novel’s opening scene introduces the unemployment,
anger and despair amongst the Moroccan youth and thus the context
for illegal immigration; the protestors are raising banners “written years
ago, still bearing the same slogans” (ch. 1). The opening establishes an
economic motive for illegal immigration, which will later be linked to
global capitalism. Hamdouchi introduces the crime and its investigation
only after these contexts have been established: Laafrit receives a call
about “another drowned body,” the fourth that has washed up in three
days (ch. 1). When he shows interest in the corpse, the forensics officer,
Abdellah, is dismissive. “No need to dirty your hands” he tells Laafrit,
as he identifies the body as another harraga, not “different from the
rest” (ch. 1). Harraga is the Moroccan Arabic term for illegal immi-
grants and means “those who burn” their past lives and identities “for
84 C. GULDIMANN
the hope or fantasy of a better life on the other side of the Straight”
(Smolin, “Burning” 75). The name of the phenomenon is hrig which
means “burning” in Moroccan Arabic, since migrants burn their identi-
fication papers before getting on a patera, a fragile fishing boat, in an
attempt to avoid repatriation if arrested. It also expresses a metaphorical
burning of the past, of the connections to home and country in favour
of a new life in Europe (Smolin, “Burning” 75; Powers 132). This termi-
nology is particularly daring because it embodies a devastating criticism
of circumstances in Morocco. When it emerged in the mid-1990s, the
new literature of illegal immigration was critiquing the pace of reforms in
Morocco following the “years of lead.” Whitefly continues this critique
by revealing how the conditions that created the hrig still exist. Through
his use of the police novel, Hamdouchi extends this critique beyond crit-
icism of the Moroccan state, showing how the hrig is inextricably linked
to global capitalism.
Despite Abdellah’s dismissal, Laafrit takes a long look at the body and
has “a funny feeling about it,” because this one does seem different from
the others (ch. 1). Following up on Laafrit’s sixth sense they discover that
the victim has been shot four times. Abdellah’s dismissal of the harraga is
echoed by the police commissioner when he finds out about the shooting
victim: “I don’t give a shit about [the three] harraga,” stating that he
wants the investigation to focus on the shooting (ch. 1). The police
commissioner thus dismisses the hrig as an insignificant form of murder,
not worthy of investigation.
Undeterred by the instruction to focus on the real “murder,” Laafrit
persists in investigating both cases, the shooting victim and the three
drowned bodies, assumed to be harraga, and sets out to find out if a
patera has left the Moroccan coast for Spain recently. In doing so, he
introduces the underground mafia of human traffickers, their methods,
and the routes used. He and Inspector Allal drive to Ksar es-Seghir, a
town east of Tangier, and half-way between Tangier and the Spanish city
of Septa. Laafrit visits Layashi, a former human trafficker, and in doing
so provides the “history of harraga” associated with him (ch. 2). Layashi
talks about the “golden age” when migrants made it safely to Europe
and brags that he had provided a great service to “young people who
could escape” (ch. 2; emphasis added). Later, however, he tricked the
harraga, taking them out on a patera “knowing death was waiting for
them” (ch. 2). Instead of taking them to Spain, he would toss them
out in front of Asila, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, where they “died
drowning or when the waves smashed them up against the rocks” (ch.
2). Layashi cannot sleep anymore, because he is tortured by the harraga
“drowning and crying out for help” (ch. 2). Layashi was convicted for
human trafficking and served a prison sentence, but is currently free
and “enjoying the millions he collected” (ch. 2). “Where’s the justice
in that?” asks Inspector Allal. “Justice,” Laafrit replies, “doesn’t crimi-
nalize those who help in immigration. It considers them as only having
committed a misdemeanor” (ch. 2). This shows how Whitefly, as a novel
of illegal immigration, offers a critique of the Moroccan state.
When Layashi assures him no patera has set out, Laafrit exploits his
underground sources within Tangier, with “its labyrinths, gangs and
smugglers” (ch. 4). He meets an informant, Fifi, at a club where, from
the windows, “the lights of Gibraltar sparkled … as if it were one of
the districts of Tangier” (ch. 4). In this image, the liminal space of the
Mediterranean erases the border separating Europe from Africa and incor-
porates Gibraltar into Morocco. Fifi informs Laafrit that “the golden age”
of human trafficking is over for Tangier, but that the “hrig’s bustling
in Septa” (ch. 4). While Whitefly was first published in 2000, its plot
is prescient in that the Septa border has recently been in the news
frequently as migrants have stormed the double fence that demarcates the
Moroccan-Spanish border in an attempt to get into Europe. According
to the International Organisation for Migration, the number of “irregular
border crossings” into Septa and Melilla rose from 1567 in 2010 to 4043
in 2014 (IOM 21). Referring to this border as “imaginary,” Inspector
Allal suggests that the Spanish occupation of Septa is a continuing form of
colonialism (ch. 2) and asks why Moroccan police are guarding a border
that is not theirs: “Septa’s a Moroccan city and our real border is on its
shores,” not at the “Great Wall of China” (ch. 2). Allal claims that if they
arrest the Africans attempting to cross the border, they legitimise “the
colonization” (ch. 2).
Here the novel presents a postcolonial perspective of the Septa/Ceuta
controversy.3 The dispute between Spain and Morocco over Septa/Ceuta
and Melilla has a long political and legal history. These are the only terri-
tories which provide a land border between the EU and Africa, making
them extremely significant. Xavier Ferrer-Gallardo has argued that this
border between Spain and Morocco functions as a “metaphor provider”
encapsulating a series of symbolic divisions, such as “Christianity and
Islam,” “Europe and Africa,” “EU and non-EU,” “prosperous north
and impoverished south” and “former colonizer and former colonized”
86 C. GULDIMANN
(2). The two enclaves date back to the fifteenth century: Ceuta fell into
Portuguese hands in 1415 and it became Spanish through a treaty with
Portugal in 1668 and the two territories remain an “unresolved colonial
issue” (Ribas).
In retaining political control, Spain cites that Morocco has signed at
least twelve legally binding bilateral treaties and conventions pertaining
to the Plazas.4 However, the official Moroccan position is “that treaties
signed during the colonial era are not binding in the postcolonial context”
(O’Reilly 13). Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over these territories is
based on the UN principle of decolonisation and assertions that the
Spanish presence is retarding the political and economic independence of
Morocco (O’Reilly 9). Morocco has made repeated requests that the UN
recognise its rights over territories occupied by Spain (1961), stressing
later (1975) the status of the five Plazas as the “last vestiges of colonial
occupation” and the need for the restoration of Morocco’s “territorial
integrity” (O’Reilly 14). In 1975, Morocco formally requested the UN
to place the Plazas on the UN list of non-autonomous territories and to
apply Resolution 1514 on decolonisation (O’Reilly 14).
The investigation of the harraga corpses thus provides an oppor-
tunity for what Christine Matzke and Susanne Mühleisen have called
the “postcolonial postmortem.” The authors postulate that the literal
“postmortem” of the crime text—“the investigation of the victim’s
remains”—is, in the postcolonial, extended to an exploration of the “body
of the individual text and its context” (8). Commonly, the crime acts
as a springboard for an examination into “colonial situations” and how
these have been “re-created and re-investigated from the perspective of
the colonized” (8). The attempt to trace the traffickers responsible for the
literal corpses turns into an investigation about mobility and the borders
of the Moroccan nation state. The novel shifts the focus of crime from the
perpetrators of illegal immigration by identifying the border itself as the
source of the crime. Condemning Spain’s occupation as “colonisation”
the novel performs a postcolonial postmortem. Hamdouchi introduces
the idea of Spanish colonialism prior to the main crime, establishing a
colonial context for the crimes of capitalist competition and exploitation
also emanating from Spain. While this makes Hamdouchi’s novel worthy
of critical discussion, I suggest that his use of the police novel as a vehicle
for political analysis extends beyond the postcolonial critique described
above and links colonisation to globalisation.
Up to this point, Hamdouchi’s novel provides a fairly typical example

of illegal immigration literature, albeit in reverse. Generally, this new
genre portrays the “process by which the protagonists contact the illegal
immigration mafia … head out to sea on the patera, and eventually die
in the crossing” (Smolin, “Burning” 76). Whitefly reverses this linear
narrative because the detective novel typically works backwards from the
murder towards uncovering the “whodunit” and the “real story” (Žižek,
Looking Awry 49). Following this, however, a major shift occurs in the
plot which disrupts the narratives above and catapults the text to new
heights in terms of both illegal immigration literature and the police
novel. The investigation uncovers that the four bodies were not those
of harraga who died attempting the hrig but, instead, that all four had
successfully hrigged two years ago and were working in Spain. In terms of
the illegal immigration genre, the focus of the novel now shifts from the
actual hrig to the lives of the harraga in the aftermath of hrig, the “grim
world illegal immigrants encounter once they arrive in Europe” (Smolin,
“Burning” 76). In terms of the police novel, the investigation locates
the harraga narrative within a larger plot: globalisation. The investiga-
tion of the hrig shifts the location of the crime from human trafficking to
the realm of neoliberal capitalism, revealing how crime can cross national
borders more easily than migrants.
Transnational Crimes Require

Transnational Policing
Solving the crime is achieved through the novel’s first display of the
team work that is characteristic of the police novel. Here it is in the
form of a transnational Moroccan-Spanish team: Laafrit in Tangier and
his friend Luis, a detective in Almería. When Laafrit discovers that the
four victims were living in Almería prior to being murdered, he phones
Luis to request his assistance. In order to meet the genre’s require-
ment of realism, the police novel should stress teamwork and the actual
methods and procedures of police investigations; in fact, the importance
of collective and cooperative police agency is a defining characteristic of
the procedural (Scaggs 87, 93). Yet, while the team is important, so
are the individual characters participating in the investigation—not only
because of the combination of skills they bring to the team, but also
88 C. GULDIMANN
because their individualism gives face to a collective agency that “medi-

ates the public’s fears of an overextended and inhumane police power”
(Winston and Mellerski qtd. in Scaggs 94). This takes on new signifi-
cance in a country like Morocco with such a police power in the past.
As I have suggested, Laafrit’s individualism makes him a character that
the reader can “create a friendship” with. While Laafrit is surrounded
by other police characters in Morocco, they are generally portrayed as
being ineffective. Abdellah hates touching corpses, and Inspector Allal
was considered one of the “sturdiest characters” in the force until prostate
surgery, after which he became more interested in religion than inves-
tigating crime (ch. 1). Professor Abdel-Majid, the medical examiner, is
portrayed as arrogant, uncooperative, and only doing the bare minimum.
Much like other contemporary police procedural detectives, Laafrit takes
the initiative and refuses to delegate within Morocco. However, Luis in
Spain proves to be the exception to this rule because half of the case is
in Morocco and, as Laafrit informs Luis, “the other half’s over there in
Almería” (ch. 9).
Laafrit and Luis are portrayed as mirror images of each other. We
learn that Laafrit means “crafty” (his real name is Khalid Ibrahim), and
this nickname comes from his “professional and linguistic aptitude” (ch.
1). He is the only police officer in Tangier who speaks Spanish fluently,
“qualif[ying] him to work with the Spanish police as part of the bilateral
cooperation” (ch. 1). Laafrit and Luis have previously worked together
in Tangier when Luis was working for the Spanish DEA and they were
chasing down a drug-smuggling network: “Laafrit was chosen for the
job in the Moroccan side since he spoke fluent Spanish, and Luis got the
job for the same reason: he spoke fluent Arabic” (ch. 9). While migrants
from a variety of sub-Saharan countries travel to Morocco to undertake
the hrig , the four harraga were all Moroccan citizens from the same
village. The novel thus focuses on Moroccan nationals, prefiguring their
increase amongst the migrants (Frontex 6). They were employed in
Almería by Carlos Gomez, the biggest tomato farmer in Andalusia, who
exports tomatoes to European markets. As the transnational investigation
develops, Luis informs Laafrit that Gomez is “a racist” who “hates immi-
grants and exploits them shamefully,” making them “work long hours in
medieval conditions” (ch. 9). Luis’s description of the living conditions
of harraga in Spain deconstructs the fantasy of a better life on the other
side of the Strait, which is typical of the literature of illegal immigration:
“A few kilometres from Almería … there are hundreds of Moroccans who
made it to paradise and now live in squats and cardboard boxes without
water, electricity or plumbing. They drink river water, burn candles for
light and crap outside” (ch. 9). Luis solves the crime in Spain by visiting
the migrants’ “trash dump” (ch. 9) and speaking Arabic. In addition to
using the migrants as a source of cheap labour, Gomez’s criminal plan
relies on exploiting the migrants’ desperation to achieve their fantasy of
living in Europe and thus completing the metaphorical hrig , burning
their past ties with Morocco by acquiring new European papers.
The motivation for the crime is rooted in capitalist competition:
Morocco is one of Spain’s main competitors in the international tomato
market, and Gomez plans to devastate Morocco’s tomato crops using
harraga. He obtains legal Spanish papers for one of the migrants,
Mohamed Bensallam, and supplies him with a “ton of cash” and a chem-
ical so that he could be sent back to Morocco to “demolish all the tomato
fields” in the country (ch. 12). However, Bensallam is unable to complete
the sabotage due to guilt and regret once the Moroccan tomato crops
start failing. Bensallam suffers from depression and, subsequently, plans to
avenge Gomez by destroying his Spanish tomato fields with the remaining
chemical. Bensallam asks his three friends to help him, but they betray him
instead, telling Gomez of his plan in the hope of obtaining legal papers
themselves. Gomez shoots Bensallam during a confrontation and takes
his boat out as close as “possible to Moroccan waters opposite Tangier”
where he tosses Bensallam’s body—along with his three live friends—into
the sea so that “their bodies would wash up [in Tangier] and [Laafrit
would] think they were harraga” (ch. 12). Gomez does not want the
shooting victim to be investigated in Spanish territory, as he relies on the
inefficiency of the Moroccan police and the “harraga graveyard” between
Gibraltar and Tangier to erase his crime (ch. 12). The novel makes it
clear that this would have been the outcome were it not for transna-
tional cooperation with Luis. Recent news commentary points to the
novel’s contemporary relevance: Alessandra Sciurba, for example, claims
that Europe has turned the Mediterranean “into a graveyard” rather than
a “place in which civilisations meet and encourage the free movement of
people” (InfoMigrants).
Hamdouchi presents a pioneering Moroccan version of transnational
police teams. Hamdouchi’s plot resembles the opening episode of season
one of Bron/ Broen (2011) where a body, cut in half, is placed on the
Öresund Bridge, on the border between Malmö and Copenhagen (one
half on each side). The corpse is comprised of two halves from different
90 C. GULDIMANN
victims, one Swedish and the other Danish, generating the collaboration
between detectives Saga Norén, from Sweden, and Martin Rohde, from
Denmark. Bron/Broen was commercially successful and sold to over 150
countries, as well as adapted into other environments with a US version,
The Bridge (2013), set on the US-Mexican border, and The Tunnel
(2013), which relocates the border narrative onto the French-British
Channel Tunnel (Steiner). The embedding of transnational issues into
the story of Bron/Broen contributed to its international success, revealing
that these are no longer national concerns but part of a “global political
agenda” shared by many different nations (Sideri 29).
In a similar fashion, Whitefly’s victims are thrown into the sea on
the invisible border between Spain and Morocco. The striking differ-
ence between Hamdouchi’s transnational team and those of the European
and North American television series is that the Spanish police force is
never formally involved as Luis acts in his personal capacity: Laafrit calls
Luis as a friend and Luis works the case in his spare time. He takes a
personal interest because he was born in Morocco and moved to Almería,
his mother’s native city, when he was seven. Luis was previously sent to
Tangier by the Spanish DEA as “evidence the Spanish were standing in
solidarity with all the efforts” the Moroccan police force was exerting in
a transnational investigation into Spanish truck drivers transporting drugs
(ch. 9). Now, however, Luis works outside his jurisdiction and wants to
keep his involvement secret. Moreover, he claims that if anyone knew he
was investigating illegal immigration he would get unwanted attention
from the farm owners in Almería and the Spanish police. This is because
big farm owners in Almería, like Gomez, “buy the silence of the [Spanish]
cops so they’ll turn a blind eye on illegal immigration” and that makes it
easy for the farm owners to “hire illegals at the lowest possible rates and
make them work long hours in medieval conditions” (ch. 9).
Hamdouchi’s novel thus launches a critique of both the Moroccan and
Spanish police forces and, instead of celebrating transnational police work,
presents the hierarchies and corruption involved. Just as the Moroccan
police force dismissed the case of what they considered to be harraga, the
novel implies that the death of the four illegal immigrants is not significant
enough for the Spanish police to become involved. While the Moroccan
police cooperated with the Spanish DEA, there is no such reciprocity from
the Spanish police force in this case. Furthermore, the Spanish police force
is portrayed as corrupt and complicit in the exploitation of illegal immi-
grants. Hamdouchi thus provides a rather unique perspective on the lack
of reciprocity in transnational police investigations. While borders present

no barrier to the deterritorialised mobility of crime, this is not always the
case for transnational police investigations.
Crime in the “Age of Globalisation”

Whitefly’s translator, Jonathan Smolin, contends that the plot reveals
how the hrig degrades Moroccans morally. Bensallam worked for Gomez
knowing that he was racist against Moroccans, and while Bensallam ulti-
mately felt remorse for his actions, the other three Moroccans “represent
the degraded social bonds in the new era between Moroccans, who are all
too eager to betray each other and their country to obtain European resi-
dence papers” (“Anxious” 294). Yet, the difference between Bensallam’s
behaviour and that of the other three also reveals the varying degree to
which the metaphorical hrig is successful. Bensallam is unable to complete
his act of treason against Morocco, even in exchange for legal Spanish
papers. Whitefly thus provides a commentary on the personal conse-
quences of the hrig , while still linking the personal cost to the global
economy.
For a fleeting moment, the novel offers the tantalising possibility that
Gomez might be convicted. During his investigation, Laafrit has discov-
ered some of the vials of poison, provided by Gomez, and has given
these to an agricultural engineer for analysis. If the vials contained the
chemical provided by Gomez, he and his partners might be convicted. In
the novel’s final chapter, however, Laafrit receives a phone call from the
engineer’s wife who tells him that her husband has been shot, the vials
stolen and his computer burned. All the material evidence is destroyed
and Gomez is free. Smolin claims that the novel therefore ends with the
“message of a Moroccan police powerless to stop the professional killers of
the new era from striking at will [and] unable to … protect the country
from the terrifying encroachment of globalization” (“Anxious” 293). I
want to suggest, however, that Hamdouchi’s novel is doing something
rather more complicated than Smolin’s pessimistic conclusion suggests.
The crime depicted above was not Gomez’s first attempt at destroying
Morocco’s tomato crops. In the previous year, his company acted as
an intermediary for a Moroccan farmer who imported Israeli seedlings.
These carried a virus spread by a tiny whitefly, the pest referenced in the
novel’s title. The Israeli company is owned by Gomez’s son-in-law, which
reveals the global reach of capitalism: Morocco and Israel are Spain’s
92 C. GULDIMANN
largest competitors in the tomato market where “competition justifies

everything” (ch. 12). Since Morocco managed to contain the whitefly
virus, Gomez was inspired to create the chemical in another attempt to
eliminate Moroccan competition. The novel thus points to the deterri-
torialisation and transnationalisation of crime: “the globe isn’t under the
control of states or governments anymore” declares Luis, “[m]ultinational
companies rule the world” in “the age of globalization and the new world
order” (ch. 12). The novel incorporates several other crimes confirming
this: there is a fire at a factory in Almería used to pack fruit and vegeta-
bles imported from Morocco, leading the press to question whether “a
Sabotage War [has] Erupted against Moroccan Goods in Spain” (ch. 12).
Here Hamdouchi’s novel enacts one of the defining characteristics of the
contemporary crime novel, as defined by Pepper and Schmid, in that it
maps “the relationship between crime, globalization and the state” (10).
A typical way in which authors do this is to set their work in a specific
location, as Hamdouchi does with Tangier, but then “generate a complex
and multi-layered understanding of the relationship between crime and
neoliberal capitalism” (10). These types of novels are less interested in
“individual acts of crime” than “in the way in which structural changes to
national and global economies produce conditions where crime is all but
inevitable” (Pepper and Schmid 10). Whitefly’s plot demonstrates Slavoj
Žižek’s claim that despite “criticism of economic neo-colonialism, many
are still not aware of the devastating effects of the global market on …
local economies” or how this keeps countries in a state of “post-colonial
dependence” (Against 44, 45). Whitefly locates crime within the struc-
tural inequalities at work in global capitalism, border traffic control and
transnational policing.
Conclusion
The ingenuity of Hamdouchi’s novel lies in the way in which he cleverly
maps the illegal immigration genre onto the plot of the police novel and
ultimately ties these strands together. While the criminal investigation is
originally linked to the hrig , the plot locates the truly criminal element
within global capitalism. By revealing the link between illegal immigration
and global capitalism, Whitefly illustrates Žižek’s point that refugees are
part of a “globalised economy in which commodities—but not people—
are permitted to circulate freely,” highlighting the “new forms of slavery”
that are a “structural necessity of today’s global capitalism” (“Norway”).

The global capitalist economy gives rise to the act of sabotage against
Morocco, a crime designed to devastate Morocco’s economy, which, if
successful, would perpetuate the conditions giving rise to the hrig .
Pepper and Schmid state that many accounts of crime fiction “assume
the demise, or irrelevance, of the territorially bounded state in the face of
the deterritorializing impulses of global capitalism” and that if contem-
porary crime fiction is going to be relevant it needs to find ways of
“reflecting on” and “critically assessing” the implications of the deter-
ritorialisation of crime (4). It is precisely this relationship between the
state and globalisation that Hamdouchi’s novel foregrounds. By linking
the two genres, the police novel and the novel of illegal immigration,
Hamdouchi reveals how the state is, as Pepper and Schmid indicate,
not unaffected by transnationalization of crime and policing (smuggling

of goods and people across borders, connections between criminal gangs
in different parts of the globe, and by the increasingly complex liaisons
between state and supra-state bodies …) or by the affairs of multi-nationals
and the deterritorializing impulses of global capitalism. (4)
Hamdouchi’s plot demonstrates the implications of the transnationali-

sation of crime for the Moroccan state as well as the repercussions of
Morocco’s having entered the global marketplace.
While this makes Whitefly a pioneering contemporary crime fiction
novel, Hamdouchi takes one step further by linking the crimes of neolib-
eral capital to the postcolonial postmortem. Gomez’s motivation for the
crime is not merely profit; it is rooted in his colonial mentality. Luis tells
Laafrit that Gomez is an extreme racist who thinks that the “Moors”
are a “bunch of animals lower than human beings” (ch. 12). He does not
understand “how a third-world African country can compete with him for
the European markets” and says openly that “Spain should reoccupy the
‘land of the Moors’” (ch. 12). This commentary links borders, mobility
and crime to the inequalities of the colonial past and the neoliberal
capitalist present in the age of globalisation.
Notes
1. The Blind Whale is Jonathan Smolin’s translation of the novel’s Arabic title.
The book has not been published in English (see Smolin, “Anxious” 285).
94 C. GULDIMANN
2. The two authors are not related (Smolin, “Anxious” 296).

3. Ceuta is the Spanish name while Septa, used by Hamdouchi, is the
romanisation of the Arabic name. I use Septa when referring to the novel.
4. The Plazas refer to the five Spanish territories of Ceuta, Melilla, Penon de
Vélez de la Gomera, Penon de Alhucémas and the Chafarinas Islands in
North Africa (O’Reilly 1).
References
Ferrer-Gallardo, Xavier. “Theorizing the Spanish-Moroccan Border Recon-
figuration: Framing a Process of Geopolitical, Functional and Symbolic
Rebordering.” Centre for International Borders Research (CIBR) Queen’s
University Belfast, Electronic Working Paper Series, pp. 1–24, https://www.
qub.ac.uk/research-centres/CentreforInternationalBordersResearch/Public
ations/WorkingPapers/CIBRWorkingPapers/Filetoupload,174401,en.pdf.
Accessed 31 Aug. 2018.
Frontex European Border and Coast Guard Agency Risk Analysis Unit. “Risk
Analysis for 2019.” Risk Analysis Unit, 2019, pp. 1–52, https://frontex.eur
opa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/Risk_Analysis/Risk_Analysis_for_
2019.pdf. Accessed 27 May 2020.
Hamdouchi, Abdelilah. Whitefly. Translated by Jonathan Smolin, Hoopoe, 2016.
Ebook.
Head, Gretchen. “‘The Sea Spits Out Corpses’: Peripherality, Genre, and Affect
in the Cosmopolitan Mediterranean.” The Global South, vol. 9, no. 2, 2015,
pp. 38–59.
InfoMigrants. “Europe Has Turned Mediterranean into Migrant Graveyard,
NGO President Claims.” 21 Feb. 2020, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/
post/22931/europe-has-turned-mediterranean-into-migrant-graveyard-ngo-
president-claims. Accessed 27 May 2020.
International Organisation for Migration (IOM). “Migration Trends Across
the Mediterranean: Connecting the Dots.” International Organisation
for Migration (IOM) MENA Regional Office, June 2015, pp. 1–
131, https://publications.iom.int/books/migration-trends-across-mediterra
nean-connecting-dots. Accessed 5 Jan. 2018.
Kamali Dehghan, Saeed. “‘We Would Rather Die Than Stay There’: The
Refugees Crossing from Morocco into Spain.” The Guardian, 23 Aug. 2017,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/we-would-rather-die-
than-stay-there-the-refugees-crossing-from-morocco-to-spain. Accessed 5 Jan.
2018.
Matzke, Christine, and Susan Mühleisen, editors. “Postcolonial Postmortems:
O’Reilly, Gerry. “Ceuta and the Spanish Sovereign Territories: Spanish and
Moroccan Claims.” Boundary and Territory Briefing, vol. 1, no. 2, 1994,
pp. 1–35.
Contemporary Crime Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 1–19.
Powers, Holiday. “Yto Barrada: Tangier’s Changing Cosmopolitanisms.” Nka:
Journal of Contemporary African Art, vol. 28, 2011, pp. 130–39.
Ribas, Xavier. “The Border Fences of Ceuta and Melilla: A Landscape for
the Future?” Nitrate, 6 June–12 Oct. 2014. Museo de Arte Moderno de
Barcelona, Barcelona, http://www.xavierribas.com/Contents/Texts/Texts/
XRIBAS-Ceuta%20and%20Melilla_En.pdf. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018.
Rosenfeldt, Hans, creator. Bron/Broen. Filmlace International and Nimbus Film,
2011.
Scaggs, Jonathan. Crime Fiction. Routledge, 2005.
Sideri, Eleni. “Bridging Worlds: Producing and Imagining the Transnational
through TV Narratives.” Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, vol.
9, no. 2, 2017, pp. 27–35.
Smolin, Jonathan. “Anxious Openings: Globalization in the Moroccan Arabic
Police Procedural.” Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 17, no. 3, 2014, pp. 283–
98.
———. “Burning the Past: Moroccan Cinema of Illegal Immigration.” South
Central Review, vol. 28, no. 1, 2011, pp. 74–89.
———. Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture. Indiana
UP, 2013.
———. “Political Malaise and New Arabic Noir.” South Central Review, vol. 27,
no. 1, 2010, pp. 82–90.
Steiner, Tobias. “Bron/Broen, the Pilot as Space between Cultures, and
(Re)negotiations of Nordic Noir.” The Scandinavian Invasion: The Nordic
Noir Phenomenon and Beyond, edited by Richard McCulloch and William
Proctor, Peter Lang, forthcoming [2020]. Preprint (2018), https://doi.org/
10.31235/osf.io/9dbw2.
Žižek, Slavoj. Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles
with the Neighbours. Allen Lane, 2016.
———. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular
Culture. MIT Press, 1991.
———. “The Non-existence of Norway.” London Review of Books, 9 Sept.
2018, https://www.lrb.co.uk/2015/09/09/slavoj-zizek/the-non-existence-
of-norway. Accessed 1 Apr. 2018.
CHAPTER 5
Systemic Violence in the Borderlands:

Anthony J. Quinn’s Border Angels and Alicia
Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood
Eoin D. McCarney
Introduction
As several critics have noted, contemporary crime fiction is now one of the
most globalised literary forms (see Pepper and Schmid 2). Crime novels
are set and sold in a vast number of countries worldwide, but while the
genre benefits from the forces of globalisation, Andrew Pepper and David
Schmid draw attention to whether crime writing has the ability “to reflect,
in critical and imaginative ways, on the processes of globalization in
general, or on the transnationalization of crime … in particular” (2). This
chapter seeks to answer this question by demonstrating that crime fiction
can provide insight into the darker side of globalisation, the increasingly
close ties between global capitalism and crime, by analysing Anthony
J. Quinn’s Border Angels (2015) and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood:
The Juárez Murders (2005), set in the border regions of two highly glob-
alised countries: Ireland and Mexico, respectively. My examination takes
E. D. McCarney (B)
School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies,
Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

98 E. D. MCCARNEY
a geocritical approach to the representation of the borderlands in the

novels, which allows me to explore the fissures that occur in the inter-
face between globalised countries and how they can generate inequality,
exploitation and crime.
Border Angels and Desert Blood connect what first appear to be isolated
incidents of what Slavoj Žižek refers to as subjective violence, a highly
visible type of violence with a clearly identifiable agent, to a larger pattern
of systemic violence, which either echoes, or participates in, global capi-
talism. In Border Angels , Quinn connects the subjective violence of
murder and fraudulent property speculation to the systemic violence of
human trafficking. The women trafficked in Border Angels are seen, and
referred to, as property to be bought and sold. In Desert Blood, Gaspar
de Alba connects an incident of subjective violence, the abduction of the
protagonist’s sister, to femicides in Juárez. Gaspar de Alba, then, reveals
deeper linkages between the femicides and the booming maquiladora
industry in the city.1
This model, which depicts subjective violence as a symptom of a
larger systemic disease, corresponds closely to Žižek’s paradigm. In
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, Žižek refers to the kind of violence
often seen on 24-hour TV—news, murder, “civil unrest, international
conflict”—to explain the highly visible nature of subjective violence (1).
In contrast, systemic violence is the least visible form as it is integral to the
“normal” functioning of contemporary economic and political systems.
Žižek’s conception of systemic violence comprises not just “direct physical
violence but also the more subtle forms of coercion that sustain rela-
tions of domination and exploitation, including the threat of violence”
(8). He argues that global capitalism requires this kind of violence to
function, but that this need is obscured by the abstraction of capital
which is increasingly dominated by speculation on futures. This seemingly
abstract world of capital has real effects. Its “inexorable ‘abstract’ spec-
tral logic” determines the social reality of people’s daily lives around the
world (11). Quoting Étienne Balibar, Žižek explains that capitalism auto-
matically creates “excluded and dispensable individuals from the homeless
to the unemployed” (12). The complexity of contemporary movements
of capital means that it is impossible to attribute responsibility to “con-
crete individuals” (11). Žižek believes that we are blinded to systemic
violence by our focus on subjective violence which is conspicuous and
fascinating, as it erupts unpredictably and disturbs the established order.
5 SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE IN THE BORDERLANDS: ANTHONY J. QUINN’S … 99
Systemic violence, by contrast, operates continuously to sustain what

Žižek calls the “zero-level standard against which we perceive something
as subjectively violent” (2). As he notes, this pattern can be difficult
to identify; however, it is perceptible in representations of borderlands
as they both facilitate and are profoundly impacted by the injustices
inherent in global capitalism. In Border Angels and Desert Blood, the
crimes depicted are deeply enmeshed with the systemic violence of global
capitalism.
The plot of Border Angels revolves around Lena Novak’s attempts to
escape a brothel in the Northern Irish borderlands where she has been
forced to work as a prostitute after being trafficked from Croatia. Human
trafficking is a very common theme in twenty-first-century crime fiction
(see Beyer). Lena’s escape is orchestrated by Jack Fowler, a corrupt prop-
erty developer and former member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
who is in love with Lena. During the escape, Lena’s pimp Sergei is killed
in a car crash, and Inspector Celcius Daly is tasked with investigating
Sergei’s death and locating Lena, an eyewitness who has left the scene
barefoot. The investigation expands to incorporate the brothel owner,
Jozef Mikolajek, and the business activities of Fowler who is murdered
by Mikolajek. It transpires that Fowler has embezzled peace funds given
to his community regeneration organisation by the British government.
Fowler has used the money to buy land he knows will be developed and
will increase in value. However, the global financial crash renders the land
worthless and Fowler’s fraud is discovered. Before he is murdered, Fowler
has transferred money to an account in Lena’s name. Michael Mooney, a
colleague of Fowler’s, hires retired IRA gunman Ashe to trace Lena and
return the stolen money, but Lena manages to persuade Ashe to double-
cross Mooney and help her. Despite having opportunities to cross the
border to Dublin and escape, she remains in Northern Ireland until she
and her fellow countrywomen who were also trafficked can enact their
revenge on Mikolajek.
Desert Blood follows the story of Ivon Villa, a Chicana academic from
El Paso, who initially travels to Juárez to adopt a baby whom she intends
to raise in Los Angeles with her wife Brigit. While Ivon is in Mexico,
the unborn baby and its mother Cecilia are brutally murdered, and she
begins to comprehend the scale of the femicide problem in Mexico. Soon
the horror of the violence is brought home to Ivon, as her sister Irene is
abducted in Juárez. Ivon feels Irene’s disappearance is partly her respon-
sibility, as they were supposed to meet on the afternoon that Irene was
100 E. D. MCCARNEY
abducted, but Ivon failed to turn up. Ivon’s guilt and lack of faith in the
police forces her to try to solve the case herself. After an arduous search,
she eventually rescues Irene from a snuff movie syndicate in an industrial
estate in Juárez. The syndicate is run by a corrupt border patrol agent
in collaboration with the millionaire sons of some of the local narcos.
Irene survives despite having been repeatedly raped, but the corpses of a
number of missing women are found at the site. Notwithstanding Ivon’s
efforts and an abundance of evidence at the scene, the perpetrators are
never punished and the discovery of the snuff movie operation is covered
up by the authorities.
Reading Space in Crime

Fiction After the Spatial Turn
As representations of one type of space, the borderland, are important
to my analysis, I shall briefly focus on the role and history of space
in crime fiction. Studies of crime fiction have, until recently, prioritised
the temporal over the spatial. They have identified in the crime novel
what Paul Skenazy calls a “double rhythm,” which propels the narrative
forward, while also allowing it to look back to resolve a crime committed
in the past (105). However, this emphasis on time and narrative form
over space has somewhat altered since crime fiction critics recently began
to embrace the work of the spatial turn, a re-orientation of focus towards
an examination of the nature of space and its representation in litera-
ture and art. As Patricia Garcia explains, space can no longer be seen
as a “neutral concept and cannot be considered independent from that
which it contains, and therefore neither can it be considered as immune
to historical, political and aesthetic changes” (6). A number of critics have
tried to explain the reasons for this interest in spatiality. Bertrand West-
phal notes that World War II was an important factor, because the horror
of the war and the camps meant that the positivist view of history as
progressive became untenable and space could no longer be seen as a
passive container of progress (9). In addition, the reorganisation of post-
war Europe and the gradual dismantling of the British Empire placed
an increased emphasis on the importance of space (9–14). This process
of decolonisation and redrawing of geopolitical boundaries created areas
of disputed space and borders in a number of countries including Israel,
Cyprus, Germany and Ireland.
More recently, the development of communication technologies as

well as the process of globalisation have transformed our perceptions of
space. One of the most important thinkers of the spatial turn, geogra-
pher Edward Soja, has proposed a new model for the study of spatiality:
thirdspace. Soja uses this concept to convey his belief that space can
only be fully understood if addressed in both its real (geographical) form
and its imagined (cultural) form simultaneously (53–70). This concep-
tion of space has been embraced by literary critics like Westphal, who has
developed a geocritical methodology for the analysis of space using both
literary and geographical sources. Westphal’s work focuses on the anal-
ysis of spaces with a single referent such as Paris or the Mediterranean.
However, Eric Prieto has expanded on Westphal’s methodology and uses
it to analyse “types of space” such as shanty towns or squatter cities (see
Prieto 13–27). This chapter will adopt Prieto’s approach to analyse other
types of space, the border and the borderland, both in their geograph-
ical form and via their representations in crime fiction. Schmid notes that
crime fiction has always been a profoundly spatial genre, as crime fiction
depends on space for its resolution—both the reader and the detective
need to discover where someone was murdered as much as why; however,
representations of space in crime fiction (and literature more generally) do
not merely act as neutral background and setting (8). Space is socially
produced, shaped by complex relationships of power and loaded with
ideological meaning (Lefebvre). Such complexity of meaning makes space
an appropriate subject for geocritical analysis. This has been demonstrated
by crime fiction scholars such as Andrea Goulet, Gary Hausladen, Philip
Howell and Jennifer Jenkins and Jennie Ramone who have focused on
the representations of the city, fictionalised spaces and real referents, the
crime scene, cartography and national identity. Critics have also analysed
the relationship between borders, globalisation, capitalism and crime as
this chapter will do (see Pepper; Martin and Murray).
Borders and borderlands are crucial to an understanding of global capi-
talism and contemporary crime, two processes which many critics believe
are deeply connected. Linden Peach describes how criminality is “capable
of mimicking features of capitalism” and characterised by an “aspiration
towards power, control and ruthless competition” (174). Discussing the
work of Don Winslow, Pepper similarly suggests that “the licit and illicit
economy mirror one another so closely that it is hard to tell them apart”
and that the “kind of free market reforms that are instituted to prime the
102 E. D. MCCARNEY
legal economy end up enabling the illegal economy so that” the oper-
ations of illegal traffickers “mirror the logic of neoliberal economics”
(419). Contemporary global capitalism depends on open borders, as do
contemporary crime and criminal organisations. Both systems rely on the
circulation of goods or services from low-cost economies, through open
borders, to high-cost economies where they can be sold at a significant
profit. In a world dominated by commodification, almost anything can
be bought or sold across borders: drugs, pornography or even humans as
in Border Angels and Desert Blood. Before we examine the representation
of borders and borderlands in these novels, it is important to understand
how each of these borders came to exist.
Imperialism and the Creation

of the Irish and Mexican Borderlands
The borderlands in Border Angels and Desert Blood are presented as
spaces of great danger, and there are historical and political reasons for
this. The Irish borderlands have been a contested site since the border
between what is now Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was
first established via the Government of Ireland Act of 1920.2 The border
was put in place to create a new state, Northern Ireland, which had a
majority Protestant population who wanted to remain part of the UK.
This majority was largely a result of the “vast social engineering” project
of Ireland’s British rulers in the seventeenth century: during this period,
over 5,600 square miles of land and property were seized from Catholic
natives and given to Protestant settlers who had been brought to Ireland
from England and Scotland (Ferriter 2). It was the descendants of these
settlers that the new state was designed to protect. However, Northern
Ireland now also included the majority Catholic counties: Fermanagh
and Tyrone. The partition of the island was poorly thought out by the
British government who merely wanted to take what they referred to as
“the Irish problem” off the table. As Diarmuid Ferriter notes, the phys-
ical geography of the border was both “arbitrary” and “ridiculous” as
it was based on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century county boundaries
and, consequently, it divided towns, rivers and “even individual farms and
houses” (10). According to Margaret O’Callaghan, the partition was “the
first major partition in which a British cabinet participated in territory
which it had formerly controlled” (qtd. in Ferriter 30). This model of
decolonisation and partition was to be repeated by the British in India

and Palestine.
The partition of the island—and its arbitrary nature—is a direct result
of centuries of British imperialism in Ireland. It has been the cause of
significant violence and loss of life: both the Irish Civil War and the Trou-
bles were at least in part due to partition, as players involved in both
conflicts attempted to restore a thirty-two county Ireland.3 As Joe Cleary
has observed, this reality is often obscured by a colonial ideology which
attempts to trace the violence of the Troubles and the partition of the
island itself to the supposedly atavistic sectarianism of Irish Catholics and
Protestants (108). While there was, and continues to be, tensions between
Protestant and Catholics, it was imperialism, not sectarianism, that created
partition.
Partition also created the borders and borderlands that this chapter is
concerned with. The border created two new states and a new border-
land pseudo-state, as the people of this borderland identified not with
the north or the south but with the space in between. They assumed
what Homi K. Bhabha calls a liminal identity (6) characterised by fluidity.
It resists the “primordial polarity” of traditional fixed identities and is
exemplified by a “cultural hybridity” which is constantly being made and
remade through the repeated interaction between the different cultures
on either side of the border (6). The interaction between the people on
either side of the Irish border soon developed into a culture of small-
scale smuggling. As Pepper explains, this is often the case in border
regions, because a product often has a higher value on one side of a
border so it is tempting for people to smuggle it from the other side to
make a profit (419). When the smuggling in the Irish border region was
confined to smaller-scale items like cattle, farm machinery or diesel, it was
tolerated by both governments. However, with the advent of the Trou-
bles, smuggling became a more lethal business as the borderlands were
used to store and smuggle explosives and weapons. During this period
the border region became informally known as “bandit country,” and
while the Gardaí (The Republic of Ireland’s police force) and the RUC
(Northern Ireland’s police force) tried to eliminate smuggling, it proved
impossible. The border became known as a space of disorder, and despite
the conclusion of the Troubles with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998
this image has persisted. The borderlands in Irish fiction are still most
often associated with “the Troubles” as novelist Brian McGilloway has
stated (305).
104 E. D. MCCARNEY
In Border Angels , the Northern Irish borderlands are a lawless space

inhabited and governed by criminals, and the local industries revolve
around the smuggling of alcohol, diesel and women. The landscape is
a foreboding presence where the river roars “devouring the darkness
along the Irish border” (4). It appears to invade and corrupt anyone who
lives there as Daly remarks when he witnesses Lena speaking to Ashe.
Daly assumes Ashe is a potential customer for Lena’s sexual services and
describes him as “unravelling away from all things decent and respectable,
falling into border country, an exile from the tight-knit comforts of family
life” (115). It is a nightmarish space which is as much an enemy to
Lena as her traffickers, and she feels it has “turned her into its prey”
(58). Her life there is repeatedly juxtaposed with the Cinderella fairy tale:
she escapes the clutches of her pimp by running barefoot through the
snow; her Prince Charming at first appears to be Jack Fowler, but he is
murdered before they can run away together. Inspector Daly does all he
can to help her and she describes him as her “knight in shining armor”
(235). However, there is no real happy ending for Lena. She does finally
escape and tells Daly that she is returning home, but home is the Croa-
tian borderlands, an equally dangerous space filled with “wolves, bears
and buried landmines” (1), where she will also be hunted by criminals
seeking revenge for Mikolajek. As Lena knows, there is no real escape
from the borderlands until death: “Death was the final hiding place in
the border country. The last escape route” (13).
The Mexican borderlands4 are depicted in a similar fashion in Gaspar
de Alba’s Desert Blood. Like the Irish borderlands, the Mexican border-
lands were created due to the imperialist ambitions of a neighbouring
country. However, Mexico has a more complex colonial history than
Ireland, as it has been colonised by Spain and fallen victim to the US
desire for expansion. Following the purchase of Louisiana from France,
and the annexation of the state of Texas from Mexico in 1845, the United
States decided to acquire yet more territory. It manufactured a conflict
with Mexico over the border at the Rio Grande and eventually declared
war on Mexico. Despite fighting bravely, Mexico soon had to surrender
to the United States and attempt to negotiate a treaty. The Treaty of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo was disastrous for Mexico: it resulted in Mexico relin-
quishing more than half of its territory from Texas to California for a mere
$15 Million (Kirkwood 99). Mexicans in the US-annexed areas had the
choice of relocating within Mexico’s new boundaries or receiving Amer-
ican citizenship. This redrawing of boundaries created a new Mexican
borderland and a new community of Mexican people living in what was

now the United States. Some of their descendants would become the
Chicana/o community and they would play an invaluable role in creating
an understanding of life in the borderlands.
In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), the seminal
work on the US-Mexico borderlands, Gloria Anzaldúa describes the chal-
lenges of growing up as a Mexican American on the US side of the
border. She explains how her community is not Mexican or American
but both and neither simultaneously. The border has been internalised
by her community and created a divided identity. She urges her fellow
Chicanas/os to embrace what she calls the mestiza consciousness, a way
of thinking that involves a “tolerance for ambiguity,” and recognises that
the multiple elements of Chicana/o identity combine to create a whole
“which is greater than the sum of its severed parts” (101–02). This way of
thinking and being “depends on the straddling of two cultures” and “the
breaking down of paradigms” to create a “new mythos” that “transcends
duality” (102). Anzaldúa’s work, and that of other Chicana/o theorists,
concentrates on the US side of the border and it somewhat contrasts with
the approach of Mexican writers and theorists of the Mexican borderlands.
As Núria Vilanova points out, the Chicana/o analysis of the border
tends towards the abstract and metaphorical and is internalised by the
Chicana/o community (78). The Mexican approach is to engage with
the border area as a “physical space whose problems and conflicts are
external to the emotional and existential experiences of the literary
subject” (78). This does not mean that the Mexican approach is apolit-
ical; much of Mexican writing about the borderlands is engaged with
current political issues like migration. Valeria Luiselli’s Desierto Sonoro
(2019; translated as Lost Children Archive, 2019) is exemplary in this
regard. Some of Northern Mexico’s other problems have attracted the
attention of Mexican and international writers alike. Drug trafficking and
the violence associated with the War on Drugs in Northern Mexico have
been the subject of numerous novels by writers including Don Winslow
and Elmer Mendoza. Drug-related violence has also featured in major
motion pictures like Sicario (2015) and TV series like Narcos: Mexico
(2018), albeit in a rather stereotypical fashion. Femicide and the impact of
the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Northern Mexico
have been tackled by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño in his novel
2666 (2004) and Gaspar de Alba among others (see also Close). Given
106 E. D. MCCARNEY
the nature of the political problems addressed by these writers, it is not

surprising that the Mexican borderlands are depicted as treacherous.
The contrast between the Mexican and US borderlands in Desert Blood
is apparent. In the course of Desert Blood, Ivon must cross the US-
Mexican border repeatedly, and there is a marked change of tone when
she enters Mexico and drives towards Juárez. From the opening line,
the violence that is inflicted on women in the Mexican borderlands is
described in detail: one of the abducted women has a “rope tightened
about her neck” (1), and her belly is slashed by “blades” and left “hanging
open” before she is reduced to “a bag of water and bones” (2). Thus,
while the US borderlands and the town of El Paso appear to be relatively
safe, the Mexican borderlands are presented as spaces of extreme violence
and horror.
Representations of the Borderlands

in Border Angels and Desert Blood
The Northern Irish and Mexican borderlands in the novels are spaces
apart from normal society; they operate as semi-autonomous states and
their residents belong not to the nations on either side of their borders
but to the space in between. These border pseudo-states are liminal spaces
haunted by violence. In this, and many other ways, they resemble Michel
Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia of deviation, a type of space that
accommodates “individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to the
required mean or norm” (25). This is true of the behaviour of the human
traffickers, Republican criminals and snuff film-makers of the novels. The
heterotopia of deviation is also “capable of juxtaposing in a single real
place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible”
(25). The borderlands between the Republic of Ireland and Northern
Ireland might be seen as incompatible sites, similar to the US and Mexico
borderlands. As Anzaldúa famously remarked, the US-Mexican border-
lands are an open wound or “una herida abierta, where the Third World
grates against the first and bleeds” (25). Foucault explains how “hetero-
topias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both
isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site
is not freely accessible like a public place…. To get in one must have a
certain permission and make certain gestures” (26). This conception of
the heterotopia describes the operation of the border post perfectly: it
opens and closes allowing and disallowing access and to cross it a certain
type of permission (a visa or passport) is required. The novels clearly

relate the aberrant behaviour and contradictory aspects of heterotopic
space to the systemic violence of global capitalism. The illegal criminal
activity in the novels closely mirrors the legal business activity of the local
economies.
Border Angels focuses on property investment and presents human traf-
ficking as its criminal equivalent. Fowler and Mooney’s involvement in
the systemic violence of capitalism via property investment is contrasted
with the subjective violence of their participation in Republican violence
during the Troubles. Fowler persuades Mooney to purchase a property
in Foxborough Mews, one of the developments he has invested in fraud-
ulently. Once the financial crisis kicks in and Fowler’s fraud begins to
unravel, he can no longer pay the building contractors and the estate is
left unfinished. Mooney is the only resident of the estate and he compares
it to the “solitary confinement” he experienced in prison but with a “hefty
mortgage” to pay for the pleasure (91). The estate stinks of raw sewage
and this reminds Mooney of his time on the no wash protest in Long
Kesh in the 1970s when prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls
of their cells with faeces in protest at the British government’s refusal to
recognise them as political prisoners.
When Fowler’s fraud is finally exposed, he pleads with Mooney to help
him cover up the details on the regeneration association’s financial report.
He describes how they had fought the British for the right to control their
destiny and had built up their communities by securing good jobs and
housing. They believed the property market was on their side as it had
brought wealth and employment in abundance. “We can’t let it come
back and terrorize us,” Fowler pleaded, “It will destroy everything we
thought we had won” (Quinn 93). Fowler and Mooney have swopped
the self-sacrifice of their political past when they used their “bodies as
protest weapons” for the false dream of capitalism. As Mooney remarks
to Ashe while visiting him in Spain, “We left that ethos behind long ago.
We’re all capitalists now” (85). Fowler had become obsessed by greed and
bet everything they had fought for on the markets. He is not alone in his
naïveté, as the novel explains: “The banks were at it, too. And politicians.
Even the financial watchdogs turned a blind eye” (85).
The above view of the Irish property crash, and the corruption endemic
to it, is not unique to Border Angels . A number of other post-crash
Irish crime novels address this theme (see Cliff), including Alan Glynn’s
Winterland (2009) and Tana French’s Broken Harbour (2012). However,
108 E. D. MCCARNEY
Border Angels ’ conflation of this theme with human trafficking is quite

unique: Lena Novak and the other trafficked women in Border Angels are
treated as slaves. As Daly explains to a potential client of Lena’s: “This
woman is a victim of people trafficking … You can’t see her chains, but
that’s what she is. A slave” (115). Lena’s status as a slave means she is
effectively owned by Mikolajek. She is, as Daly remarks, “treated as prop-
erty” (98). Mikolajek thinks of her as a property investment, an asset that
can generate significant equity through sexual exploitation. Jack Fowler’s
relationship with Lena is described in similar terms: he makes Lena a
director of his holding company, taking a “big financial gamble on her”
(86). Mooney explains that the reason why Fowler takes such a risk is that
he liked “crossing borders. Metaphorical as well as physical” (86).
Open borders are essential to both Fowler’s and Mikolajek’s busi-
nesses. The relaxation of border controls between Northern Ireland
and the Republic of Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement has
brought foreign direct investment and jobs to Northern Ireland. The
availability of jobs has increased the amount of immigration to Northern
Ireland, and in 2004, Northern Ireland experienced net migration for
the first time in decades (Russell 4); the larger workforce resulted in a
greater demand for housing. The so-called peace money which the British
government pumped into the Northern Irish economy in the form of
grants to community groups provided opportunities for the kind of prop-
erty fraud described in the novel. Open borders, a buoyant Northern
Ireland economy and the enlargement of the EU also facilitate Mikolajek’s
trafficking business. It is significant that Lena is trafficked from Croatia,
which joined the EU in 2013 allowing its citizens to travel and work
anywhere within the EU. Northern Ireland has received a high percentage
of immigrants from EU accession states including Croatia (Russell 3).
Border mobility is also fundamental to the legal and illegal forms of
systemic violence depicted in Desert Blood. While the female trafficking
of Border Angels mirrors property investment, the femicide described in
Desert Blood mirrors the maquiladora industry in Mexico. Since the early
1990s, the Mexican borderlands have been rapidly industrialised, and this
process has resulted in the construction of hundreds of maquiladoras in
Juárez and other parts of Northern Mexico. After the passing of NAFTA
in 1994, the number of maquiladoras in Mexico increased significantly,
particularly in Juárez (Wright 93–113). Simultaneously, the number of
murdered women in the city began to increase from a “handful of
cases annually” to hundreds of cases annually (Nathan); many of the
women who disappeared or were found murdered were maquiladora

workers. Maquiladora labourers who work on assembly lines for large
US multinationals are mostly young females. They have no protection
from the unions and their relative freedom and small disposable income
are resented by some locals who sometimes refer to them as maquilocas
(sluts). They work long hours for low pay and are subject to appalling
conditions, and they travel from all over Mexico and Central America to
Juárez to work in maquiladoras as they have no other possibility of work.
Due to the large-scale poverty in the region, there is an endless supply of
cheap labour for the maquiladoras . Consequently, these women are seen
as disposable and this makes them extremely vulnerable.
In Desert Blood, many of the femicide victims have American pennies
in their throats or stomachs. Max, a mortuary worker in the novel,
comments that it is as if they had Abe Lincoln shoved down their throats.
When Ivon hears this comment, she immediately thinks of NAFTA,
the effect it has had on Mexico and the maquiladoras being shoved
down Mexico’s throat. She realises that it has created a labour market
where women are seen as virtually worthless and that each victim is “just
another expendable penny” (255). Gaspar de Alba’s research provides
further details of the exploitation and degradation women face in the
maquiladoras : workers are pressured to participate in “demeaning beauty
contests disguised as work incentives and morale boosters,” compulsory
pregnancy testing at the time of hiring and forced birth control (“Poor
Brown Female” 85). This is the systemic violence of globalised capitalism
at work.
Sergio González Rodríguez has entitled this phenomenon, as exempli-
fied in Juárez, as a “femicide machine.” In his view, Juárez has “normal-
ized barbarism,” and the border city “didn’t just create the conditions”
for femicide, “it developed the institutions that guaranteed impunity for
those crimes and even legalized them” (7). Juárez developed rapidly
due to its proximity to the US border and El Paso in Texas. González
Rodríguez argues that this rapid development—driven by powerful legal
and illegal forces—created a population boom, a crisis in infrastructure
and an opportunity for organised crime to become deeply enmeshed with
government and law enforcement, which has led to impunity for crim-
inals. This level of corruption combined with the city’s unique location
in a poverty-ridden Mexican borderland only a few miles from a large
American city makes it the perfect location for the brutally exploitative
maquiladora industry.
110 E. D. MCCARNEY
While Ivon’s investigation into the disappearance of Irene in Desert

Blood does not lead her directly to the maquiladoras , connections are
repeatedly made between violence, exploitation and the factories. The
woman being murdered in the opening scene of the novel recognises
one of the attackers who injects her in the stomach as a man from the
maquiladora factory where she works. Ivon finally succeeds in adopting
a child, the child of a maquiladora worker who is dying due to an illness
contracted from her working conditions. It is perhaps appropriate that the
snuff movie site where Irene is rescued is located in an industrial area next
to a smelting plant, because the women are being used as raw material in
the snuff film industry before being smelted down. Their very deaths are
being productised as films for online sale to a global audience.
Conclusion
David Harvey reminds us that “the accumulation of capital has always
been a profoundly geographical affair” (23). In order to continually
expand its reach and profits, capitalism requires borders to remain open to
trade. Border mobility ensures that the capitalist project can take advan-
tage of the uneven development characteristic of the contemporary world
by exploiting cheap labour to minimise costs and maximise profits. As this
chapter has clarified, this globalising capitalist process requires systemic
violence to ensure its “smooth functioning” (Žižek 1). Contemporary
crime novels like Border Angels and Desert Blood provide valuable insight
into and highlight this least visible form of violence by delineating its
relationship with its more transparent counterpart, subjective violence.
The precise nature of this association is most apparent in represen-
tations of borders and borderlands. These spaces are crucial interfaces
between economies and as such subject to systemic capitalist violence at its
most heightened and brutal. They reveal the unpalatable level of corrup-
tion and exploitation in legal businesses such as the property industry
in the Northern Irish borderlands and the maquiladora industry in the
Mexican borderlands. They also demonstrate how the subjective violence
of human trafficking and femicide is both symptomatic and reflective of
these industries.
Border Angels and Desert Blood show that what might appear to be
an isolated crime, the murder of a foreign national or the kidnapping
of a teenager, can be related to a larger system of criminality. These
criminal systems mirror global capitalism in their desire to systematically
exploit inequality to create profit, and amplify capitalism’s aspiration to

productise to a point when everything is for sale. The complexity of
this correlation is highlighted here through a geocritical analysis of the
representation of borders and borderlands in contemporary crime novels.
Notes
1. Amnesty International defines maquiladoras as “assembly plants set up by
multinational companies on the Mexican border to exploit tax breaks and
cheap Mexican labour” (“It’s in Our Hands” iii).
2. The Act of 1920 was rejected by Sinn Féin, but following the Irish War of
Independence, the boundary was finalised by the Boundary Commission in
1925.
3. Simplified, “The Troubles” was a conflict in Northern Ireland between
1968 and 1998 caused by complex historical, religious and social reasons
going back centuries.
4. With Mexican borderlands, I refer to the northern part of Mexico adjoining
the US border; with US borderlands, I refer to the southern parts of the
United States adjoining the Mexican border; and with US-Mexican border-
lands I mean the borderlands adjoining the US-Mexico border on both
sides.
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CHAPTER 6
Transnational Female Sex Trafficking in Naja

Marie Aidt’s “Women in Copenhagen,” Matt
Johnson’s Deadly Game and Stuart Neville’s
Stolen Souls
Charlotte Beyer
Introduction: Representing Female Sex Trafficking

Human trafficking and modern slavery are widespread crimes currently
on the rise in Western Europe as gangs and organised criminals exploit
increasing transnational mobility. This chapter explores representations
of transnational female sex trafficking in selected contemporary crime
fictions, with a particular focus on dimensions of victimhood and gender.1
Transnational sex trafficking throws the spotlight on issues around gender
and globalisation, illegal flows across borders, and increased migration
to the West from former East Bloc countries and the Global South
(Gregoriou and Ras 16). Although transnational female sex trafficking
has often been depicted in stereotypical or lurid terms by the media
and in popular culture (Bickford, “Stories”; Kinney), I will demonstrate
that, rather than merely reproducing formulaic representations, crime
C. Beyer (B)
University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

116 C. BEYER
fiction has the capacity to convey considerable variety and nuance in

its portrayal of female sex trafficking. This leads me to contend that a
critical assessment of the various representations of female sex trafficking
in crime fiction and their impact on readers is long overdue. My chapter
seeks to remedy this gap in critical debates, by analysing a selection of
crime fictions and their portrayals of females subjected to sex trafficking,
in order to examine the differing ways in which crime narratives explore
gendered positions of victimhood.2 I thus demonstrate that, through
detailed and complex representations of transnational sex trafficking
victims and the differing social contexts, crime fiction engenders more
nuanced understandings of female victims’ agency and mobility.
The texts to be examined here are the Danish author Naja Marie Aidt’s
short story “Women in Copenhagen” (2010), British author Matt John-
son’s Deadly Game (2017), and Northern Irish author Stuart Neville’s
Stolen Souls (2011).3 These texts have been selected for the present exam-
ination because of the differing aspects of transnational sex trafficking
which they treat thematically, their locational focus on different Western
European settings impacted by transnational sex trafficking, and the
specific ways the texts utilise narrative perspective to examine central issues
of exploitation and mobility. Aidt’s short story describes the normalisa-
tion of transnational sex trafficking in Western European societies, and
examines mobility in relation to issues of privilege, class, gender and
race/ethnicity. Johnson’s novel problematises the blurred lines between
sex trafficking of children and women often found in popular and critical
discourses, reiterating prevailing victim stereotypes (Gregoriou and Ras
8). Neville’s novel explores the female transnational trafficking victim’s
perspective, particularly the impact of trauma on victims and their strate-
gies for resistance and survival. These three texts thus illustrate different
aspects of transnational female sex trafficking as a particularly problematic
form of criminalised mobility. Analysing portrayals of transnational female
sex trafficking victims, my chapter investigates how human trafficking in
crime fiction is imagined and depicted, arguing that this theme highlights
the complex problems and social effects caused by criminalised mobility,
such as illegal flows of people across borders into Western Europe from
former East Bloc countries and the Global South. The crime fictions
analysed here thus engage with the human and social cost of transna-
tional sex crime, investigating international issues of cultural and social
inequality which have particularly devastating consequences for women
and girls whose rights and positions are at best liminal.
6 TRANSNATIONAL FEMALE SEX TRAFFICKING … 117
Critical Perspectives and Contexts

By highlighting the negative implications of mobility, and problema-
tising the ways in which opportunistic criminal networks and trafficking
gangs exploit mobility, the crime narratives examined here urge the
reader to consider the complicated roles of Western societies in an
unequal world of violence and corruption. Public awareness of transna-
tional human trafficking has grown exponentially since the 2003 United
Nations ratification of the international treaty the Palermo Protocol. Set
up in order to counter human trafficking (Moore and Goldberg 17), the
Palermo Protocol gives a “tripartite definition of trafficking as involving
deceptive/coercive recruitment, movement and exploitation of a person”
(Wylie and McRedmond 2). As Joana Ruivo states, traffickers are oppor-
tunists who seek to exploit victims from countries with high poverty
levels and poor educational opportunities (21–22). These dimensions
are explored in Aidt, Johnson and Neville, as well as in other popular
texts such as documentaries and autobiographical narratives by human
trafficking survivors (Mai; Bales and Trodd). Recent years have seen
increasing media and public debate around the subject of human traf-
ficking, particularly transnational human trafficking to Western Europe
from the Global South and South-East, and former East Bloc countries
(Surtees; Tverdova). The theme of female sex trafficking from the above-
mentioned regions into Europe has dominated media discussions, with
Western Europe regarded as the favoured destination (“Trafficking in
Persons” 10–12). These significant sociopolitical aspects of mobility and
trafficking are investigated in the crime fictions under consideration here.
Although female sex trafficking is frequently discussed in media and
popular culture, it is important to assess its representation in crime fiction,
due to the genre’s capacity to affect readers’ perceptions of this crime
(Bickford, “Stories” 2). As Edith Kinney comments, “Public concep-
tions of human trafficking as ‘modern-day slavery’ are shaped by a spate
of documentaries, exposés by investigative journalists, television crime
dramas, and feature films” (88). The crime fictions examined here all
explore the idea that transnational female sex trafficking has become
normalised in society but seek to engender an understanding of its
victims. Furthermore, the theme of transnational female sex trafficking
is a compelling example of how contemporary crime fiction engages
with themes of mobility and detection across borders. The crime fictions
discussed here demonstrate that, within a modern slavery economy,
118 C. BEYER
mobility is a term which differs greatly in meaning and consequence

depending on the subject’s position. Ingo Berensmeyer and Christoph
Ehland explain that “Literature reflects and processes the transforma-
tive force of movement on the perception of the world and is part of
the broader cultural discourses of mobility” (13). Human trafficking is
a process which includes recruitment, transportation and exploitation
(Aronowitz 9); therefore, mobility (principally enforced) is a central facet
of transnational sex trafficking. Thus, in crime fiction, the theme of
human trafficking links mobility to broader concerns regarding exploita-
tion and criminality, but also draws attention to the privilege enjoyed by
exclusive groups in society, for whom movement is a choice, a luxury,
even.
The theme of transnational female sex trafficking brings together vital
questions in relation to gender, criminalised mobility and crime. Analysing
these complex issues requires a flexible critical approach which aligns with
crime fiction criticism and is sensitive to the questions relating to cultural
and ethnic difference which female sex trafficking foregrounds.4
This chapter employs a range of critical perspectives in its analysis of
representations of female sex trafficking. Principally, these include crime
fiction criticism and feminist analyses by Bickford; Brunsdale; Moore
and Goldberg; and Kinney. Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Elizabeth
Swanson Goldberg argue that the stereotypical female trafficking narra-
tive is often presented as an “atrocity tale,” according to which “sex
slavery” is made to “break” and mistreat a young woman, “often of
Eastern European descent” (21). My chapter sets out to test this analysis,
exploring the extent to which crime fiction—a genre wedded to the
depiction of violent crime—is able to convey further complexity in the
victim’s experience, and to what effect.
A crucial means of achieving this insight into the sex trafficking
victim’s experience is through critical engagement with representations
of the trauma they endure, a theme examined particularly closely in
Neville’s novel. As Laurie Vickroy states, “Fiction provides readers a
wealth of thick description of the conditions and characteristics of
traumatic experience” (137). The depiction of victim trauma in crime
fiction, according to Leanne Dodd, provides “an opportunity for authors,
including crime writers, to empower a large audience with knowledge
of trauma by presenting how characters process traumatic experience”
(4), by “open[ing] up a space in which to depict more authentic and
safe representations of traumatic experience” (5). This constellation of
critical perspectives enables me to investigate the politics of representing

female sex trafficking and the psychological dimensions of traumatic expe-
rience, rather than merely the oft-encountered sensationalised aspects of
the crime. These gender-political dimensions are central to our under-
standing of the role of crime fiction in exposing the damage this crime
causes.
The crime fictions analysed in this chapter demonstrate, to a varying
degree, the capacity of literature to educate its readerships about the
damage caused by female sex trafficking on micro- and macro-levels (see
also Bickford, “Stories”). As such, the police investigators or detectives
and their private lives and problems are not the main topic of interest
here. Rather, the representation of the female victims, their struggle
to survive or resist victimisation, becomes the principal subject for the
present discussion. This critical examination of crime narratives high-
lights the contradictions of portraying female sex trafficking within the
crime genre. As we shall see, narratives of female sex trafficking embody
the potential to problematise notions of social, cultural and linguistic
mobility, highlighting the divisions between those with privilege who
control the mobility of others, and those who are enslaved.
When Sex Trafficking Is Part of the Everyday

Picture: “Women in Copenhagen”
This examination of Naja Marie Aidt’s Nordic Noir crime short story
“Women in Copenhagen” focuses on the story’s portrayal of female sex
trafficking as a normalised part of everyday life on the city’s streets, and
its implications for how we perceive female victims of this crime.5 The
story explicitly echoes stereotypical perceptions of sex trafficking and the
operation of gangs and networks of criminals organising the trafficking
and exploitation of women for the purposes of prostitution. Although
female sex trafficking is not the central theme in Aidt’s quest narrative,
it is situated alongside the continuum of violations against women in the
story’s depiction of a society where the vulnerable and the marginalised
are easy meat for exploitation.
Aidt’s story is set in contemporary Copenhagen rife with crime and
social inequality, using a detached first-person narrator to underline the
sense of alienation it engenders. The opening highlights the theme of
mobility, describing the protagonist’s arrival to a desolate, noir cityscape—
a contrast to conventional images of affluent, open Scandinavia: “If you
120 C. BEYER
ever come to Copenhagen and ride into town from the airport on a rainy,
dark November evening…. You have arrived in Scandinavia…. Here you
are left to your own fate. Copenhagen Noir” (23). The narrator is a
middle-aged man who has lived in New York for a number of years, but
who has returned to the metropolis where he once lived. He assumes an
amateur detective role in his search for Lucille, the daughter of his ex-
partner, who recently contacted him, intimating that she was in danger
and asking him to help her. Haunted by the unfinished business of his
life, the protagonist goes in search of Lucille in the shady, less salubrious
parts of Copenhagen. It is during one of his night-time searches that the
theme of female sex trafficking and sexual exploitation is introduced: he
describes watching a group of young black prostitutes working the streets
who are “at the bottom of the pecking order and come out only after
the other prostitutes have gone home. They get the worst customers.
All the scum. The violent, the drunk, the sick” (37). This description
highlights the normalisation of sexual exploitation of females from the
Global South, exposing the racialised hierarchy within which the women
are denigrated. The objectification of the women is evident in the narra-
tor’s own detached description of the transactions: he observes how “A
car pulls up to the group and stops. Negotiations take place through the
front windshield. A fat hand points at the girl it wants” (37). As Mitzi
M. Brunsdale notes, organised sexual crime such as prostitution is now
rife in Danish society, with women trafficked into the country for the
purpose of sexual exploitation (31–32).
The narrator’s reflections on transnational female sex trafficking reveal
the extent to which the crime has become normalised. Later, as the
protagonist walks the streets at night, he observes a long-haired Russian
criminal doing his rounds, first checking on his drug-dealing boys, then
on a group of black prostitutes. The narrator watches the Russian hit
one of the young black prostitutes and pushing her around. Passively
observing the violent interlude but doing nothing to intervene or stop the
abuse, the protagonist believes the young black prostitute to be a victim
of transnational sex trafficking. He reflects that he has “read about these
girls, especially the ones from Gambia…. They are held as prostitutes
here, often under threat and against their will. They are promised a life
of luxury in cozy little Copenhagen. And end up as slaves” (Aidt 28–29).
Relating what he witnessed to newspaper reports, the narrator’s awareness
of transnational female sex trafficking and its racial politics demonstrates
the impact of media reports and the tacit toleration within Western society
of the “invisible,” normalised face of its presence. What is being repro-

duced are, as Julietta Hua and Holly Nigorizawa argue, such “troubling
gender-race-nation discourses of victimization, which construct a stereo-
type of the ‘helpless victim’ that links femininity to dependency and racial
‘otherness’ to cultural deviancy” (Hua and Nigorizawa 402). Consoli-
dating the notion of the black sex trafficked woman as victim, the narrator
later finds the body of a dead black woman in Lucille’s flat, presumed
murdered and concealed there by Dmitrij, Lucille’s Russian boyfriend and
the long-haired Russian thug the narrator saw earlier. The narrator imag-
ines himself caught up in a gang war—“the Russians versus the Gambian
slavers”—but eventually detaches himself from the crimes he witnesses
because “it wasn’t Lucille” (36).
The theme of men exploiting women is conveyed on both macro- and
micro-levels in the story. The narrator meets up with the now adult friend
of Lucille to get information regarding Lucille’s whereabouts. He starts
fantasising about sleeping with the friend and feels sexually aroused by
her. He does not question whether these feelings of sexual arousal are
inappropriate, and she ends up having to fight him off as he makes a
move on her. The title of Aidt’s story, “Women in Copenhagen,” thus
references the various ways women are objectified and female sexuality
rendered a commodity, collectively in society through sex trafficking, and
individually within private relationships. The story thereby connects the
theme of trafficking of women with other types of gendered crime, along
a continuum of violations and transgressions. Aidt’s story problematises
the tacit acceptance of female sex trafficking, a topic also referred to in the
introduction to Copenhagen Noir, by the book’s editor Bo Tao Michaëlis.
He explains how “The short stories in Copenhagen Noir deal often with
[trafficking], the introduction of women from the outside—often the
third world—to our own little den of capitalist lust” (16).
At the end of the story, the narrator returns to New York following his
confrontation with the past and a harsh contemporary Danish society he
barely recognises anymore. For him, mobility was part of a personal quest
for meaning in an incomprehensible and alienating contemporary world.
Seemingly free of responsibility, his expatriate existence in New York keeps
him at a distance from “women in Copenhagen” and his own acquies-
cence in female exploitation. The story thus explores the various nuances
of movement, from autonomous agency to criminalised mobility, sex traf-
ficking and modern slavery. The privileged male narrator is able to exercise
122 C. BEYER
choice and make self-reliant life decisions regarding mobility, whereas the
victims of sex trafficking, the black street prostitutes, are trapped in a cycle
of abuse, violence and degradation.
Female Sex Trafficking Stereotypes: Deadly Game

This discussion of Matt Johnson’s police procedural novel Deadly Game
focuses on its use of victim stereotypes and reliance on popular traf-
ficking representations. Set in contemporary London, the novel depicts
the rescue and murder of Relia Stanga, a young female Romanian sex traf-
ficking victim. According to critics Rutvica Andrijasevic and Nicola Mai,
such cultural representations of female sex trafficking perpetuate certain
stereotypes: “a young, innocent, foreign woman tricked into prostitution
abroad. She is battered and kept under continuous surveillance so that
her only hope is police rescue.” Through its powerful opening, told from
the perspective of the female trafficking victim prior to her trafficking and
exploitation, Deadly Game provides an insight into Relia’s background
and motivations. This portrayal of the victim puts a human face to female
sex trafficking, an act which constitutes this novel’s most compelling
aspect (see also Beyer, “Resisting”; Bickford, “Novels”). However, at
the same time Deadly Game perpetuates existing myths about former
East Bloc countries, and about sex traffickers and their female victims.
Furthermore, apart from the novel’s opening chapter, the female traf-
ficking victim’s perspective is not explored in any detail; consequently,
the reader remains somewhat detached from her plight.
The reader is first introduced to the character of Relia through the
novel’s Prologue, dated 1999 in Romania, which tells the story of her
poverty-stricken life devoid of opportunity, and how she was lured and
then coerced by traffickers. The opening page states that Relia is 17,
which means that, according to the Palermo Protocol, she is a victim
of child trafficking.6 However, the specific aspect of child sex trafficking
has been overlooked by reviewers and commentators of the novel, who
merely describe the crime as “slave trafficking” (Amphlett) and “sex traf-
ficking” (Marianne). This suggests that the sex trafficking of women and
children is lumped together by commentators, without enough attention
to the specificity of child sex trafficking as a crime (Beyer, “Suitcase”).
Deadly Game’s opening deliberately constructs a particular narrative
about former East Bloc countries and the hardship encountered by people
living in remote parts that may lead to human trafficking. Relia comes
from a small Romanian village, where she works at a factory but harbours
dreams of leaving for the city lights and a better life. One day she is picked
out to serve at a dinner in a wealthy factory owner’s luxurious house,
where she is introduced to traffickers under the auspices of gaining pres-
tigious employment in the city. The transactions taking place over the
girls who are serving the traffickers dinner explicitly demonstrate their
objectification, exposing the inhumane commodification of children and
young women in sex trafficking. At the end of the short Prologue, Relia
by chance notices the factory owner’s wife throw away the goodbye letters
which she and the other girls were instructed to write to their families.
This discovery is a warning of the reality behind the glamorous façade
that seduced her. It hints at the suffering to come, suggesting that for
girls and young women from Relia’s class, mobility means being trafficked
for purposes of exploitation, rather than a fairy-tale life of wealth and city
glamour.
When the reader next encounters Relia later in the novel, a couple of
years have passed after she was first trafficked. At this point, she is no
longer the focus of the narrative; instead, her story is presented through
the perspective of police officers discussing her case as victim, her plight
described as typical of transnational human trafficking of women and girls
for sexploitation: “Relia wasn’t paid, and she was only given the barest of
provisions to ensure she could survive and fulfil her role—to have sex
with as many men as the owners decided” (Johnson 89). Having been
subjected to violence and rape, forced to take drugs, and exploited and
abused in brothels in Hungary, Italy and Britain, Relia has also been
blackmailed by the traffickers who threaten to hurt her family. At this
point, Relia has been trafficked through several different sex trade estab-
lishments in various countries, and her traffickers have now coldly decided
that she is finished and “to be disposed of.” Deadly Game thus provides a
realistic assessment of the financial aspects and human cost of the devas-
tation caused by sex trafficking for its victims: “It was a lucrative business
for the criminals that ran it and a disaster for its victims. The girls had a
limited shelf life” (Johnson 89). Waiting to testify against her traffickers,
Relia is tracked down and murdered by them, as the authorities fail to
adequately protect her: “She had known too much and had been willing
to name names, identify traffickers and help bring other victims who
might also be willing to help. The slavers had found and silenced her”
(142). Johnson himself has stressed the connection between the novel
and real-life trafficking crimes. He has stated that “The story of Relia,
124 C. BEYER
and of how she falls into a trap that so many young women succumb to
is based on very real stories I heard” (“The Crime Review”). Relia’s char-
acter is compelling; however, the erasure of her story from the narrative’s
centre divests the reader of her perspective on her experience.
Johnson’s novel is noteworthy for the lack of sensationalism or gratu-
itous violence in its portrayal of sex trafficking, and the insight that
it provides into the international “structural factors” of poverty and
inequality leading to trafficking (see also Gregoriou and Ras 16). Through
the novel’s depiction of police dealings with Relia, the reader realises
how “the slave route” functions and learns about transnational sex traf-
ficking networks and the ruthlessly exploitative nature of this crime. The
novel explains how “trade infiltrated the corridors of power, how influ-
ential people became complicit in the business as customers, as organisers
or simply by turning a blind eye” (Johnson 88–89). As in Aidt’s story,
freedom of mobility is reserved for the privileged, whereas the transna-
tional sex trafficked woman remains fixed in a powerless victim position,
in a narrative of exploitation and silence. Deadly Game conveys the inhu-
manity of transnational human trafficking, whereby girls and women are
objectified and dumped or killed when no longer useful. Their victim
status is defined through their gender and the commodification of their
bodies and sexuality, an objectification which to a degree is perpetuated
by the narrative perspective of the novel itself. Relia’s later experiences
of trafficking, sexual exploitation and rescue are told to the reader as
part of a police report and ongoing investigation, rather than from her
point of view as a main character, which generates a sense of detachment
from female sex trafficking victims. The novel perpetuates the stereotyp-
ical image of brutalised Eastern European sex trafficked young women,
but also shows how victims continue to be fixed, symbolically and physi-
cally, after their “rescue” by a society ill-equipped to meet their complex
needs.7 Paradoxically, in Deadly Game, freedom of mobility is both a
gender- and class exclusive privilege, and a trap used to lure and enslave
female victims of transnational sex trafficking.
Surviving Female Sex Trafficking: Stolen Souls

Stuart Neville’s police procedural novel Stolen Souls illustrates the contra-
dictions in crime fiction’s representations of transnational female sex
trafficking, problematising issues of mobility, identity and agency through
its depictions of victims and trafficking networks and gangs.8 However,
like Johnson’s novel, Stolen Souls also reiterates familiar stereotypes of

female trafficking victims from former East Bloc countries, although it
does attempt to resist these patterns of victimisation, by insisting on the
female victim’s agency in moving beyond the trauma she has experienced,
and her determination to reclaim her life and selfhood post-trafficking.
The novel’s detailed focus on the victim and her experience of trafficking
and mobility is what distinguishes it from the other two texts examined
in this chapter.
Set in contemporary Belfast, Stolen Souls is based around a murder plot
which involves Galya, a young female sex trafficking victim from Ukraine
who has been brought to the city by a trafficking gang to be exploited.
The setting of Belfast highlights the complicated histories of violence and
opportunist crime which continue to haunt Europe and pave the way for
the prospering of human trafficking and other forms of exploitative crim-
inality. Stolen Souls examines the issue of Ukrainian human trafficking, a
problem which has ravaged the country since its 1991 independence, as
it remains constrained both economically and through its difficult rela-
tionship to Russia. The economic crisis in the country has reached such
a point that people are desperate to get away and will pay anything for
a ticket to the West (Tucker). Like Johnson, Neville thus investigates the
role of former East Bloc countries in contributing to the female sex traf-
ficking trade. Stolen Souls ’s portrayal of transnational female sex trafficking
reflects prevailing stereotypes, but also draws attention to issues of priv-
ilege in relation to mobility. As evidence of the research he undertook
to support the portrayal of sex trafficking in Stolen Souls , Neville credits
Louisa Waugh’s book Selling Olga (2006), an exposé about human traf-
ficking from former East Bloc countries and the Global South, in the
Acknowledgements section of his novel. Nevertheless, as Andrijasevic and
Mai conclude, this narrative is stereotypical and serves to establish certain
fixed patterns.
The title of Neville’s novel, Stolen Souls , alludes to the abandonment
of hope and self-determination by the women dehumanised through sex
trafficking. In “Galya,” the opening part of the novel, the reader learns
of the female protagonist’s history. Impoverished, both her parents dead
and with a younger brother to support, Galya has had to pay traffickers
a great deal of money to get to the West. Lured under false pretences by
a fake work agency called “European People Management,” Galya finds
herself imprisoned and forced into prostitution. By using Galya as the
narrative focal point, the novel’s dramatic opening details her traumatic
126 C. BEYER
experiences as she kills one of her captors in self-defence when he enters

the room where she is held prisoner to “break her in.” By killing him and
escaping from her ordeal, Galya reclaims her ability to move at her own
will, striking back against the traffickers and contesting the idea of passive
victimhood and police rescue.
In Stolen Souls , the female trafficking victim’s mobility and agency are
compromised by the different men who seek to control her, whether
through deception, enforced imprisonment and attempted murder (her
traffickers), or through a debt of gratitude (the money from Police Detec-
tive Jack Lennon). Neville states in an interview with critic Barry Forshaw
that he felt Galya’s agency was crucial to his portrayal of her: “With Stolen
Souls, it was very important to me that my protagonist Galya would not
be a victim; she would not passively wait for a hero to come and save
her. If she’s going to survive, it’ll be by her own efforts” (Forshaw).
The novel signals Galya’s desire for self-determination through the motif
of her running. Refusing to let her body be controlled as an objecti-
fied commodity, she reclaims mobility through her body’s power and
ability to evade capture. However, this freedom to move is temporary.
The unresolved contradictions in the novel’s representation of female sex
trafficking victims are displayed in its portrayal of Galya’s “alter ego” char-
acter, a nameless woman who has been lured to an abandoned property
by a sadistic man who keeps her imprisoned and tortures her. Her pitiful
character is symbolic of the objectification of the female sex trafficking
victim: tied to a bed, trapped in a room without language or agency, to be
abused and then disposed of when she no longer serves a purpose for the
sadistic male using her. Neville’s novel engages the reader’s imagination
in the trafficked women’s suffering, reflecting Vickroy’s point that “Effec-
tive trauma texts engage readers in a critical process by immersing them
in, and yet providing perspective on, the flawed thinking, feeling, and
behavior of the traumatized individual” (138). Through the characters
of Galya and the nameless woman, Stolen Souls examines the agonising
experiences of trauma which afflict female sex trafficking victims.
Galya is rescued from the sadistic maniac’s imprisonment by Police
Detective Jack Lennon. Given money by Lennon to return to Ukraine at
the end of the novel, Galya evades punishment for stabbing her trafficker
to death as he came to rape her. In the novel’s closing chapter, a letter
from Galya to Lennon describes how she succeeded in escaping Belfast
and eventually returned to Ukraine, selling her mother’s farm to pay off
the debt bondage owed to the trafficker. This recuperation of agency is a
crucial dimension of her character. As Vickroy states, fiction can serve the
purpose of “expressing the voices of trauma through the survivor’s narra-
tive” (130). Thus, although Stolen Souls engineers a positive ending for
Galya, the narrative exposes the lack of formal social care structures for
victims post-rescue (see also Bulman). Reliant on familiar stereotypes of
the transnational female sex trafficking victim and the heroic male saviour
who frees her, the novel’s insistence on Galya’s reclaiming her mobility
nevertheless adds a dimension of hope to an otherwise dark narrative.
However, as Aidt and Johnson show, the reality of transnational female
sex trafficking shows that the narrative reclamation of mobility is rendered
problematic and unrealistic by structural inequalities, and that represen-
tations of female sex trafficking threaten to perpetuate the crime, rather
than eradicate it (Gregoriou and Ras 16).
Conclusion: Resisting the Normalisation

of Female Sex Trafficking
Portrayals of transnational female sex trafficking in crime fiction suggest
that stereotypes of female trafficking victims persist, but also beg the
question of how the genre may challenge and change these stock repre-
sentations. Vickroy argues that sensitive representations of victim trauma
can be highly effective, stating that “suffering is shown to be the
basis for social critique by demonstrating the ties between individual
trauma and larger social injustices” (149). As we have seen, Johnson
and Neville opened with chapters presenting the female victims’ expe-
riences of transnational sex trafficking, and, in Neville’s case particularly,
the trauma that trafficking and exploitation cause. Although this focus is
not sustained throughout Johnson’s novel, the novels allow the preoc-
cupation with victims of female sex trafficking to be fully established
rather than minimised within a police procedural plotline. Aidt’s crime
short story differs from this pattern, as it follows the narrator and centres
on his experience, agency and mobility. The portrayals of female sex
trafficking victims communicate, in varying detail, their imagined expe-
rience across cultural and national boundaries, both perpetuating and
challenging current perceptions of transnational sex trafficking of women.
Describing human trafficking, Maria Joăo Guia states that it is “one of
the most grievous crimes in the world. It involves many different types of
offences, all of which prevent the victim from exercising his [sic] freedom
of will,” not least because of the money involved (vii). The crime fictions
128 C. BEYER
examined here critique the normalised and tacitly accepted presence of

female sex trafficking in everyday life as part of a consumer-based mass
society. The theme of transnational female sex trafficking throws a spot-
light on the politics of mobility, and the gender, class and ethnicity-driven
inequality of transnational movement. By investigating representations in
crime fiction of the women victims who have been trafficked for purposes
of sexual exploitation, the crime fictions discussed here provide an insight
into the complexity and controversy of the crime, and highlight the
crucial role and function of mobility as a signifier of privilege.
Notes
1. Funding for the research that forms the basis for this chapter was received
from a PaCCS Interdisciplinary Innovation Award, awarded in 2016,
Project reference ES/P001130/1. See also Gregoriou.
2. See Beyer, “Suitcase” on theorising and analysing representations of child
trafficking victims’ trauma in crime fiction.
3. An early version of this chapter, “Depictions of human trafficking in
contemporary crime fiction,” was given as a conference paper at Networks
and Connections in the Crime Genre, 26–27 May 2017, NUI Galway,
Ireland.
4. See Beyer, “Suitcase” and “Resisting” for further discussion of method-
ological questions relating to analysing human trafficking themes in crime
fiction.
5. Due to the complexity of translation studies, there is no scope here to
explore the implications of the translation of Aidt’s crime short story.
6. I briefly make this point about Johnson’s novel in Beyer, “Suitcase”; see
also Moore and Goldberg; Bickford.
7. I briefly touch on these issues in relation to Johnson and Neville’s novels
in Beyer “Migration.”
8. Neville’s novel is briefly mentioned in Beyer, “Suitcase.”
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“The Crime Review, Q and A: Matt Johnson About Deadly Game.” The Crime
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PART II
Historicising Mobility and Agency

CHAPTER 7
The Socially Mobile Female in Victorian

and Neo-Victorian Mysteries
Meghan P. Nolan
Introduction
As with all great cities, the dichotomous nature of Victorian London easily
lends itself to the mystery genre, because it is simultaneously vast and
condensed in landscape, diverging construction, ideals and people abut
and overlap within its many warrens. While socioeconomic borders and
hierarchal standards abound in this environment, the upper and lower
classes remain intertwined and mutually dependent. Thus, it is often
through social mobility or ambiguity that criminal motives in Victorian
mysteries can be fully unearthed, and this is as true for pieces written
during the nineteenth century as for those composed today. There are
many ways to view social mobility in this context, but as Tim Cresswell
indicates, “mobility exists in the same relation to movement as place does
to location (Cresswell, 2006) and … involves a fragile entanglement of
physical movement, representations, and practices. Furthermore, these
entanglements have broadly traceable histories and geographies” (18).
Although social mobility is traditionally viewed as moving between class
M. P. Nolan (B)
Rockland Community College, State University of New York,
Suffern, NY, USA

136 M. P. NOLAN
ranks economically (see, e.g., Long), it takes on a different meaning in

Victorian detective fiction, as characters do not change social or monetary
status themselves, but must possess the ability to interact and move seam-
lessly among varying classes through atypical modes in order to collect
evidence.
To solve murders, male characters in original and modern Victorian
mysteries must blend in with London’s wealthy and poor denizens alike;
however, it is the women in these mysteries who are the most flexible
and mobile bodies. While the men exhibit duality through simple means,
frequently not much more than a mere change of clothing is required to
shift between classes, women consistently defy gender expectations and a
great deal hinges on their abilities to exist among disparate classes. This
is principally the case for aristocratic females in contemporary renderings
who are positioned as the unofficial (but influential) partners to their male
counterparts as they freely interact with individuals of all social classes and
take on roles outside their expected domestic duties. These women both
use their ranks and rally against them as it suits their (or the protagonist’s)
needs and maintain their positions and command respect among people
of differing classes despite the unlikeliness of such a favourability in the
real world or even the literature of the time. While scholars in various
disciplines have examined identity in relation to this kind of social move-
ment between classes, “They have not been so good at telling us about
the representations and meanings to mobility either at the individual level
or at the societal level” (Cresswell 19). This oversight has the potential
to be particularly perilous for examining women’s identities in literature,
because they are traditionally fraught with real societal limitations both
stated and unstated.
This chapter analyses the evolution of perceptions of social mobility
in the form of interaction among various classes outside the domestic
setting for contemporary versions of Victorian women in relation to
those characterisations of the day through the tropes of birthright (and
its associated guilt), charity and marriage. Detective fiction is a perfect
vehicle for this enquiry, because it “is deeply enmeshed with most
of the thornier problems of the Victorian, modern, and postmodern
eras, including gender roles and privileges, racial prejudice and the
formation of racial consciousness, the significance and morality of wealth
and capital, and the conflicting demands of privacy and social control”
(Nickerson 744). More specifically, this chapter uses texts on gender,
etiquette and feminism to compare portrayals of women’s social mobility
7 THE SOCIALLY MOBILE FEMALE IN VICTORIAN … 137
in actual Victorian mysteries, such as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

(1852–1853), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891)
and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1906), with those in the William
Monk series by Anne Perry (1990–) and the Sebastian St. Cyr series by
C.S. Harris (2005–).1 As Doreen Massey declares, curtailing “women’s
mobility, in terms of both identity and space, has been in some cultural
contexts a crucial means of subordination. Moreover, the two things—the
limitation on mobility in space, the attempted consignment/confinement
to particular places on the one hand, and the limitation of identity on the
other—have been crucially related” (179). This approach offers a way to
examine the cultural ramifications of regulated movement for female char-
acters and demonstrates that the initial reasons for their border crossing
remain the same in the inherent constraints of Victorian womanhood—
guilt and charity are the primary motivators for the socially mobile female
involved in a mystery, then and now. It suggests that this is also true
for the stories’ lower-class women who possess the less restrictive method
of disguise as an additional detective tool. The historical mystery novels
examined highlight the necessity and means of movement between classes
in relation to identity for female characters and allow us to interrogate
the implications of rewriting societal norms. This chapter proposes that
changing views on marriage have had the greatest effect on how the new
Victorian female is portrayed in detective fiction, and contemporary char-
acters possess greater freedom in their approaches to solving crimes, which
is indicative of a post-second-wave feminist re-envisioning of women’s
social roles.
Guilt and Charity as Motivators

for Female Mobility
Until fairly recently, it was believed to be a tacit fact that a woman’s place
was in the home, and for Victorian people, works like Coventry Patmore’s
book of poetry, The Angel in the House (1854), typified women from
varying classes as the epicentre of the domestic sphere (see “Book I”
3–52). Hence, it is often through great restriction that female literary
characters of the time traverse social borders to solve a mystery, as they
must approach matters differently than their male counterparts because
of a delineation of the sexes pervasive during the Victorian period (and in
some ways still persistent today). In his lectures titled Sesame and Lilies
138 M. P. NOLAN
(1865), English writer John Ruskin2 encapsulates the reasoning for an

innate separateness of male and female characteristics at the time:
The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer,

the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and
invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever
war is just, wherever conquest is necessary. But the woman’s power is for
rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but
for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of
things, their claims, and their places…. The man, in his rough work in
open world, must encounter all peril and trial: to him, therefore, must be
failure, the offense, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or
subdued, or misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from
all this … unless she herself has sought it. (51)
Ruskin’s depiction of males as predominantly hardened discoverers and

defenders who seek out peril and thus must endure the resultant error,
failure and/or offense, aligns with depictions of border-crossing men in
(mystery) novels from both eras.
Detectives from earlier mysteries primarily subscribe to Ruskin’s asser-
tions, as the focus is extensively on men’s abilities to deduce the truth via
logic and reason. In Bleak House, “Inspector Bucket … the first ‘detec-
tive hero’ in British fiction” (Ben-Merre 50) interacts with the gentry in
one scene and exhibits an “artful familiarity with the Dedlock footman or
his privileged airs with the petits bourgeois Smallweeds and Chadbands”
(Walton 459) in the next. In the late nineteenth century, the image of
the observant and stealthy sleuth is repeated in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes, as the first (and most well-known) British gentleman detective,
has an unrivalled insistence upon the necessities of educated reasoning
and attention to detail, and he, like Bucket, moves freely between the
social classes to gather evidence. He is as likely to be found in an opium
den (“The Man with the Twisted Lip,” 1891) as on a wealthy estate or
at the opera (“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” 1901–02). Later depic-
tions of the Victorian male also fit Ruskin’s description, but regardless of
social caste, the focus is less on deduction and more on their headstrong
approaches to crime regardless of the personal injury it may bring. Char-
acters like Conrad’s Chief Inspector Heat, Perry’s Commander Monk
and Harris’s Viscount Devlin, Sebastian St. Cyr must also piece together
mysteries through this kind of social mobility, but they rarely encounter
issues with gleaning information from members of various social strata

during their investigations.
In embodying Ruskin’s ideal, the aforementioned male characters
exemplify a correlation between manliness and power that is problem-
atic for their female counterparts, because “Masculinity seems to extend
outward into patriarchy and inward into the family; masculinity represents
the power of inheritance, the consequences of the traffic of women, and
the promise of social privilege” (Halberstam 2). It is not surprising that
Ruskin claims a woman at the time was naturally “protected from all [the]
danger and temptation” that men are inevitably prone to, unless “she
herself has sought it” (51). This is the crux of the socially mobile female,
for if amid the mystery trouble has found her, then she has only herself
to blame. For nineteenth-century women, movement between classes and
otherwise is invariably tied to a host of political, ideological and cultural
limitations because of perceived notions of physicality.
In the nineteenth century, middle-class and aristocratic women could
not be seen among the lower classes unless it was for the purposes of
charity. Philanthropy became the customary impetus for social mobility
in Victorian London even though it had its limitations because of strict
rules of propriety. The plight of the poor was a common focus among the
upper classes and it was reflected in novels of the time. Bleak House, for
example, calls attention to the different, yet equally deplorable situations
of impoverished characters including the brickmakers and their wives,
the Jellybys, the Skimpoles, Jo the street sweep and Ms. Flite. Esther
Summerson’s involvement with these characters, and thus her social
mobility, is predicated on her charitable actions towards them. It is also
a product of an inherent guilt she possesses because of her own confused
birthright, as Esther’s3 godmother boldly proclaims, “Your mother,
Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time will come—and
soon enough—when you will understand this better, and will feel it too,
as no one save a woman can” (32). From the beginning of the novel, it
is clear that the burden of her background results in a self-reproach that
drives Esther to pour herself into those around her as she moves from
one social stratum to another.
It is easy to believe that Esther should play a greater role in unravel-
ling the truth, especially as it relates to the mystery of her own parentage.
However, “it is improbable that the same person would have knowledge
of all the multitude of characters and events which comprise the series of
mysteries in Bleak House (Esther Summerson, for example, does not [and
140 M. P. NOLAN
cannot] even know that many of these mysteries exist)” (Grenander 303).
Esther is able to practice a deductive reasoning similar to that of Inspector
Bucket: for instance, she “offers evidence as to the [negligent] character of
Mr. Skimpole by means of his house” (Ben-Merre 53). However, because
of male privilege, Bucket can insert himself into social situations unin-
vited, but Esther’s movements (and her detection) are limited to only
those places where she is welcomed. The little evidence Esther gathers in
relation to the few mysteries of which she is aware stems from her role as
“a confidant of virtually everyone she meets, and consequently [she] has
access to the thoughts and feelings of her friends, as well as knowledge
about incidents and episodes at which she was not present” (Grenander
305); that is, pertinent information comes to her during conversations
in a few select locations. Her mobility is controlled via other means, too,
because even though she is not raised among the gentry, she “is a paragon
of all the virtues: intelligent, thoughtful, capable, self-reliant, affectionate,
cheerful, modest, likeable, etc” (Grenander 305). These qualities suggest
that she would never dream of stepping outside the confines of her
mandated domesticity by travelling to areas where she is not invited,
even for the sake of uncovering the truth. In short, Esther’s narrative
is a fairy tale cloaked in the harsh realities of the characters surrounding
her, and consequently her social mobility is as stymied as that of an estab-
lished aristocrat (e.g. Lady Dedlock). The same self-effacing contrition
and attention to charity are assigned to female Victorian characters written
today, but there is a loosening in hierarchal standards, which allows them
to move more freely because there exists “a delicate balance between the
conservative traditions of the conventional detective story and the femi-
nist insistence on change” in contemporary historical mysteries (Jeanne
Roberts qtd. in Nickerson 750).
Hester Latterly’s trajectory as a character in the Monk series is also
through social disgrace. The first novel, The Face of a Stranger (1990),
reveals that Hester’s father has run their aristocratic family into debt and
committed suicide, leaving the women to fend for themselves in a world
that deems them worthless without a formal attachment to a man. Still,
Hester readily admits that “If anyone had asked her [before her experience
as a nurse in the Crimean War] if she would have … married and secure
in status and well-being with family and friends, she would have accepted
it as a woman’s most ideal role, as if it were a stupid thing even to doubt”
(Dangerous 152). Even after experiencing life beyond the aristocracy in a
man’s domain—that of battle—she cannot fully shake those expectations
of the Victorian female. She describes her time in the Crimea thus: “Yes I
was afraid sometimes, but not often. Mostly I was too busy…. Sometimes
it is just tidying up that helps, getting a kind of order out of chaos”
(Dangerous 152). Even in the midst of war, she defaults to an “ordering,
arrangement, and decision” (Ruskin 51), which is in keeping with female
characters of the day. This is a tactic Esther employs as well. For instance,
after realising that Mr. Vholes is leading Richard to monetary ruin, Esther
plunges herself into her domestic duties with an almost hysterical gusto,
when upon returning to Bleak House she proclaims, “‘Once more, duty,
duty Esther,’ said I; ‘and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more than
cheerfully and contentedly … you ought to be. That’s all I have to say to
you, my dear!’” (508).
Like with Esther, a status-driven guilt and fierce determination drive
Hester further down the path of taking care of others; this choice situ-
ates her between social classes, as she often plays the role of servant to
the gentry although she was born a lady. She is sometimes treated as
the common help, ignored, and thus able to observe and collect clues
with little hindrance, while in other circumstances, she is accepted for
her birthright and can directly question or interact with her patients
and others as peers. In A Dangerous Mourning, Monk places her in
the Moidore household to gather information from the residents (all
suspects in a murder case), and Hester uses her position as a nurse to
collect evidence in both ways. Therefore, her detection initially resem-
bles that of Esther’s, as she primarily gleans information through her role
as confidant. However, as the series progresses, Hester blossoms beyond
the confines of her position when she establishes a free clinic for prosti-
tutes in London’s slums. This clinic provides a way for Hester to cross
class borders daily, as she physically moves between affluent and poverty-
stricken neighbourhoods. Along the way, she makes unlikely alliances
and befriends some unsavoury characters, among them a former brothel
owner, a doctor of questionable background and a number of street
urchins (one of whom becomes her informally adopted son), all of whom
provide her with information about crimes she would not have been able
to procure otherwise.
Several of the well-to-do women in the St. Cyr series engage in activ-
ities outside the demands of their designated class and gender, but the
leading lady, Hero Jarvis, intermingles with the working classes more than
anyone else. Her entanglement with St. Cyr begins because she possesses
knowledge of the murder of several prostitutes in a seedy area of London
142 M. P. NOLAN
(Where Serpents Sleep). Although Hero’s presence at the brothel as an

unmarried woman and the daughter of a prominent political figure devi-
ates from accepted behaviour of ladies of the time, from that point on, she
regularly moves between classes while assisting Devlin. She also demon-
strates mobility through her philanthropic endeavours, as she attempts to
reform living and working conditions for the poor through writing based
on her field research. Like Hester, she spends a significant amount of time
outside her home tackling these efforts, and so Hero, too, may possess a
guilt that hinges on Victorian ideals of pedigree, as readers get the sense
that this need to regularly infiltrate the masses—much more than social
norms would dictate—may derive from a desire to counteract her father’s
underhanded dealings.
While women of the time were relegated to the rules of propriety in
relation to their designated birthright, Esther, Hester and Hero exemplify
the burden of a required obligation in relation to aristocratic entitlement;
accordingly, their involvement in a murder is predicated on their abilities
to muster clues through their social interactions. In contrast, lower-
class women in Victorian mysteries seem to have yet another method of
detection at their disposal—the art of disguise.
The Limitations of Disguise

as a Means of Detection for Women
Disguise, the art of concealing one’s identity through costume, makeup
and acting as a means of blending into a different social caste, is frequently
employed by male and female characters in Victorian mysteries. These
concealments are used in order to suppress true economic status, depen-
dence or vulnerability (Nord 122), and to gain entry to places and
situations otherwise prohibited. Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the first
to extensively dabble in this art, and he, like other men in Victorian
mysteries, possesses the ability to easily change his appearance to manipu-
late a given situation. In “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Holmes is said
to be able to transform himself into an old man, “very thin, very wrinkled,
bent with age” (Doyle 213), whereas in other tales he can blend into any
crowd with no more than a hat, a fake moustache, or a shawl. Sebastian
St. Cyr also uses this technique to his advantage more than once (he too
can appear older with little more than a dusting of powder in his hair),
and is said to move “easily from the ballrooms of Mayfair to the rookeries
of St. Giles, from the exclusive men’s clubs of St. James to the dangerous
docks of the Thames” (“Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries”). Likewise, in The

Secret Agent , the Assistant Commissioner immediately turns to this form
of concealment at the beginning of his inquiry, but when asked by a supe-
rior if he plans to use a disguise, his response is, “Hardly a disguise! I’ll
change my clothes of course” (138). Yet, the effect of an upturned jacket
collar, a “low, round hat” (140), and “an upward twist to the ends of
his black moustache” is so great that he himself is “struck by his foreign
appearance” (141) in a glass reflection. In each of these situations, half-
baked disguises work, because men are not required to be socially mobile
in the sense that they actually fit into a given group of people via disguise.
As Ruskin intimates, it is in their nature, as if they were subconsciously
inviting danger or half daring someone to find them out. After all, the
inevitable failure is almost necessary for them to proceed to the next step
of the investigation. Men are only required to be mobile enough to gain
entrée into a given situation—after admitted, they can resume their proper
social status, because it is about asserting their dominance through brute
force, intimidation or wit.
Female counterparts from original and contemporary Victorian
mysteries engage in similar detection through disguise, but it is more diffi-
cult for a woman to both costume herself and be accepted in this capacity.
It is also a tactic reserved primarily for the lower-class women in these
narratives, as it would be frowned upon for a woman of the gentry to
position herself as anything else. This is not to say that aristocratic women
do not engage in disguise to cross class borders, but they do not do so
as a means of detection in Victorian mysteries. In Bleak House, the veils
of Lady Dedlock, Hortence and Hester “suggest a number of paradigms
associated with women’s navigation of city streets. The novel employs
a convention of Victorian women’s dress … to enhance the mystery of
the plot, to suggest the interchangeability of women within the context
of the city streets” (Nord 241). Thus, although Lady Dedlock dresses
herself as a peasant at the end of the novel, she does so to conceal her
movements so she can die in peace, not to garner information to one of
the novel’s many mysteries. In Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia,” however,
the main female character engages disguise for detective purposes, and it is
one of the few of his mysteries that directly juxtaposes a female character
(Irene Adler) with Holmes. The mystery Irene must solve differs from
that of Holmes; she must identify who is attempting to foil her black-
mail plot. Irene is notable also because she exemplifies a common motif
among lower-class females who utilise disguise during the course of an
144 M. P. NOLAN
investigation. She disguises as a “slim youth in an ulster” (157) in order

to move among the masses on Baker Street and expose Holmes’s true
identity; such cross-dressing clearly intimates how “mobilities are both
productive of … social relations and produced by them” (Cresswell 21).
This kind of “[g]ender disguise might provide an exhilarating sense of
invisibility, interrupt the circuit of objectification, and deflect the atten-
tion habitually attracted by the lone female in a public place” (Nord 241).
As Irene notes, “I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is
nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives”
(158). Unlike Holmes, she is formally trained in the art of makeup and
persona adaptation—a skill these men seem to naturally possess without
instruction, although not to the same degree.
Additionally, Irene’s cross-dressing4 is only tolerated because she
bridges the male-female divide while possessing the most desirable qual-
ities of both sexes, which suggests a cultural lenience towards her
behaviour because it is seen not as a detractor of femininity, but rather
a boon. Irene’s character rails against Ruskin’s ideal, as “She has the
face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most reso-
lute of men” (Doyle 150). This kind of male impersonation in literary
texts “extends back to the restoration stage, but more often than not, the
trouser role was used to emphasize femininity rather than to mimic male-
ness” (Halberstam 233). Irene is only able to hold the admiration of men
like Holmes when employing such disguises, because she possesses the
most prized feminine quality, that of beauty. The dutiful narrator Watson
relays, “To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman…. In his eyes she
eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex” (Doyle 145), but this
is only because her femininity is seemingly enhanced when taking on the
characteristics of males.
It is fitting that Victorian novels emphasise women’s beauty, because
they are reflective of those societal values which were often disseminated
via popular women’s manuals. For example, Polite Life and Etiquette
(1891) states that “If women are to govern, control, manage, influence,
and retain the adoration of husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, or even
cousins, they must look their prettiest at all times” (Benham 326). It is
noteworthy that Irene is not aristocracy but an opera singer, and it is
this position and beauty which give her access to the nobility and ulti-
mately the King of Bohemia as her lover. Throughout the story, Irene is
described by men in the following ways: Holmes says, “she was a lovely
woman, with a face that a man might die for” (152); the ostlers declare,
“She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet” (152); while the
King laments, “I wish she had been born of my own station!” (157). Her
physical attractiveness guarantees such adoration and praise for outwitting
Holmes in the end.
This depiction of the beautiful low-born actress is carried over in
Harris’s novels through the character Kat Boleyn, “the most celebrated
young actress of the London stage” (Serpents 292). She too has access to
different classes through her stage presence and regularly hobnobs with
the rich and poor alike. As with Irene, there is always a great emphasis
placed on her beauty—her auburn hair, face, or her piercing blue eyes
and the effect they have on men. At the beginning of the series, Kat uses
her acting abilities to help Devlin (then her lover) solve several murders—
her profession grants her both access to costumes and the ability to slip
into characters when necessary—but her greatest feat is perhaps her use
of disguise in her role as a spy for the French. In Where the Dead Lie, it
is revealed that the latter is actually related to her own issue of birthright,
as she is said to have “passed information to the French, not because she
had any love for Napoléon, but because she longed to free her mother’s
people, the Irish, from the onerous yoke of their English conquerors”
(159). In this way, Kat is always in disguise, costumed as a professional,
law-abiding English citizen and reaping the benefits of her critical acclaim,
while harbouring political secrets beyond her station.
Characters like Irene and Kat may be the most accurate and real-
istic representations of socially mobile females who mingle among
various classes in Victorian mysteries, because these attractive theatrical
performers resemble real-life border-crossing adventuresses known as
“grandes horizontales, or ‘pretty horsebreakers’—courtesans more realisti-
cally associated with the 1860s, such as Laura Bell, Cora Pearl, Catherine
Walters, and Caroline Otero” (Redmond 51). Christopher Redmond also
notes (52) that Irene could have been directly modelled after those scan-
dalous women who influenced politics through their relationships with
aristocratic men. While these low-born characters may experience greater
freedom as they gather information through disguise, they are still rele-
gated to the societal constrictions of womanhood at the time. Irene and
Kat possess a sense of guilt in relation to birthright just like their middle-
class and aristocratic sisters; however, theirs is predicted on a fear of
inferiority which is shown through their actions. When Irene is pushed
aside by the King so that he may marry a woman of his own class, she
resorts to blackmail to maintain some semblance of an advantage; when
146 M. P. NOLAN
Devlin rebuffs Kat based on a lie concocted by his father, the Earl of
Hendon, she does not attempt to right the wrong, but rather accepts
it as a condition of her lack of pedigree. Further, to avoid the maximum
shame of being rejected by these gentlemen, both women succumb to yet
another restriction that all Victorian women must face, the unrelenting
necessity of marriage.
Changing Views on Marriage

and the Mobile Female
It is no coincidence that each of the female characters mentioned
begins single and eventually marries within her respective story/series,
as marriage was not only customary in Victorian literature, but a require-
ment for the Victorian female who had no sufficient means of supporting
herself. Yet, Hester, Hero and Kat are not held to the same restrictiveness
as Esther, Lady Dedlock or Irene, as the former are both able to move
more fluidly between social classes at greater intervals and given the lati-
tude to do so by the men in their lives. Their husbands simultaneously
appreciate and depend upon their uncharacteristic (and socially inappro-
priate) behaviours, and this may be due to the changing perceptions of
the institution of marriage itself.
As previously mentioned, Victorian women were expected to keep the
home in perfect running order. Georgene Corry Benham declares in her
etiquette manual that home “is the kingdom of Woman. It is her duty
to embellish and make it tasteful and cozy” (1). To that end, all things
unpleasant were seen to exist outside of the home, as Ruskin asserts:
home “is a place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from
all terror, doubt, and division…. so far as the anxieties of the outer life
penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved,
or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or
wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home” (51). In this sense,
Esther’s efficiency at Bleak House plays foil to the dysfunction of poor
households as seen through characters like the brickmakers’ wives and
Mrs. Jellyby. Ruskin’s avowal that the “anxieties of the outer life” should
not be allowed to penetrate the home also provides an explanation for
the Dedlocks’ demise; Lady Dedlock’s marriage is a failure because she
has not lived up to the societal ideals. She has allowed the chaos of
her previous life to disturb the domesticity of her home, and the only
social mobility between classes that we see from her is linked to this
downfall—she wears the cloak of a poor woman, roams the squalid

streets of London in the cold and dies at Captain Hawdon/Nemo’s
grave. In contrast, Esther’s marriage to Woodcourt is ideal in its nature:
she has demonstrated her abilities to keep an orderly house throughout
the novel, has adhered to and thrived within her restrictions, and readers
are left to believe that the pair live happily ever after, and thus no mystery
is to be had beyond that union so that is where the story ends.
Victorian feminist writers took issue with such portrayals, as they fail to
address the foibles of deeply entrenched marriage ideals. In The Morality
of Marriage (1897), Scottish author and feminist Mona Caird states that
we have subjected women for centuries to a life, which called forth one
or two forms of domestic activity; we have rigorously excluded (even
punished) every other development of power; and we have then insisted
that the consequent adaptations of structure, and the violent instincts
created by this distorting process, are, by a sort of compound interest, to
go on forming a more and more solid ground for upholding the established
system of restriction, and the ideas that accompany it. (64)
Caird’s assessment of marital relations illustrates that these arrangements

were problematic, especially in their justifications for their restriction of
women. Her ideas are reflective of a larger change in the perceptions
of marriage at the end of the Victorian era that affects how we view
women as mobile bodies. In her edition of Conrad’s The Secret Agent ,
Tanya Agathocleous draws attention to this, explaining that “Feminists
of the period challenged the mid-Victorian ideal of the ‘angel in the
house’ and called for economic, social, and legal rights for women” (293).
Agathocleous also sheds light on Conrad’s main female character, Winnie
Verloc—unlike Hester and Hero, she does what is expected of her as a
Victorian woman and fulfils her duties through her maintenance of the
household and care of her husband, brother and mother even to her own
detriment. Yet, Winnie’s determination to break free of her marital bonds
by murdering her husband may mark the beginning of the shifting of
cultural views on women and marriage in literary mysteries.
In Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (1911),
G.K. Chesterton discusses how these changing ideals affect readers at
the beginning of the twentieth century. When discussing marriage in
David Copperfield (1850), Chesterton implies that while nineteenth-
century readers would have been content with how Dickens portrays
148 M. P. NOLAN
the dysfunctional marriage between David and Dora (133), the post-
Victorian readership has a much harder time swallowing the illusion
of their uneven marriage as idealistic. Perhaps this is why the literary
marriages of Victorian women in historical mysteries are born out of
reciprocal collaborations with male protagonists instead. These women
work hand-in-hand with men and often exhibit a brashness in sidestepping
social proclivities that would have been chastised by a nineteenth-century
readership that bristled at something as simple as neglecting one’s house-
hold duties. Kat’s brief marriage to Yates is untraditional—it is a nonsexual
partnership founded upon the knowledge that he is gay—and she shows
virtually no signs of domesticity. Devlin and Hero despise each other at
first, but during the pursuit of solving murders their attachment grows,
especially after they marry in Where Shadows Dance. It is similar with
Monk and Hester, as Hester could have chosen another suitor from
her own social class, but ultimately a strong working dependence brings
them together. In all three cases, it is the woman’s choice to marry,
and only after careful consideration. Surprisingly, these unions seem to
succeed through a mutual respect that would have been hard to come
by for those Victorians who insisted upon the separateness of male and
female domains. According to Catherine Nickerson, “detective fiction
layers its own binaries (criminal/victim and detective/criminal) onto the
unshakeable hierarchal pairs of mind/ body and male/female” and these
dichotomies can only be subverted when the conventional (patriarchal)
authority is decentred (751–52) as it has been with these characters.
For contemporary audiences, it makes sense that these ideals have been
adjusted to allow female characters a wider birth for their mobility with
husbands who willingly rely upon them for contributions beyond the
domestic setting, for this cooperation is precisely what enables the new
Victorian woman to remain mobile. Hester, Hero and Kat are free to
interact among people of even the most dubious backgrounds without
fear of chastisement, and this helps them to play a greater role in the
detection itself.
Conclusion
It is necessary for both male and female characters to traverse class borders
in both original and contemporary Victorian mysteries, because they must
gather clues from people of various social strata to solve a murder. While a
deep-seated male privilege makes it easy for literary men to move among
various social classes with little effort, the women in these stories must
contend with societal restrictions that hinder their movements. Cresswell
posits that mobilities research requires “an awareness of the mobilities
of the past” (28), and historical detective fiction gives us a way to
interrogate the regulation of mobility for the nineteenth-century female,
while simultaneously re-contextualising her position. The initial motiva-
tions behind female mobility as it relates to interaction among various
social classes appear remarkably unchanged—guilt in relation to one’s
social standing and charitable expectations remain primary motivators in
both nineteenth-century and contemporary narratives. However, since
the early twentieth century, how such characters traverse social borders
have been drastically altered in direct relation to shifting views of institu-
tions such as marriage and the acceptance of women as true partners to
male protagonists.
In other words, genuine Victorian female characters are limited in their
participation because of the (un)written rules regarding social conduct at
the time. Esther Summerson, for example, may appear socially mobile,
as she mingles with characters from every class, but her involvement in
various mysteries is constrained, because she ascribes to the demands of
her station. Likewise, Irene Adler may experience a freer rein by detecting
through the art of disguise, but is still bound by the tenets of birthright
and marriage. Modern depictions of Victorian females, such as Hester
Latterly and Hero Jarvis, maintain a similar sense of guilt in relation
to their social status, but are able to exhibit a mobility that extends
well beyond social confines mainly because of supportive husbands and
changing perceptions of marriage that occurred in early twentieth century
as seen in Conrad’s novel, Chesterton’s criticism, and feminist writing of
the day. It is also necessary to mention the obvious—the original Victorian
women in such mysteries were written by men, and therefore represent a
distinctly male perspective of the female, akin to that of Ruskin’s, whereas
the contemporary renditions are written by women. Perhaps it is only
natural, then, that today’s authors have taken liberties to ensure that their
female characters remain authentic while playing a vital role in gathering
evidence and uncovering the truth through their abilities to move and
interact among various social strata—it is a small attempt to rewrite the
misfortunes of the past while paying homage to the burdens women bore
for centuries.
150 M. P. NOLAN
Notes
1. As Regency novels, the St. Cyr mysteries technically predate the Victorian
era; however, I have included them because most of the themes and char-
acters’ actions lean heavily toward the Victorian in their subject matter. I
also like the progression arc their inclusion creates, as the series is repre-
sentative of the earlier part of the nineteenth century, while Conrad’s novel
exemplifies changing ideals at the end.
2. Although John Ruskin’s (1819–1900) gender politics were not his primary
focus, I use his ideas on the matter because they are commensurate with
patriarchal views of the time, and because Ruskin has had an immense
influence on Victorian studies as a whole, then and now.
3. While I primarily address male characters by last name or title, I address
female characters initially by their maiden names and then only by first
name—each of them marries at some point in the stories and/or series;
this is done to eliminate possible confusion.
4. I explore cross-dressing within the context of Victorian novels, because
female use of disguise has major effects on both plot (particularly in
mysteries) and readership reaction (see Nord). However, cross-dressing
(or queering) could also be further explored as a strategy by marginalised
groups.
References
Benham, Georgene Corry. “Chapter I: Our Home” and “Chapter XXV: Toilet
Recipes. How to Be Beautiful.” Polite Life and Etiquette: Or. What Is Right,
and the Social Arts. Louis Benham, 1891, pp. 1–23, 326–54. Google Play,
Books, https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=GSYMAAAAIAAJ&
rdid=book-GSYMAAAAIAAJ&rdot=1.
Ben-Merre, David. “Wish Fulfillment Detection, and the Production Knowledge
in ‘Bleak House.’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 44, no. 1, Spring 2011,
pp. 47–66. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41289226.
Caird, Mona. “Marriage—Part I.” The Morality of Marriage: And Other Essays on
the Status and Destiny of Woman, George Redway, 1897, pp. 60–72. Internet
Archive, courtesy of University of California Libraries, https://archive.org/
stream/moralityofmarria00cairrich#page/n13/mode/2up.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. “David Copperfield.” Appreciations and Criticisms of
the Works of Charles Dickens, Kennikat Press, 1911, pp. 129–39.
Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent. Edited by Tanya Agathocleous, Broadview
Editions, 2009.
Cresswell, Tim. “Towards a Politics of Mobility.” Environment and Planning

D: Society and Space, volume 28, 2010, pp. 17–31. Research Gate, https://
www.researchgate.net/profile/Tim_Cresswell/publication/248881905_Tow
ards_a_Politics_of_Mobility/links/0a85e53287bf6b6056000000/Towards-a-
Politics-of-Mobility.pdf.
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Barnes & Noble Books, 2005.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Man with
the Twisted Lip.” The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Barnes & Noble, 2009,
pp. 145–310.
———. “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Barnes
& Noble, 2009, pp. 635–730.
Grenander, Mary Elizabeth. “The Mystery and the Moral: Point of View in
Dickens’s ‘Bleak House.’” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 10, no. 4, 1956,
pp. 301–05. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3044189.
Halberstam, Jack (Judith). Female Masculinity. Kindle ed., Duke UP, 1998.
Harris, C. S. Where the Dead Lie: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery. Kindle ed., Signet,
2017.
———. Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery. Kindle ed., Signet,
2009.
———. Where Shadows Dance: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery. Kindle ed., Signet,
2012.
Long, Jason. “The Surprising Social Mobility of Victorian Britain.” European
Review of Economic History, vol. 17, no. 1, Feb. 2013, pp. 1–23. Crossref ,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/hes020.
Massey, Doreen. Space, Place and Gender. Wiley, 2013.
Nickerson, Catherine. “Murder as Social Criticism.” American Literary History,
vol. 9, no. 4, 1997, pp. 744–57.
Nord, Deborah Epstein. Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation,
and the City. Cornell UP, 1995.
Patmore, Coventry. The Angel in the House. 1854, 1856. Blackmask Online,
2001. UK Public Library, http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/03/74.pdf.
Perry, Anne. A Dangerous Mourning: A William Monk Novel. Ballantine, 2009.
———. The Face of a Stranger: The First William Monk Novel. Ballantine, 1990.
Redmond, Christopher. Sherlock Holmes Handbook. 2nd ed., Dundurn, 2009.
Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies. 1865. Edited by Julia Korres. Philaletheians,
7 Dec. 2017, http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/down-to-earth/
ruskin%27s-sesame-and-lilies.pdf.
“Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries.” Author C. S. Harris, http://csharris.net/.
Accessed 3 Jan. 2018.
Walton, James. “Conrad, Dickens, and the Detective Novel.” Nineteenth-Century
Fiction, vol. 23, no. 4, 1969, pp. 446–62. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/293
2684.
CHAPTER 8
Liminal Spaces in Laurie R. King’s Touchstone

and Keeping Watch
Mary Ann Gillies
Introduction
Near the end of his “Introduction” to Theorizing Borders, Chris Rumford
writes: “Borders are not to be conceived only as the edges of territory,
zones of connectivity, or even spaces of governance.… borders can shape
our perception of the world” (166). To him, borders and border crossings
are “constitutive of social relations” which “help us orientate ourselves in
the world” (167). His expansive view of what constitutes a border is a
helpful starting point in my examination of border crossings in two novels
by the American crime writer Laurie R. King: Touchstone (2007) and
Keeping Watch (2003). In this chapter, what I will explore is how Touch-
stone’s World War I British officer Bennett Grey and Keeping Watch’s
American Vietnam veteran Allen Carmichael’s perceptions of their post-
war worlds have been shaped by the borders they cross on their way to war
and on their return from it. Their war experiences, and particularly the
traumas they carry home with them, directly influence how they orien-
tate themselves in their post-war worlds. Their actions as detectives are
thus to a large degree shaped by their status as war veterans.
M. A. Gillies (B)
Department of English, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

154 M. A. GILLIES
Johan Schimanski and Stephen Wolfe’s border poetics affirms

Rumford’s contentions about border crossing. More specifically, it
provides a framework in which to read the border crossings in King’s
novels. In his article, “Crossing and Reading: Notes towards a Theory
and Method,” Schimanski outlines several of the key border poetics terms
that I will use in this chapter. Topographical borders, he writes, are “a
necessary element in any border crossing: all borders must have a spatial
dimension, imaginary or otherwise, or else one cannot cross them” (56).
He defines symbolic borders in literary texts as “mostly about differences
concerning the lived life of humans and other agents, either in its social
aspects … in its individual aspects … or in the in-between of interper-
sonal relationships” (55). Temporal borders “are transitions between two
periods of time” (55), and epistemological borders “build on the differ-
ence between the known and the unknown” (56). In both novels, King’s
protagonists cross topographical borders on their way to war, but their
traversing of national or territorial borders are accompanied by various
combinations of the other three forms of border crossings.
King is not the first writer to feature war veterans in crime fiction, nor
is she the first to depict detectives whose actions have been shaped by war.
Indeed, Stacy Gillis points out that detective stories occupy a central place
in post-World War I fiction. She suggests that the “Golden Age detec-
tive novel is both a place in which the dismembered and bloody body
of the battlefield can be neatly reassembled and a space in which such
motifs of the war as shell shock are negotiated” (185). As Jane Mattisson
Ekstam notes, World War I continues to feature as a setting in contem-
porary crime fiction; she argues that in these novels readers “learn that it
is those who have experienced the war at firsthand who are best suited to
evaluating evidence correctly and finding the killer” (805). Sarah Trott,
in her study of Raymond Chandler, makes a similar observation about
the influence war has had on the development of American hard-boiled
detective fiction. She coins the term “war noir,” by which she means “a
style that merges two complimentary genres—the hard-boiled and war
genres—into a single entity” (xii). While she identifies the origin of war
noir in the hard-boiled fiction that emerges post-World War I, she main-
tains that it occupies a central place in post-Vietnam War era crime fiction.
What King brings to her contemporary versions of Golden Age detective
fiction and Vietnam inflected war noir that makes them stand out from
the novels that Gillis, Trott, Ekstam and others examine is precisely that
notion of border crossing that Rumsford identifies.1 In her novels, the
8 LIMINAL SPACES IN LAURIE R. KING’S TOUCHSTONE … 155
act of detecting is itself a form of border crossing that allows Grey and
Carmichael to orientate themselves to their post-war worlds in ways that
had previously eluded them.
Caren Kaplan maintains that “Mobility is at the heart of modern
warfare” (395) and that “War is one of the more perverse enactments of
mobility in modernity because it requires the movement of large armies
and instigates the mass displacement of refugees, yet it also polices borders
and limits freedom of movement” (396). In wartime, she continues,
“Free individuals are expected to subsume their independence in the
service of the nation and may, through that submission, be moved physi-
cally in military or industrial deployments” (396). Grey and Carmichael’s
initial border crossings need to be understood within this notion of
mobility created and constrained by war.
Touchstone’s Bennett Grey is a member of what once would have
been called the English landed gentry; the eldest son of wealthy and
well-connected parents, he attended Eton and Oxford. Upon enlisting
in the army immediately after his graduation in 1915, his education and
class meant that he was sent to Sandhurst, the elite military academy.
At twenty-one, he crossed the English Channel to France as a newly
minted officer in the British army. His initial border crossing is thus
topographical. Grey’s state-sanctioned mobility shapes not only his move-
ment across physical borders but also his experiences of the places/spaces
he moves through. His epistemological border crossing takes him from
his known world—the world of an upper-class, male, English university
student—to the unknown world of war where much of his existing knowl-
edge is not relevant. The most important border crossing, though, is the
symbolic—the erecting of categories of those who went to war and those
who stayed home—which has long-lasting consequences on Grey. World
War I veterans experienced alienation from non-combatants at home; a
returning soldier, as Eric J. Leed writes, “often felt that there was no
‘place’ to which he might return” (33) because he “had been reshaped
by his voyage along the margins of civilization, a voyage in which he was
presented with wonders, curiosities, and monsters—things that can only
be guessed at by those who remained at home” (194).
Keeping Watch’s Allen Carmichael also crosses multiple borders on his
way to war. He is portrayed as a patriotic, middle-class college student
from the American Pacific Northwest who drops out of school in order to
enlist in the army in 1967. After boot camp, he is deployed to Vietnam.
Like Grey, then, his initial border crossing is topographical and as a
156 M. A. GILLIES
soldier his mobility is controlled by his government. His epistemological

border crossing is more extreme than Grey’s, since Carmichael travels to
a markedly different culture, which he struggles vainly to comprehend.
His symbolic crossing is also more difficult than Grey’s; it creates a wider
gulf between those who served in Vietnam and those who remained state
side, since those at home had no conceptual framework to understand the
world that Carmichael entered when he went to war. Indeed, as Philip D.
Beidler claims, “save for other Americans who had been there or had some
other direct communication … the actuality of the experience … could
not have been harder for most of their countrymen to comprehend” (7).
For Carmichael, and perhaps Grey as well, crossing borders to war
may not only be a way to serve their countries but also a way of discov-
ering whether “war made a man out of a boy” (Keeping Watch 327–28).
Leed suggests that the “act of volunteering made the entry into war a
chosen liberation” (83). When we consider the layered manner in which
the multiple border crossings work, we can begin to develop a picture
of the ways in which going to war both reshaped the identities of Grey
and Carmichael and separated them from those they left behind. We
can read their border crossings, thus, as rites of passage in the sense
that this term has been used by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner.
Turner argues that typically such rites “are marked by three phases:
separation, margin (or limen, signifying ‘threshold’ in Latin) and aggre-
gation” (Ritual Process 94). Joining the army marks the beginning of this
three-part rite of passage for both Grey and Carmichael.
Liminal States: Trauma as a Rite of Passage

Crossing epistemological and symbolic borders functions as the first stage
of the rite, separation from what Leed refers to as one’s “normal, or
former, state and condition” (15).2 From the moment that Grey enters
Sandhurst and Carmichael goes to boot camp, they pass into the sepa-
ration stage. This stage is marked by the state’s imposition on them of
new identities in and orientations to the world, since among the goals
of basic training is, as Kali Tal writes, “to systematically strip [recruits]
of their civilian identity” (238). However, it is the liminal stage of initi-
ation that Leed suggests is “closely analogous to the position of men in
war” (17). Turner claims that in the “liminal period” the initiate “passes
through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past
or coming state” (Ritual Process 94). In this stage, Grey and Carmichael
cross symbolic and epistemological borders which leave them unmoored

from their familiar life; war and its associated traumas become the crucible
in which they, like Turner’s initiates, “are induced to think (and think
hard) about cultural experiences they had hitherto taken for granted”
(“Liminal to Liminoid” 73).
In Grey, King presents her readers with a familiar World War I char-
acter: the shell-shocked soldier, though her presentation of Grey’s war
trauma is atypical because of its focus on the physiological consequences
of his injuries.3 Upon arrival in France in 1915, Bennett Grey is posted to
the Western Front where his war ends three years later when he is “blown
up” by a German bomb that explodes near him. The significant phys-
ical wounds he incurs pale in comparison with the blast’s effects on his
sensory nervous system. Shell shock, as Tracey Loughran suggests, “has
become the emblematic disorder of the First World War” (97).4 She also
notes that during the war, “shell shock was understood in many different
ways: as a psychological reaction to war, as a type of concussion, or as a
physiological response to prolonged fear” (107). She argues that subse-
quent narratives—historical, medical, sociological, literary—have elided
the “etiological ambiguity of the disorder” (108) and as a consequence
have privileged the view of shell shock as primarily a psychological condi-
tion. For Grey, the concussive force of the artillery shell “changed every
cell in his body, twisting each and every one of those millions of tiny
blocks of life, reversing the flow of blood through his veins and making
his very bones momentarily soft and malleable” (Touchstone 128). When
the initial shock of being “blown up” passes, he discovers that his “normal
filtering mechanism on his mind had been stripped away. The tiniest of
sights, sounds, smells competed with the big ones for his attention. It
felt like looking at ten million blades of grass and being unable to see a
lawn” (133). Being “blown up,” his body literally being shocked to the
cellular level, has completely transformed him. While Grey does suffer
from an array of psychological maladies, the physiological effects of the
shell’s explosion are most debilitating.
Grey is typical, however, in the way that his shell shock impacts his
post-war life. He is an example of what Angela K. Smith calls “invisible
victims of war,” returning servicemen who “struggle to integrate” and
who “cannot adequately contribute” (309) to society after the war. While
convalescing in hospital, Grey realises that his sensory acuity renders
“everyday social intercourse … unbearable, the daily lies and misde-
meanors people committed without thought grating against him like a
158 M. A. GILLIES
hasp” (133). Things get much worse when he is “found” by Aldous

Carstairs, a military intelligence officer whose team had “been working
on a machine to read the truth.” Because of his acute sensitivity, Grey
becomes “the means by which results were checked and readings cali-
brated” (91). After “nineteen months of growing hell” (133) Grey frees
himself from Carstairs’ clinic and returns to his mother’s home intent
on reestablishing a normal life. His attempts prove futile and he flees
London, finding sanctuary in remote Cornwall. Though he has re-crossed
the topographical border from France to England in his return home, his
hypersensitivity prevents him from crossing the symbolic border in order
to reintegrate into society. Seven years after the war’s conclusion, Grey
continues to exist in a liminal state.
Beidler’s description of Vietnam during the war as a “strange, remote
midworld where visitations of the absurd and unreal nestled with sinister
ease amidst a spectacle of anguish, violence, and destruction almost
too real to comprehend” (4) gives some sense of the environment that
twenty-year-old Allen Carmichael finds himself in shortly after his arrival
in Saigon. It also speaks to the brutal desensitisation to the needs, and
even realities, of others which forms the core of his Vietnam experience.
In fact, after only three months in Vietnam Carmichael’s “mind held a
lifetime of savage images” (Keeping Watch 947). Six months in, on a
jungle patrol led by a new lieutenant named Brennan, Carmichael’s rage-
filled reaction to the sight of a platoon member who has been captured,
tortured, and whose corpse has been hung in a tree shows how much of
his pre-existing identity he has shed. In the final six months of his tour
of duty, Carmichael holds on tenuously to his humanity, engaging in a
war of wills with Brennan, where Carmichael’s refusal “to burn inno-
cent villages or commit violence on civilians” (5167–68) is tolerated,
but it also increases the gulf between Carmichael and the rest of his
platoon who follow Brennan’s orders to commit atrocities. In the end,
Carmichael breaks again, his second violent outburst made that much
more shocking because of his determination not to give into the baser
nature that Brennan draws out of his men. When he executes Brennan
by throwing a grenade into a cave Brennan has entered, and inadver-
tently kills the village children hiding there, Carmichael’s pre-war identity
is shattered.
Carmichael’s homecoming is as difficult as Grey’s. Having re-crossed
topographical borders to reach American soil, he returns to a nation
“where gentle, long-haired proponents of free love spit on men in
uniform and called them baby killers” (1840–42). He nonetheless

attempts to cross the symbolic border, to reintegrate into American
society, but his efforts are complicated by flashbacks to Vietnam which
have him seeing a “booby trap in the center of the freeway” (1892) and
waking at 4 am to find that “his hands were around [his wife’s] throat”
choking her (1911). Unable to sustain normal life, he leaves his wife,
family and home, spending much of the next four years in an alcohol
and drug infused nether world, wandering from city to city, sleeping on
park benches, under culverts and in flophouses, his life a “kaleidoscope of
bone-chilling weather and vicious fights and at least a couple of arrests”
(2184). However, unlike Grey, he eventually does find a cause which gives
his life meaning: working as a de facto private investigator, albeit as one
“on the wrong side of the law” (2750–51) yet “in the service of abused
children and their mothers, disappearing them from harm” (2711–12).
Tal notes how “Soldiers enter the liminal state and have no commu-
nity outside of the war” (239). Both Grey and Carmichael’s post-war
lives extend the truth of her statement. They have little contact with
their families or their pre-war friends; neither resumes the occupations for
which they had been preparing before going to war and neither finds a
place for themselves within the social structures of their post-war societies.
Their post-war lives are extended engagements with their war experiences,
though the engagements take different forms. Grey’s survival strategy is
immobility—isolating himself in rural Cornwall and engaging minimally
with the broader world. Carmichael’s strategy is hypermobility—criss-
crossing North America for thirty years intent on rescuing victims of
abuse, but not stopping to put down roots, take stock of his own life
or to find a way to reintegrate into society. Though they have crossed the
topographical borders to their homes, they have yet to return home from
war.
Rites of Reaggregation: Crossing Symbolic

and Temporal Borders Through Detection
Leed writes that “Without rites of reaggregation, in which the initiated
assumes his new place in the social structure, the liminal phase lacks all
purpose, meaning, or justification” (32). He contends that it was not
possible for returning World War I combatants to complete reaggregation
successfully and suggests that “Perhaps the nature of the war and the char-
acter of industrial society prevented any consummation of passage, any
160 M. A. GILLIES
reaggregation of the former soldier with his home” (33). Vietnam War
veterans faced similar challenges. As William J. Searle notes, “returning
combat soldiers … feared hostility and blame from their peers who did
not fight in an ‘immoral war’ and also suffered from a lack of respect by
veterans of earlier wars who blamed them for not winning a war against
a military inferior” (148). However, King’s novels present pathways out
of the liminal state into reagreggation for her protagonists. For them to
assume their “new place” in the post-war social structure, the border that
must be crossed is a symbolic one: from being outsiders, because they
were soldiers, to being insiders, who can integrate their war experience
into their post-war, civilian lives. Detecting becomes the essential means
of crossing the symbolic border. Equally important, we need to view their
trauma as central to their functioning as detectives. It is what gives their
liminal states meaning because it provides what Turner calls the “wisdom”
which “has ontological value … [and which] refashions the very being”
(Ritual 103) of the initiated.
Instead of reading Bennett Grey’s trauma as a wound that in “its very
unassimilated nature … returns to haunt the survivor later on” (Caruth
4), it is possible to read Grey as Michelle Balaev might: “[as a] trau-
matized protagonist … who has special knowledge or unique, positive
powers that can help others” (27). Grey’s shell shock has left him with the
capacity to discern whether someone is truthful in their motives, words
or actions. As he explains early in the novel to an American Bureau of
Investigation agent, Harris Stuyvesant, “a con artist makes my skin crawl
because he’s torn between what he wants and what he thinks I want.
He’s afraid of missing some clue in my behavior that will tell him how to
clinch the deal, he’s charming on the surface and greedy underneath, and
that dichotomy is … dissonant” (Touchstone 87–88; ellipsis in original).
In effect, being “blown up” has made Grey a human lie detector, albeit
one who opts out of close contact with society because of the distress
interaction with others engenders in him. However, he offers his “unique
power” to Stuyvesant to help him apprehend a serial bomber he has
pursued from America to England because Grey trusts the American’s
motivations. The Stuyvesant-Grey partnership drives the detective story’s
plot forward, because without Grey’s willingness to venture out into a
world that overwhelms him, Stuyvesant would not have gained access
so readily to the social circle of his prime suspect—the Labour Party’s
rising star Richard Bunsen. Without that access, he would not have been
well placed to act when the bomber’s identity is uncovered by Grey.
Dissonance in his interactions with Lady Laura Hurleigh forces Grey to

face the truth that Laura, his former fiancée (and Bunsen’s current lover),
is the bomber. He passes this information along to Stuyvesant who then
attempts to prevent her from carrying out her plan to set off a bomb at
her family’s country home.
For Grey, leaving Cornwall to help Stuyvesant find the bomber marks
the end of his voluntary immobility but it forces him not only to contend
with the discomfort caused by his sensory acuteness, but also to face
his fear of it—how it might be used to hurt or betray others. This is
the real symbolic border that keeps him from rejoining post-war society,
since he has already confided to Stuyvesant that in the months prior to
the American’s arrival on his doorstep, he had “little trouble control-
ling” his sensitivity and could “manage Penzance on market days without
undue problems” (89). His deepest fear is of being coopted by Major
Carstairs again, and in this regard, his fears are warranted since Carstairs
sees in Grey the ultimate weapon in his campaign to undermine British
democracy and replace it with authoritarian rule. Yet Stuyvesant’s plea for
assistance in uncovering the bomber’s identity has reminded Grey that his
ties to family and country are stronger than his fear of agents of a shadow
state. Grey knows he will have to confront Carstairs at some point if he
opts to help Stuyvesant, but he nonetheless joins him and in doing so,
he emerges from his liminal state, crossing the symbolic border to let go
of his identity of a shell-shocked and alienated war veteran to take up his
new place in post-war society.
By the end of Keeping Watch, Allen Carmichael has also moved from
the liminal state into reaggregation and in the process he brings his
hypermobility to an end. Julia Grandison provides a lens through which
we may analyse his crossing of the symbolic border.5 While stressing
that the field of trauma studies is large, complex and ever evolving, she
writes that “the challenge of integrating a past event of immense psychic
impact into the post-traumatic present is at the heart of most theoriza-
tion about trauma” (768). She suggests that the “recognition of agency
in encounters between the present experience and the traumatic past is
one crucial difference between these models” (774). Following Gran-
dison’s lead, we can view Carmichael’s work as a “civilian mercenary”
(Keeping Watch 2711) not as the “repetitive actions of the survivor”
(Caruth 17) of trauma, but as a conscious choice. King weaves past and
present times throughout the novel, in effect crossing and re-crossing the
temporal borders of Carmichael’s experiences. In the process, she reveals
162 M. A. GILLIES
how Carmichael’s engagement with his war trauma provides both a means
of resolving the uncertainties he has about his final client, a twelve-year-
old boy named Jamie, and a means of release from the liminal state he
has inhabited since his return from Vietnam.
It is in Book 4 that King’s contrapuntal narrative is at its best.
Here temporal border crossings occur quickly, moving the reader from
Carmichael’s current moment to a flashback to Vietnam, then back again
to the present moment, and then flashing back to a conversation that
occurred a few weeks or months ago. This rapid movement is disorien-
tating to the reader who may struggle to follow the narrative sequence
and it also mimics Carmichael’s detecting process as he draws on the full
scope of his life experiences to resolve the puzzle in front of him. It is also
a representation of the inherent mobility of time and space. Indeed, if we
read Carmichael’s temporal border crossings from what Mimi Sheller and
John Urry call a mobility perspective, we can see how they “lead us to
discard our usual notions of spatiality and scale” and how such cross-
ings also undermine “existing assumptions about temporality and timing,
which often assume that actors are able to do only one thing at a time,
and that events follow each other in a linear order” (214). Carmichael is
able to use information gleaned from the disparate moments of his life to
determine his next action. His detecting literally crosses borders of time
and space, making evident that the act of detecting is itself a form of
border crossing.
Carmichael’s reaggregation depends on his ability to confront his
unspoken, but deepest fear: that revealing the full truth of the atrocities
that he committed would result in rejection by his family and permanent
alienation from the state that sent him to Vietnam in the first place. The
turning point occurs when his brother Jerry asks why he has spent his
life “[k]idnapping children” (6412–13). Carmichael weighs the risks of
speaking his truth:
Jerry wasn’t asking why it needed doing: He’d seen enough cases where
abused kids were not taken from their parents to know why it needed
doing. Rather, Jerry was asking, Why you? And it all came down to that,
Allen knew. Not just whether or not Jerry would help him now, but
whether Jerry would have anything to do with him when this episode
was over. (6414–16)
After this hesitation, Carmichael tells Jerry about his murder of Brennan
and the children in the cave, then waits for Jerry’s judgement of his
actions:
Something moved in the back of Jerry’s eyes, and Allen waited, dreading
the growth of revulsion, the final wedge that would split his brother from
him forever. He waited, and saw Jerry review both the statement and the
way in which he had said it. He saw Jerry deliberately put aside immediate
judgment. He saw his brother choose to trust him. (6422–25)
Jerry’s reaction is what finally brings Carmichael home.

Grandison suggests that “Rather than depicting the post-traumatic
present as a jarring and disruptive encounter with the past that obliter-
ates an individual’s agency” we might see “present moments influenced
by the traumatic past as pauses in which engagements with the past and
decisions about the future remain fluid possibilities” (779). The pause in
Carmichael’s telling of his story to Jerry opens a space in which he can
choose to act differently, to tell his truth this time. The way that King has
crafted this gradual revelation of Carmichael’s deepest fear throughout
the course of the novel, and particularly in Book 4, has involved her
mobilising three temporal borders: Carmichael’s Vietnam tour of duty,
the years he has spent as a “civilian mercenary,” and the current situa-
tion which has brought a badly wounded Carmichael back home to the
San Juan islands to Jerry’s door. There is a reciprocal flow across the
borders with the events in Vietnam influencing Carmichael’s choices in
the current moment, but the current moment also reshaping his orienta-
tion to his war experiences. The weaving of past and present moments
together to reveal this core trauma underscores Carmichael’s agency.
Trust and agency were stripped away from him in Vietnam and his process
of reclaiming them is the real substance of this novel. Carmichael’s ability
to use his war trauma consciously in his final case is not only crucial to the
resolution of the detective story, but it is also what allows him to cross
the symbolic border and finally to come home.
164 M. A. GILLIES
Conclusion
Schimanski’s fifth border plane, the textual, illustrates how cultural objects
like these crime novels cross borders. He defines textual borders as those
“which the reader meets when she reads the text” (53). Furthermore,
border poetics “attends to two kinds of space, the presented space (the
world in the text) and the space of presentation (the text as part of the
world)” (51). In effect, what I want to end with is a glimpse of what we
find when we look from the “presented space” across the border to the
“space of presentation.”
The accuracy and vividness of the historical settings and events lend
power and authority to Touchstone’s crime narrative. King nicely captures
the flavour of the British public’s fears in the lead up to the General Strike
of 1926, and her depiction of the class-based motives that are presented as
the reason for acts of violence and terrorism ring true as well. However, as
is inherent in historical fiction, there is an additional temporal layer which
is a function of when the novel was written and published—the United
States in the twenty-first century. King calls Touchstone her “9/11 book,
since it burrows into the impulses of terrorist acts” (“The Other LRK”).
Readers might see in Lady Laura Hurleigh’s actions King’s presentation
of her central question: “Why does a person become a terrorist?” (“The
Other LRK”). Such an interpretation would fit the post-World War I
world presented in the book, yet to a twenty-first-century reader, Aldous
Carstairs is an even more likely candidate for the role of terrorist. With
his plot to undermine democracy and his desire to “weaponise” Bennett
Grey’s unique skills, Carstairs qualifies as a denizen of the “deep state”
that has become a pervasive meme in post-9/11 America. Touchstone’s
textual border thus requires that the reader cross back and forth between
early twentieth-century England and early twenty-first-century America,
tracing the echoes of each space the reader occupies when reading the
novel.
One of King’s main questions in writing Keeping Watch was “How do
you turn a boy into a killer?” She goes on to say that Jamie “is going
through a civilian version of what Alan [sic] experienced in uniform:
isolated, oppressed, and bombarded by murderous impulses. Why does
one person give into those, and another stand away?” (“Keeping Watch”).
While this question provides a framework in which to understand King’s
portraits of Carmichael and Jamie, if we read across the border of
the text—from the presented space to the space of presentation—we
can detect a resonance the novel has for a twenty-first-century reader

who lives in a world in which boys and young men are groomed to
commit violence in settings as diverse as jihadi training camps and white
supremacist militias.
Mary Evans proposes that crime fiction “has one cardinal virtue … it
looks beyond and behind the various facades of social life; it steps away
from that comfortable view that the social world includes only good and
bad people and that social order can be maintained by the eradication
of the latter” (168). This chapter’s readings of Touchstone and Keeping
Watch not only reveal the truth of Evans’ statement, but also the value of
looking closely at the various borders that we find in the novels, as well
as those that occur between reader and text. It is by carefully detecting
across these borders that we see how trauma can be renegotiated from
its status as a debilitating wound to an integral feature of one’s under-
standing of the world. Furthermore, this renegotiation permits those who
might have been consigned to liminal lives to find a way to reintegrate
into society. In tracking the multiple borders that Bennett Grey and Allen
Carmichael cross in their pursuits of those who undermine social order
by their criminal actions we also see how their detecting enables them to
return home from war. In undertaking these border poetics readings, I
thus have not only shed light on the innovative ways that King treats the
established trope of the war veteran as detective, but I also have shown
the ways in which King’s novels exemplify the themes of this volume:
mobility and detecting across borders.
Notes
1. For Golden Age fiction and war veterans, see Lott; Plain 45–67; Reynolds;
Smith; and Wynne. For hard-boiled fiction and war veterans, see Anderson;
Bogue 79–90; Haut; and Jason, Chapter 7 and this chapter.
2. Leed also uses van Gennep and Turner’s work on rites of passage. While
I find his argument persuasive, I disagree with his contention that World
War I soldiers were unable to attain reaggregation.
3. The shell-shocked soldier suffering from psychological trauma was made
familiar to readers by a number of literary texts published in the interwar
years including Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier (1918), Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That (1929)
and Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930). More recent
works, Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy (1991–95), Sebastian Faulk’s
Birdsong (1993) and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child (2011),
166 M. A. GILLIES
among others, also take on the challenge of representing shell shock

victims. Contemporary crime fiction series have also addressed the subject
of World War I detectives and shell shock, including Jacqueline Winspear’s
Maisie Dobbs series (15 novels to date) and Charles Todd’s Inspector
Rutledge novels (22 books to date).
4. Loughran is not the only critic who argues that a more differentiated under-
standing of shell shock or trauma in World War I is necessary. See for
example Leese; Jones; Young, Harmony and “W.H. Rivers.”
5. While Grandison’s article is not on crime fiction, her discussion of trauma
theory provides a model which is applicable to my reading of King’s novel.
References
Anderson, Donald. “Soldiering On: Dave Robicheaux and Vietnam.” A Violent
Conscience: Essays on the Fiction of James Lee Burke, edited by Leonard Engel,
McFarland, 2010, pp. 52–61.
Balaev, Michelle. The Nature of Trauma in American Novels. Northwestern UP,
2012.
Beidler, Philip D. American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam. U of
Georgia P, 2007.
Bogue, Barbara. James Lee Burke and the Soul of Dave Robicheaux. McFarland,
2006.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Johns
Hopkins UP, 1996.
Ekstam, Jane Mattisson. “Modern Detective Novels and World War One: A
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Evans, Mary. The Imagination of Evil: Detective Fiction and the Modern World.
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Gillis, Stacy. “Consoling Fictions: Mourning, World War One, and Dorothy
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Haut, Woody. Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction. Serpent’s Tail,
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Jason, Philip K. Acts and Shadows: The Vietnam War in American Literary
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Environment and Planning, vol. 38, no. 2, February 2006, pp. 395–407.
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———. “Keeping Watch.” Mutterings: Laurie. R. King’s Blog, 23 Mar. 2010,
http://laurierking.com/2010/03/keeping-watch/. Accessed 22 May 2018.
———. “The Other LRK: TOUCHSTONE.” Mutterings: Laurie. R. King’s
Blog, 12 Mar. 2017, http://laurierking.com/2017/03/the-other-lrk-touchs
tone/#. Accessed 22 May 2018.
———. Touchstone. Bantam, 2007.
Leed, Eric J. No Man’s Land. Cambridge UP, 1979.
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———., editors. Border Aesthetics. Berghahn Books, 2017.
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CHAPTER 9
Urban Mobility and Technology in Carlo

Lucarelli’s Almost Blue
Barbara Pezzotti
Introduction
In Italian crime fiction, the typical detective, such as Andrea Camilleri’s
Inspector Montalbano, conducts a psychological investigation and is
usually suspicious about a scientific method of enquiry. Mobility in the
urban environment is also a distinctive feature of Italian gialli.1 While
crime fiction set in small villages or the countryside is starting to take
more space in the Italian output, the majority of crime stories still
take place in the most populated Italian cities, such as Rome, Milan,
Turin, Bologna and Florence. In these novels, like in their European
counterparts (Most 69), Italian sleuths walk the city streets, interact with
different social classes and master the urban environment.
In this tradition, Carlo Lucarelli’s crime novels stand out for three
reasons. First, digital methods of detection are at the core of the inves-
tigation and, having been published in a pre-social media and pre-9/11
world—where the pervasive control of governments and a surveillance
culture were not at the centre of public debates—they do not mirror
anxieties regarding personal freedom in the digital age. Second, and
B. Pezzotti (B)
Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

170 B. PEZZOTTI
equally interestingly, the detective’s knowledge of the city is problema-

tised. The city map is not “imprinted on the neural network of the
detective’s brain and … reproduced within his consciousness as a form
of expert local knowledge” (Most 68) and the sleuth often struggles
to master an ever-expanding city. Finally, and especially in Almost Blue
(1997; translated into English as Almost Blue, 2001), the object of this
chapter, the equation between mobility and technology is complicated
by a discourse on gender discrimination and disability. Through an anal-
ysis of the representation of Bologna as a postmodern and uncanny city
and the relationship of the two main detectives—a young policewoman
discriminated against in a male-dominated environment and a disabled
man—with urban space, the aim of this chapter is to investigate how
in Almost Blue the two protagonists successfully manage to decipher
and control a network of interactions in an otherwise unknowable city
through databases and scanners. Eventually, this chapter makes the case
for the subgenre of urban crime fiction as a powerful form of analysis
of postmodern urban mobilities, an aspect still underexplored in crime
fiction studies.
Mobility in the Urban Environment

Lucarelli (b. 1960) is a host of TV shows about unsolved crimes and
mysteries in Italy and one of the country’s most famous and successful
crime writers. He is the author of historical detective novels set in
the 1930s and 1940s and has written two series set in contemporary
Bologna.2 The crime novel Almost Blue is part of the contemporary
tetralogy composed of Lupo mannaro [The Werewolf] (1994), Un giorno
dopo l’altro (Day after Day, 2004) and Il sogno di volare [The Dream of
Flight] (2013). In Almost Blue, the protagonist, Inspector Grazia Negro,
investigates crimes committed by a serial killer nicknamed the Iguana
who, after murdering his victims, assumes their identity and features. She
is helped by Simone, a blind man whose interaction with the world is
mainly through technology. He happened to hear the voice of the Iguana
through a scanner and is the only person able to recognise the elusive
serial killer.
Before analysing Almost Blue, it is important to place this novel in
the context of spatiality and mobility in the city. As David Schmid
argues, crime fiction is a profoundly spatial as well as temporal genre
(7). Together with the reconstruction of the events that led to the crime,
9 URBAN MOBILITY AND TECHNOLOGY IN CARLO LUCARELLI’S … 171
which constitutes a sort of travel back in time, the investigation often sees
the detective walking and driving in an urban environment. As Glenn W.
Most puts it:
The city is also a large and busy space, and the detective must move
constantly through it in order to discover crimes, to visit locations, to
interview survivors and witnesses and suspects, to pursue and arrest, and
to kill. The detective’s incessant movement creates and discovers relations
among far-flung parts of the city and establishes its unexpected unity in
the form of a series of dynamic vectors. (68)
In other words, through the investigation, the clash with the villain and
violence in the city, detective fiction operates a “constant rearticulation
and reaccentuation of the themes of mobility” (Highmore 107).3
Because of his walking the city streets, the fictional male detective
in urban crime fiction has often been associated with the figure of the
Baudelairean flâneur (Most 56–72). According to Walter Benjamin, in
Baudelaire’s poetry the anonymity of the crowd provides an asylum for
the poet-flâneur, who is on the margins of society. The flâneur is the
modern hero: his experience is that of a freedom to move about in the
city, observing and being observed, but never interacting with others
(Benjamin 36). Philip Howell claims that by moving through the urban
environment and having the ability to read the streets and interiors of the
city, the fictional sleuth becomes an active flâneur who not only observes,
but also participates in the life of the metropolis (361). This participation,
however, requires freedom of movement that not everybody possesses. As
Ben Highmore argues, the mobility of the traditional detective implies
“an ability to appear as ‘universal man’ (déclassé and generally unmarked
in appearance)” (93). This mobility infers that public space and the private
space of the privileged are “accessible to a rugged-jawed, white skinned,
suit-wearing man in ways that it wasn’t to non-white and women” (93).
Indeed, the freedom of movement of the Caucasian detective is
severely truncated for women and minorities and, we may add, people
with disabilities. This is a crucial issue as, according to Doreen Massey,
the limitation of women’s mobility in terms both of identity and space
has been “a crucial means of subordination” (179). Conversely, mobility
is regarded as a means of access to opportunity (Kwan 210–27), even
though the fear of violence may affect mobility for some people, especially
women (Wekerle 275–95). Thus, detective fiction represents a complex
172 B. PEZZOTTI
relationship between space, knowledge and violence, and mobility itself

articulates social and cultural differences. This is further complicated by
a postmodern environment. Oscar Handlin points out that in the post-
modern city places are replaced by goods, services and relations, and it
becomes difficult to comprehend the city’s intricate network of changes
and influences (25). Brian J. L. Berry goes even further by stating that
the new communication technologies are ultimately creating an urban
civilisation without physical cities (52). In his book, City of Bits: Space
Place and the Infobahn, William Mitchell suggests that with new forms
of technology and telecommunication the very idea of the city has to
be reformulated and old urban design questions have to be re-thought.
Indeed, the use of modern technologies to provide novel and interactive
city-wide services has led to the rise of the “digital city” or “smart city”
that depends less and less on physical infrastructures and increasingly on
virtual means of interactions (see Foth et al.; Townsend). In other words,
urban activity becomes increasingly abstract and unreal, and the city is not
a space that can be easily explored with traditional methods of investiga-
tion anymore. Consequently, the detective may renounce the traditional
Holmesian powers of induction (Lehan 287). What, then, can we make
of the flâneur detective in this new environment? Is the postmodern city
still a place that is in fact “a space made legible by the detective” (King
213)?
Narrative Space and Technology

Almost Blue relates mobility in the city with technology. The novel starts
with a gory description of a crime scene: a policeman slips on a puddle
of blood, tries to get up and falls again and screams from the top of
his lungs. After this highly visual sequence, which acts as a prologue,
the novel presents a sophisticated structure that alternates three perspec-
tives, that is, the stories of three people narrated by first- and third-person
narrators.
The first story is that of Simone Martini, the blind young man, who
lives with his mother in an apartment in Bologna. The narrative is in the
first person and Simone’s story is recorded in the present tense. The first
few lines explain the title of the novel: Simone loves listening to Chet
Baker’s interpretation of “Almost Blue,” a jazz song composed by Elvis
Costello in 1982, because “you have to sing it with your eyes closed”
(5) and “[m]y eyes are closed even when I’m not singing” (5). Being
blind from birth, Simone has a personal sense of colours and is attracted
by sound. For this reason, he uses a scanner to listen to “the voice of
the city” (10) throughout the night. Scanning the radio waves of the
city from police radio calls to telephone conversations allows him to have
a spatiotemporal perception of the extent of the urban environment: “I
have never seen Bologna, but I know it well, even if it’s probably my
own imaginary Bologna. It’s a big city: almost three hours” (7). As it
is explained in the novel, three hours is the time needed for a truck
to cross greater Bologna. Once Simone followed a truck driver’s inces-
sant conversation throughout the journey and internalised the temporal
size of the city. This aural perception is accentuated later when Simone
associates the boundaries of Bologna with silence: “And then, suddenly,
the voices stop. My city has a well-defined perimeter; it’s bordered by
silence. On the other side of the border there’s an abyss that swallows
up all sounds, blacker than black. Emptiness” (7–8). During his sleepless
nights, the physiognomy of Bologna is constructed through the many
different dialogues (and stories) that the blind protagonist experiences
through technology.
Simone’s story alternates with another tale in the first person which
follows the Iguana, the serial killer investigated in Almost Blue. The
Iguana is a troubled young man with a painful past of neglect and hospi-
talisation. His relationship with sound and noise is more problematic than
Simone’s, as he hears voices and the sound of bells for the dead. In order
to cover this disturbing noise, he constantly listens to hard-rock music at
high volume, and so, like Simone, he is dependent on technology:
I turn on the stereo, bass and treble on max, the volume all the way up,
the LED completely red, not even flashing. I reach for the jack and shove it
into the socket, a wall goes up inside my head, hard and compact, from ear
to ear behind my eyes. The drums, the snare and the plates rattle through
my head like a snake’s tongue…. There’s a wall in my head—a Wall. The
bells ring against it, deadened. Each peal gets a little farther away. (12–13)
Eventually, what he hears in his head overwhelms him, causing him

to inflict pain on himself and others. The Iguana kills his victims and
takes over their identities in a constant and hopeless attempt to silence
what he calls the “hell’s bells.” As we will see, his ability to camouflage
makes it difficult for the police to catch him with traditional investigative
techniques.
174 B. PEZZOTTI
The third perspective of the novel is Inspector Grazia Negro’s. She is a

rookie police detective in charge of the investigation. The chapters dedi-
cated to this character are narrated in the third person and in the past
tense. In the chapter that introduces Negro, the reader sees her partici-
pating in a meeting with her boss, the charismatic criminologist Vittorio
Poletto, the Police Commissioner, and Bologna’s Deputy Prosecutor,
Alvau. There have been a series of murders of students in Bologna, and
while the police are reluctant to attribute them all to one killer, Poletto
and Negro, who belong to the recently established (fictional) Unit for
the Analysis of Violent Crimes (UASC), try to convince their colleagues
that they are all the work of the same very brutal hands (which half-way
through the novel are revealed to be the Iguana’s).
In the chapter introducing Inspector Negro’s point of view two impor-
tant issues are presented: the first is sexism in the Italian police force (and
society at large) represented by the condescending way Negro is treated
both by her boss Poletto and other members of the police force; the
second is the scientific method of investigation embodied by Negro and
Poletto, and contrasted with more traditional and conservative methods.
This contraposition is exemplified by the very place where the meeting
takes place:
The laboratory for special investigations was created by joining together

two monks’ cells. It has stone walls, beamed ceilings, and several small
windows, encased by large, roughly hewn stones. The floor is tiled with
terracotta. The beams are painted black. If there were an altar, a crucifix
and a candelabra, it would resemble a monastery chapel. Instead, a
computer terminal, its monitor, modem and keyboard, together with a
five-screen television security system, long coils of cables and an assortment
of plugs make the room a headquarters for forensics. (17)
This mix of ancient (the original destination of the rooms as monks’ cells)
and new (the computer equipment) is a metaphor for the clash between
the two groups, but also illustrates Lucarelli’s operation to introduce a
scientific and technology-based investigation into an Italian tradition that
is still reluctant to embrace it.4 In the novel, when Poletto talks about
serial killers, the Police Commissioner warns him: “Now hold on, Dottor
Poletto, this is Italy, not the United States” (18).5 In other words, the
Police Commissioner seems to believe that serial killers can only exist and
operate in the American society. Mostly silent and reduced to the role of
an assistant, Negro shows the sceptic Police Commissioner how the new
SCIPS works, but it is Poletto who does all the talking:
Grazia quickly walked over to the terminal and sat down in front of
the screen. When she moved the mouse, the rotating words vanished….
[Vittorio:] This program is called SACS. It deals with the systemic analysis
of crime scenes. It processes data gathered by SART, an operating system
that houses circumstantial data and information from different cases and
highlights the connections between them. (20)
In spite of being reduced to silence, Negro is the only one who can effec-
tively use a computer. As well as representing an evolution towards a
digital style of investigation and society, Negro is also representative of
a “mobility” towards a non- or, rather, less patriarchal society, as we will
see later in this chapter.
Women and Mobility in the Postmodern City

Together with representing discrimination endured by policewomen in
the workforce, Almost Blue also tackles the theme of the relationship
between women and the urban environment. After convincing their supe-
riors to pursue the serial killer’s trail, Negro and Poletto leave the Bologna
police headquarters. Once alone in the street, the young female detective
experiences a panic attack: “The evening air had turned cold and grey.
Suddenly the parking lot in piazza Roosevelt seems larger than before,
as if it had expanded around her. As if Bologna itself had become an
immense and infinitely dilating city” (29).
Mobility in the urban environment can be liberating for women (Kwan
210–27). However, according to Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, agora-
phobia is a common experience for women in the city (6) and a result
of the patriarchal control over society and the urban environment, both
private and public. Negro is also an outsider in Bologna: she comes
from the south of Italy and, in a tradition made famous by crime writer
Leonardo Sciascia (1921–1989), has difficulty in understanding the city
where she works. Sciascia used this feeling of estrangement in The Day
of the Owl (1984), in which Captain Bellodi, coming from the northern
region of Emilia-Romagna but fighting the mafia in Sicily, finds it hard to
understand local culture and the code of silence in particular. Since then
176 B. PEZZOTTI
the topic of the North-South culture clash has been used many times in
Italian crime fiction.
Inspector Negro, however, is not only a “foreigner” but also a woman
pursuing a career dominated by men. In this sense, the Negro police
procedural series shares with other novels featuring female detectives an
attention on the status of women in Western societies (the first and most
notable example of this being P. D. James’s An Unsuitable Job for a
Woman [1970]). In the above quotation, she faces what Stephen Marcus
defines as the postmodern city that escapes control and lacks the “signi-
fying potencies and structural coherencies that it once seemed to possess”
(240). Her feeling of alienation does not allow her to play the role of the
previously mentioned active flâneur (Howell 361) who can control the
city’s topography.
This task is made difficult not only by her double status as a foreigner
(she is a woman in the police force as well as a person coming from
Southern Italy), but also by Bologna’s elusiveness. In Lucarelli’s fiction,
the representation of urban space is twofold: on the one hand, the physical
city is portrayed as an uncanny sprawling area. On the other, Bologna is
depicted as an intricate network of exchanges, influences and mobilities.
Indeed, in the novel Bologna is described as a postmodern city charac-
terised by ambiguous spaces and underground cultures and very difficult
to explore and decipher.6 As Inspector Negro’s colleagues explain to her:
The city called Bologna actually extends all the way from Parma, in the
north, to Cattolica, on the Adriatic coast. The city grew up out of the old
Via Emilia. There are people here who live in Modena, work in Bologna,
and go dancing at night in Rimini. It’s an old metropolis—two million
inhabitants in two thousand square kilometres. It spread like an oil spill
between the sea and the Appenine Mountains. And it has no real center,
only marginal cities: Ferrara, Imola, Ravenna, the Adriatic coastal towns.
(103)
Known as la rossa, the red city, for the colour of its medieval porticoes and
the political affiliation of its population, Bologna is also called la dotta, the
erudite, as it hosts the oldest university in the Western world (dating from
1088). A model of efficient local administration, one of the wealthiest
food hubs in Italy, and a centre of student and punk culture, Bologna
has inspired several giallo writers since the 1970s. Its distinctive centre,
with the iconic Piazza Maggiore and Towers of Bologna, has been the
setting of several fictional investigations, following a traditional pattern in
Italian crime fiction. In this tradition, the city is described as an urban
environment with a well-defined historical centre, enriched with churches
and iconic buildings, and a dilapidated, but contained periphery.7
Previous representations of Bologna in the giallo thus describe a city
with a distinctive historic centre and a periphery.8 In contrast, the above
description of a metropolis that accounts for two million inhabitants
mirrors a new phase in the city’s evolution and complicates the discourse
on urban space and identity. Lucarelli’s Bologna is a city that exceeds its
traditional limits and includes a large area around the old Roman road,
Via Emilia, thus forming a metropolis that he compares with the big
American cities.9 Bologna does not only expand horizontally, but also
vertically:
The university has another side to it, and not much is known about that,
either. Students come to Bologna from all parts of Italy. They start studying
and they quit and they start up again. They stay at friends’ or relatives’
houses, they sublet apartments illegally, with no guarantees or contracts….
You want to get to know the University, Ispettore? The University is its
own clandestine city. (Almost Blue 106–07)
As Lucia Rinaldi points out, in Almost Blue the university world, with its
colourful students and alternative theatres, its squats and drug culture,
is symbolic of a postmodern Bologna (25). In an underground world
where a stranger, with an unusual accent, who comes and goes at any
hour, unknown to anyone, could be the average student, a serial killer can
easily strike and disappear. In this underground world, the apprehension
of the Iguana appears to be impossible. Simone identifies the Iguana while
tuning to a chat between two students and thinks:
I don’t like him. His voice is green…. His voice is green because it has no
colour. Colour comes from the way a person breathes through their words.
From the pressure of their breath…. This voice is none of these. It’s only
slightly stronger than the voice of the synthesiser, only slightly fuller. It’s a
fake, green voice…. I can’t stand the green voice. That’s something about
it that sends shivers up my spine. (30–31)
178 B. PEZZOTTI
As one can see from this passage, while listening to the two young people
arranging a first meeting, Simone’s acute hearing perceives the inner
nature of the serial killer and he decides to contact the police. In the
meantime, the analysis of a fingerprint found in the gory crime scene
described at the beginning of the novel reveals that the killer may be
Alessio Crotti, a disturbed youngster who had apparently died in a crim-
inal asylum a few years before. Moreover, being accidentally exposed to
the pictures of the victims of the Iguana, the landlady of the most recent
prey swears that a friend of his murdered tenant looks identical to a
previous victim of the serial killer. Negro accesses the SCIPS database and
notices that at each unsolved murder the target of the previous murder
was somehow present. She realises that Alessio Crotti is not dead, but
he assumes the features of his victims. This intuition, confirmed by tech-
nology, is pivotal for the investigation, but, as Poletto observes: “If he
changes his identity, the wanted posters won’t mean a thing. It’s like
being blind” (63).
The Liberating Power of Technology

If Negro and Poletto are metaphorically blind in searching a ghost in
a clandestine city, Simone’s habit to overhear people’s conversations
through a scanner is a partial liberation from his own blindness: he is
able to “see” and make sense of a city that escapes the two detectives.
Indeed, pursuing a murderer in the multifaceted city requires radically
new investigation methods with which the different layers of the city
can be penetrated and understood. Like Jeffery Deaver’s famous fictional
paraplegic detective, Lincoln Rhyme, Simone’s limited physical mobility is
enhanced by technical devices. Like Lincoln Rhyme, he “extends himself
electronically” (Highmore 109) and does not need to move in a literal
sense in order to participate in the investigation. It may also be argued
that Simone is a technological version of the Baudelairean flâneur: he
can observe (or rather listen) without being listened to and without
interacting with others. Reading voices becomes an activity that reveals
a human mapping, which turns the city into a sociological palimpsest.
For Georg Simmel the significance of the city lies in the effect it has on
mental life, and by extension, the relationships of those who live there
(12). Simone’s aural navigation allows for a reading of relationships and
interactions in an otherwise unknowable city.
When Simone intercepts a conversation during which the Iguana

arranges an appointment at a fringe theatre in Bologna, Negro asks him
to join the chase. The unlikely pair reaches the theatre where Simone
is in charge of recognising the “green” voice in the crowd. In a packed
theatre Negro and Simone are looking for the Iguana who—as they know
by now—always wears earphones. Their mission is more complicated than
expected:
The Teatro Alternativo in Bologna is a small amphitheater. It has wide,

cement steps that double as seats and lead down towards the stage. Except
for the stage itself, which is lit by spotlights, and for some dim lights above
the columns in the walkway around the back of the theatre, it’s completely
dark. Only blurred shapes, vague outlines and movement are visible. (112)
The Teatro Alternativo epitomises the elusive “university city” inhabited

by young people wearing kufiyah and sporting ears pierced with rows
of small earrings. This unofficial uniform of the typical 1990s student
makes everybody look similar and renders Negro’s assignment very diffi-
cult. Moreover, the theatre is close to a cinema where a foreign movie is
showing. Bored by a less than appealing film, the audience converges to
the Teatro Alternativo still wearing the earphones used for the simulta-
neous translation. The distinctive feature of the Iguana is therefore lost in
the crowd. Ironically, in this episode, far from being a help to the inves-
tigation, technology hinders it. The chase of the Iguana fails and exposes
Simone to a future revenge from the killer. The novel ends tradition-
ally with a showdown between the Iguana and Negro at Simone’s house.
The physical clash between the two lasts for a few pages and is mostly
described by the noise of the struggle Simone hears. Negro is determined
to save Simone from the Iguana, but she is not able to prevent the serial
killer from blinding himself in order to look like Simone. In the end,
the Iguana is apprehended and confined to a mental asylum. Simone and
Negro survive the ordeal and start a relationship.
The last pages of the novel also show an empowering of Inspector
Negro. Not only does she defeat the Iguana, but she is also able to free
herself from her patronising boss’s control. Based on a real woman, a
friend of Lucarelli’s brother and a trumpet player with whom the fictional
police detective shares her name, physical appearance and personal history,
Grazia Negro occupies more and more “space” throughout Lucarelli’s
series (Pezzotti, Importance 97). In an earlier novel, Lupo Mannaro, she
180 B. PEZZOTTI
is a secondary character, a 22-year-old recruit who works as an assistant

to Inspector Romeo. She is very efficient, but insecure; she often has
an “anxious look,” and she is “careful and trustful” (38). She is in love
with her boss, who is hospitalised for a degenerative disease at the end
of the novel. In Almost Blue, she is more assertive and her new boss
trusts her “fierce, animal instincts” (25). Yet, he patronises her and calls
her “sweetheart.” Initially, her subordinates resent being managed by a
woman; however, by the end of the novel, she has gained her colleagues’
respect and is able to tell her boss: “Don’t call me sweetheart anymore.
It bugs the hell out of me” (166).10 In the last part of the novel, Poletto
is murdered by the Iguana. Poletto’s death and Negro’s victory over the
Iguana (and subsequent promotion) symbolically stress the emancipation
of the female protagonist of Almost Blue. Finally, her relationship with
Simone is characterised by equality, because “[s]he could talk to him
without his ogling or inspecting her. He couldn’t ask her to do things
with his gaze: ‘dress like a woman’; ‘stay here and work for me’; ‘get
him, bambina’. Simone didn’t do that, he wasn’t ironic or patronising.
He didn’t want anything. He just listened” (108).
Conclusion
As shown in this chapter, technology is an important element of investiga-
tion in Almost Blue. According to Brendan Riley, recent popular culture,
especially in the forms of science fiction, has suggested that technology,
particularly new media, harms interpersonal relationships and endangers
individual liberty (58). Written in a pre-social media and pre-9/11 world,
where the pervasive control of governments and a surveillance culture
were not at the centre of public debates, Almost Blue does not address
this issue. In the novel, the use of technology is seen as liberating and is
not contrasted with anxieties regarding personal freedom. In this sense,
Almost Blue re-establishes the connection between scientific discoveries
and crime fiction—first highlighted by Regis Messac in 1929 as one of
the features that spurred the flourishing of crime fiction in the nineteenth
century—in the Italian tradition.
The relationship between technology, mobility and privacy is not prob-
lematised in Lucarelli’s story. The author introduces the internet and
scientific investigations within the police force, citing devices subsequently
popularised by many American series. His writing style, characterised by
an almost manic attention to detail, widely describes the use of monitors,
modems, and databases and communications tools, such as chatrooms (in

other words, tools of virtual mobility). In Almost Blue, the continuous
reference to technological devices highlights the idea that contempo-
rary metropoles may be unknowable; the urban sprawl may have made
reading and controlling space difficult, but experience of the urban envi-
ronment can still be explored through technology. The epistemology of
crime fiction is therefore maintained, and detectives—be they Caucasian
male, women, minorities or disabled—can still deliver criminals to justice.
In crime fiction, space is what Manuel Castells describes in another
context as a “space of flows,” a series of connected nodal points forming
a large network, rather than a group of mutually exclusive spaces with no
connection between them (171). Interestingly, Riley argues that “[t]he
big city’s anonymous masses undermined the middle class sense of safety,
and the detective story emerged as a salve for that destabilization” (24).
In Golden Age crime fiction and American hard-boiled, connections are
mainly performed by the white male detective. Conversely, in Almost Blue
this task falls to a woman and a disabled person. Both use technology to
make sense of an uncanny space; they cannot physically probe the urban
environment because of its extension, but they can search it virtually and
make sense of it. Ultimately, in Lucarelli’s fiction technology helps women
and minorities to move in the urban environment and gain control of the
postmodern city.
Notes
1. Giallo, gialli in the plural, is the term commonly used to define crime
fiction in Italy. It means “yellow” from the colour assigned to the covers
of one of the first Italian series of crime fiction launched in 1929 by
the publisher Mondadori. In this chapter, the term giallo is used in its
widest meaning, that is to say, a story where there is a crime and an
investigation takes place, as commonly accepted by authoritative scholars,
such as Giuseppe Petronio.
2. Among the historical detective novels is the trilogy set during fascism
which includes Carta bianca (1990), translated as Carte Blanche (2006);
L’estate torbida (1991), translated as The Damned Season (2007); Via delle
Oche (1996), translated as Via delle Oche (2008); and L’ottava vibrazione
[The Eight Vibration] (2008) and Albergo Italia [Hotel Italia] (2014)
set at the end of the nineteenth century in the Italian colonies. For an
analysis of Lucarelli’s historical crime fiction, see Pezzotti (Investigating
76–84) and d’Arcangeli and Lori (73–88).
182 B. PEZZOTTI
3. In this chapter, I use the term “crime fiction” as the label of the genre as
a whole (see Knight and Priestman). I use the term “detective fiction” as a
subgenre of crime fiction where the focus of the story is “on the detective
and the process he or she uses to solve the crime” (Wiegand 148). As
for the variants in detective fiction, in the police procedural the police
detective “must function within the rules of the police department; he or
she lacks the freedom of the private detective. Although the pattern may
vary because of the personality of the detective, most police detectives
work as part of a team” (Wiegand 150).
4. Among the most famous crime stories, Andrea Camilleri’s series featuring
Inspector Salvo Montalbano presents a strong anti-forensic examination
stance. For example, in The Snack Thief (2004): “In American movies, the
policemen had only to tell somebody the license-plate number, and in less
than two minutes, he would know the owner’s name, how many children
he had, the colour of his hair, and the number of hairs on his ass. In Italy,
things were different” (170). In Massimo Carlotto’s La verità dell’Alliga-
tore [The Alligator’s Truth] (1995), a character named Alberto Magagnin
is convicted through an incorrect bloodstain analysis never rectified by the
experts. Also in Carlotto’s The Master of Knots (2004), there is a denun-
ciation of the scientific investigation that, in the narrator’s opinion, is
subservient to the powers that be (148).
5. In Italian crime fiction, the figure of the serial killer, introduced by
Lucarelli, has subsequently and successfully been used by Giorgio Faletti
(1950–2014) in his internationally acclaimed crime stories.
6. In this chapter, I use the term postmodern according to Giandomenico
Amendola’s definition of the postmodern urban environment (25).
7. For an extensive examination of the representation of the city in Italian
crime fiction, see Barbara Pezzotti, The Importance of Place in Contempo-
rary Italian Crime Fiction: A Bloody Journey.
8. Apart from Lucarelli, the most important crime writer who sets his stories
in Bologna is Loriano Macchiavelli (b. 1934). He is the author of a
long-lasting series started in 1974 with Le piste dell’attentato [Tracking
the Terrorist Attack] that features Inspector Antonio Sarti as the main
character.
9. As Lucarelli explains in an interview, he was inspired by Pier Vittorio
Tondelli and especially his literary novel Rimini, where Tondelli gives an
account of the establishment of a huge holiday resort area from the mouth
of the Po River to the Gabicce promontory (Pezzotti, Importance 184).
10. The last two adventures also see Negro in charge of difficult and
dangerous investigations, and she is invariably pivotal in solving these
cases.
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CHAPTER 10
Crime and Detection in a Virtually Mobile

World: Tom Hillenbrand’s Drohnenland
Heike Henderson
Introduction
Tom Hillenbrand’s immensely successful dystopia Drohnenland (2014,
published in English as Drone State, 2018)1 expands and transcends
traditional ideas of mobility. This popular crime novel features investi-
gators who can travel in a so-called mirror space, an alternate reality that
exists parallel to current time and space. Due to the ease of virtual travel,
compared to the hardship and time investment of actual mobility, virtual
visits to crime scenes and computer-generated recreations of past events
have largely replaced old-fashioned police work. Mobility thus extends
into another dimension and involves movement across space and time
without requiring the protagonists to leave their physical location: a post-
national Europe severely affected by climate change, the effects of which,
such as almost constant rain and serious flooding, make actual travel much
harder.2 Setting his novel in a future European Union that simultaneously
feels very distant and not so far away allows Hillenbrand to reflect on
current trends in society and technology and, as is typical for speculative
fiction, deal with contemporary fears and anxieties in a fictional form.3
H. Henderson (B)
Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA

186 H. HENDERSON
Mobility in Drohnenland does not only extend into the virtual world,
but it is also intrinsically connected to surveillance: drones monitor and
record everything and everyone. The almost unlimited mobility of drones
thus limits the actual mobility of the people who are under surveillance.
Terry, the powerful central computer of the European Union, named
after the all-knowing Greek seer Tereisias (104), has access to vast
amounts of data and, like the mythological figure it is named after, knows
everything about everybody.4 Digital data trails inform decisions, trigger
actions and preclude any semblance of privacy, but as Drohnenland’s plot
shows, these digital files can also be tampered with. The novel’s basic
plot centres on the secret service murdering EU representatives whose
vote in an important upcoming election could not be predicted and then,
through data manipulation, either disguising these murders as accidents
or, in the case that the protagonist Aart Westerhuizen is charged to solve,
implicating a known anarchist and critic of the regime. Hillenbrand’s
novel shows how convenience and surveillance are intimately connected
both on the institutional and the personal level, and how human beings
have become pawns to corporate interests and uncontrolled institu-
tional authority. This puts the novel into the tradition of sociocritical
crime novels, a genre that has been most closely associated with Nordic
Noir, while also exhibiting many characteristics of contemporary techno
thrillers.5
In my investigation of Hillenbrand’s dystopian crime narrative, I
examine the ways in which the mobility of data by far exceeds the actual
mobility of Drohnenland’s citizens, and the correlations of basing all deci-
sions on digital data. In a world ruled by powerful institutions and global
mega-companies, crime prevention and detection almost completely rely
on computers instead of personal agency. Drohnenland’s protagonist Aart
Westerhuizen, a police inspector who works for Europol, has to contin-
ually fight the authorities—and the powerful central computer—to eke
out space to think for himself and make autonomous decisions, and to
reclaim the individual agency that he needs to solve the case. During the
investigation, his self-identification changes from a representative of the
state (due to his job as a police inspector) to a figure of resistance; this
also exemplifies that resistance, despite and because of the global reach of
digital surveillance, must begin at the local level.
In addition to our mortal analogue selves, we now all possess an
immortal digital self, a simulatum that at times appears more real than our
real selves, and Hillenbrand explores this notion of hyper-real digital selves
10 CRIME AND DETECTION IN A VIRTUALLY MOBILE WORLD … 187
in Drohnenland. Digital simulations in mirror space replace real-time

analyses of crime scenes, and digital forms of communication in which
participants use holographic projections replace face-to-face conversa-
tions. The permeation of the digital does not even stop at bodies. In
Drohnenland, most people volunteer to have ID chips implanted, because
they make life easier: fewer security checks, easier payments and almost no
biometrical scans (340). It is generally only old people who occasionally
still complain about the loss of privacy; young people are used to it.
Crime narratives have long functioned “as a seismograph for emerging
conflicts and anxieties between individuals, the social order and the state”
(Stougaard-Nielsen 12). Discussions about surveillance and privacy, as
well as debates about technological advances in regard to mobility, play
a crucial role in constructing our sense of (in)security.6 Even before the
era of digital surveillance, Germany, of course, has had its own troubled
history of walls, surveillance and border security. Karin Bauer and Andrea
Gogröf, in their introduction to a special issue of the Germanic studies
journal Seminar on surveillance, recommend a “turn to literature, film,
and art as sources for understanding and possibly resisting” contempo-
rary surveillance regimes in a productive way (353). Through my reading
of Hillenbrand’s Drohnenland, I hope to contribute to this investigation
and “pursue the question of participation in and resistance to surveillance
power” (Bauer and Gogröf 355). In the following sections, I will consider
digital surveillance, the future of policing, global and local connections,
limits of mobility, and opportunities for personal agency.
Digital Surveillance
Surveillance is about seeing things and, more particularly, seeing people.
However, as David Lyon, one of the pioneers of surveillance studies, has
pointed out, “paradoxically, people are not what most surveillance sees
today” (1). Direct surveillance of people has been supplemented and, to
a large extent, replaced by technologically mediated surveillance of the
data that people yield. Ambient intelligence controls our surroundings.
Everything that moves (not only people, but also information, products,
capital, etc.) is subject to surveillance; this shows both the importance
of mobility in today’s world and how surveillance has become ubiqui-
tous and taken for granted. Mobility and movement, instead of signifying
freedom, have increasingly triggered surveillance and become its subjects.
188 H. HENDERSON
Hillenbrand’s novel explicates how modern-day surveillance is both

an instrument of control and intimately connected to consumer society.
Media foils have replaced computers and can be drawn open anywhere
and everywhere. Everyone wears specs, special eyeglasses that can be envi-
sioned as a more advanced version of Google glasses, to permanently be
online. They allow people to access the internet, make instant calcula-
tions about things like an opponent’s speed and record what they see and
hear. The specs’ power and speed depend on the model, and how much
consumers are able and willing to pay for them. In a parallel to real-life
buying behaviour, people in Drohnenland clamour to obtain the newest
model, subjecting themselves willingly to surveillance while paying a hefty
price for the privilege.
Knowing that we are under constant surveillance irrevocably changes
our daily lives; it changes what we do and what we say. As Michel
Foucault has famously shown in Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of
the Prison, the effect of the panopticum is “to induce in the inmate a state
of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic func-
tioning of power” (201). The inmate, who is “the object of information,
never a subject in communication” (200), ends up policing themselves.
This concept also applies to surveillance in the public realm. The public’s
knowledge of surveillance changes their behaviour, which in turn creates
new public standards and norms. Surveillance is thus never neutral; it
always participates in social ordering and cultural developments.
There are many implications of this self-policing in regard to crime
and mobility. In Drohnenland, running away is useless: if the police are
looking for a suspect, there are millions of cameras and drones that can
aid in the search. Drohnenland’s police drones can “powder” suspects by
covering them in thousands of tiny transmitters, thus marking them and
making it even easier to follow their movements (67). Data trails accu-
mulated with the help of the ubiquitous specs result in a comprehensive
map of people’s movements. There is no need for alibis as every life is
digitally archived. Hillenbrand’s dystopia paints a world in which there
is no privacy or anonymity left, which restricts citizens’ cultural mobility
and impacts their opportunities to engage with each other.
In Data Love: The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies,
Roberto Simanowski contemplates our love for data and its love for us.
Evoking the spectre of Dave Eggers’ dystopian novel The Circle (2013),
Simanowski predicts that data acquisition “will increasingly become a
social duty and will be perceived as being in the interest of the public good
to the extent that one will not be able to avoid the provision of personal
data without consequences” (70). Even if we do not contribute volun-
tarily and/or knowingly, data is being taken from our cell phones and
search histories or, in Drohnenland’s case, specs and identity chips. Data
love, as Simanowski points out, is a two-way street: it demands constant
contribution and rewards participants with an illusion of community.
Hillenbrand’s novel illuminates the collaboration, and occasional
conflict, between state interests and those of private corporations that
many observers already discern today. The mobility of data and people
thus becomes a subject of power and politics. The government turns
to private companies in order to facilitate the collection of information
about the populace—or, in the words of William G. Staples, “‘big brother’
meets his ‘tiny brothers’” (xii). Of course, this collaboration bears great
potential for conflict; public and private interests do not always align.
In Drohnenland, one of the original creators of the virtual world called
mirror space had been restricted by government contracts from selling his
invention to other countries. Because of this restriction on his company’s
expansion, he proceeded to build his own parallel mirror space. Instead
of relying on government data, like the official mirror space, he uses the
private feeds of the millions of people wearing the specs that are manufac-
tured and sold by his company. Millions of private citizens thus, without
their knowledge or consent, have become informants and contributors to
a second, secret mirror space. The company then has even started selling
access to this second mirror space to those who want to spy on their
competitors or, in an ironic twist, attempt to escape the total surveillance
in the EU.
The Future of Policing and Pre-crime

Predictive policing is one of the hottest—and most controversial—
trends in contemporary law enforcement. Because predictive policing uses
computer analysis of crime data to tell officers when and where future
crimes such as burglaries might occur, it is lauded as helping to prevent
crimes instead of just chasing criminals after they have committed the
crimes. Yet, predictive policing also creates a vicious cycle: since many
police departments disproportionally arrest minorities, this creates a skew-
ered set of historical data that, when fed into pre-crime’s algorithms, lead
to even more arrests of these same minorities (Mantel 341). Technology
190 H. HENDERSON
thus also contributes to racial profiling and violations of citizens’ civil

liberties.
Jude McCulloch and Dean Wilson, in their comprehensive study
Pre-crime: Pre-emption, Precaution and the Future, explore how “pre-
crime transforms the relationship between crime and punishment, with
profound implications for security, justice and society” (1). At the heart
of any predictive policing lies the question whether the future is “multiple
and contingent or predetermined and predictable” (1). Like other critics,
they remind us that pre-crime’s crime-free promise is intertwined with
threats to liberty and security; pre-crime deprives people of even an initial
chance to demonstrate their trustworthiness. By substituting suspicion
for the presumption of innocence, pre-crime produces insecurity and
reinforces divisions within society (5).7 It “prioritizes some people and
some interests over others, with no necessary match between the extent
of potential harm and selected priorities” and, by addressing hypothetical
crimes, it “produces imaginary crimes, criminals and victims, deepening
the selective and partial nature of security by fortifying the imaginary
border between the community to be protected and those deemed to
be threats and subsequently cast outside the circle of protection” (11).
Since pre-crime also promotes a general sense of fear and insecurity, it
not only impacts would-be criminals but also a society’s sense of justice
and the relationship between individuals and the state.8
Hillenbrand’s novel explores the ramifications of pre-crime taken to
an extreme. For example, children whose simulation of their personal
future shows a life of crime are preventatively executed in Drohnenland.
Showing the impact of military technology on civilian life, it was during
the “solar wars” in Drohnenland’s past that many of these pre-crime
and surveillance strategies were first developed and tested. After nuclear
attacks on Tehran and Riyadh, so the story goes, there was little access
to oil, making solar energy (and access to countries with much sunshine)
crucially important (261). During the ensuing solar wars, a large govern-
ment project called for the total surveillance of North African rebels in
the solar territories and the arrest of “future terrorists” based on pre-crime
predictions (293–94). These wars also strengthened the secret police. War
and access to energy, in Drohnenland as much as in our world, are thus
used to justify the suspension or abandonment of personal liberties and
due process.
In Hillenbrand’s novel, the borders between the community to be

protected and those deemed to be threats roughly match the borders of
the EU territory, which illuminates issues of border-control and immigra-
tion that have been at the forefront of political discussions within the last
couple of decades.9 However, within this generally protected EU terri-
tory, there are neighbourhoods such as “little Tehran” in Brussels, filled
with outlaws and minorities that refuse to succumb to total government
control. Wary of police misconduct and ruthless persecution based on
pre-crime data, little Tehran’s inhabitants shoot down police drones and
live according to their own rules. Street robbers and gangs control the
area; despite the police force’s many technological advantages, they are
not able to control and surveil the neighbourhood efficiently.
Besides its social commentary on borders and protection, Drohnenland
also shows the limits of predictive policing, and of making predictions
about a person’s future decisions in general. Drohnenland’s police system
is very effective, and there are, for example, no human smugglers in
this future world because Terry’s predictive software identifies them in
advance. Criminals also keep up with technological advances and, in
this particular case, use hobo drones for smuggling. It is also important
to remember that no prediction is fail-safe and sometimes predictions
are not even possible. In Drohnenland, this dilemma is illustrated by
Terry’s inability to predict how three members of parliament, who are
subsequently murdered, would have voted in an upcoming election. The
non-predictability of their future decisions sets in motion a chain of events
that culminates in their deaths and the discovery of the second mirror
world. A tightly regulated government such as the one portrayed in
Hillenbrand’s novel cannot tolerate insecurity on any level, and yet it is
exactly the attempt to control future developments that foils the system’s
efficiency and ultimately provides an opening for resistance.
Global and Local Perspectives

In their introduction to Crime Fiction as World Literature, Louise
Nilsson et al. characterise crime fiction as “a preeminently ‘glocal’ mode
of literary creation and circulation” (4). Combining universal themes with
local settings allows crime fiction to explore important issues of transna-
tional relevance. In Drohnenland, this connection between global and
local perspectives is heightened because of the novel’s futuristic setting in
a super-globalised world. Through the detective’s investigations, “power
192 H. HENDERSON
structures, institutions, police procedures, and civil codes are portrayed, as

are human behavior and psychology” (Nilsson et al. 5). Aart has to navi-
gate both local power structures within the police department and global
implications of his investigation, an investigation that not only reaches
across state lines, but also into the virtual world of the mirror space.
Andrew Pepper and David Schmid, in their introduction to Global-
ization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction, ask us to explore
“the capacities of crime fiction to reflect, in critical and imaginative ways,
on the processes of globalization in general, or on the growing transna-
tionalization of crime and policing networks in the contemporary era, in
particular” (2). Crime novels including Drohnenland provide insights into
and comments on the effects of globalisation and neoliberal capitalism,
for example, through its portrayal of the use of specs, and the subsequent
abuse of the data unwittingly gathered by their wearers. Global consumer
culture, global media and digital networks have spurred immense trans-
formations of local lives and values. Technology has modified our ways of
relating to and moving in the world; Hillenbrand urges us to reconsider
the ramifications of our acquiescence to technological advances that claim
to be improvements but may actually curtail our freedoms and hinder our
mobility.
In Drohnenland, the predominance of the virtual world makes clear
national delineations impossible. Although states still exist, albeit in
different forms (the novel features a strong European Union instead of
autonomous nation states) and in different power configurations (the
Unites States have ceased to be relevant and have been replaced by newer
power players like Brazil and Korea, in addition to the European Union),
the mirror space undermines national borders in new and imaginative
ways. It also allows global players such as the investigative journalist and
pop phenomenon Johnny Random to appear everywhere simultaneously,
without revealing his actual physical location or physical characteristics.
He effortlessly transgresses national borders as well as the physical laws of
space and time: the mirror space allows unlimited possibilities for mobility.
Johnny Random, the pseudonym of a journalist who uncovered a big
government scandal and was subsequently forced out of his job, uses an
avatar that continuously changes. The impermanence of his highly sophis-
ticated avatar does more than protect his true appearance; it has become
the trademark of his highly popular show. Due to his use of modern
translation technology, people can watch his show in their own native
languages. Since he uses the secret private mirror space to gather infor-
mation, he is able to successfully combine entertainment and information.
He routinely breaks shocking stories about scandals involving corruption,
child prostitution or arms deals. When the EU government tries to forbid
his feeds, he resorts to a guerrilla act, asking people to spray media foil
squares all over towns throughout the European Union that make his
show appear at a predetermined time. The popularity of his show and the
success of his attempts to circumvent government restrictions thus attest
to the ability of pop culture and new digital media to effortlessly cross
national borders.
Globalisation has wrought changes both in what kinds of crimes are
committed and how they are policed (Pepper and Schmid 17). Hillen-
brand responds to these challenges by outlining a global trajectory of
current developments. Although he depicts a largely dystopian world, he
also incorporates room for resistance and personal agency (which always
starts at a local level), despite the predominance of computer algorithms
and artificial intelligence. He helps us envision and think through the
cultural implications of technological advances and urges us to take a
stand vis-à-vis the new possibilities and limits of personal mobility that
are erected upon the old landscapes of our world today.
Limits of Mobility
In Hillenbrand’s narrative, the unlimited possibilities of the virtual world
(in the mirror space, one can go anywhere at any time) and the almost
limitless mobility of drones, which are just restricted by personal acts of
defiance like those that are committed in little Tehran, stand in sharp
contrast to the actual range of mobility for ordinary citizens, whose
freedom to travel is severely curtailed both by institutional restrictions
and environmental factors. In Drohnenland, parts of Europe, like most of
the Netherlands, are below sea level (they have thus become inaccessible)
and other places such as Brussels, where most of the story takes place,
experiences extreme weather conditions including sweltering heat and
continuous rain (which impacts its citizens’ ability to travel freely through
the city). Governments also place tight restrictions on who is allowed to
travel and who is not. Not unlike our current situation in the twenty-first
century, the ability to cross borders and have access to easy transporta-
tion varies widely depending on nationality: Drohnenland’s airports have
194 H. HENDERSON
express check-ins for EU citizens, but citizens from other countries face
intense scrutiny and their physical mobility is severely limited.
New technologies and constant surveillance also restrict people’s ability
to make autonomous choices about their movements. In Drohnenland,
the “Enhanced Privacy Act,” which can be read as a euphemism for
no privacy, requires all data files to include a signature of origin. Every
car possesses a geo-signature that continuously records its location,
and drones immediately chase down any car that has its geo-signature
disabled. This contributes to the government’s total control of mobility,
which is further limited by passengers’ lack of control over the machines
that transport them. Although the self-driving cars (there are no other
cars in Drohnenland) allow users to programme where they want to go,
the cars maintain the final say over whether they comply with their occu-
pants’ wishes. This poses a problem, specifically since car computers can
be hacked and, as it happens to the protagonist Aart during the course
of his investigation, people can be sent to a different place from the one
they wanted to go to.
Public transportation is subject to the same level of surveillance and
control as cars. In Drohnenland, taxis, buses and subways automatically
scan pay passes, which, on the one hand, makes paying for transportation
easy, and, on the other, makes it impossible for anybody to travel without
their travel being recorded. This limitation of mobility causes a problem
for Aart when he tries to conduct his investigation into the murders while
trying to escape from surveillance by the secret service. Immediately after
scanning the pay passes, the EU’s central computer compares all passen-
gers’ data with current search warrants and automatically locks the door
if there is a match, which makes it impossible for Aart to use any form
of public transportation. This is yet another example of how advances in
technology such as public mass transit and easy payment options for trans-
portation can make life easier, and at the same time these technological
advances can curtail freedoms and restrict mobility.
The only private form of transportation that exists in Drohnenland is
walking, which is also susceptible to surveillance by drones. Aart further
realises that Terry, set on finding him after the secret service issues a
search warrant against him to stop him from completing his investiga-
tion, uses a wide variety of information sources to locate suspects: data
feeds from specs and identity chips, facial recognition and gait analysis.
Aart therefore resorts to intentionally hurting his foot to change his gait,
thus restricting his own mobility in yet another form. This episode shows
again that while there are many ways to move around in Drohnenland,
none of them allows for self-reliance and, even more importantly, all of
them are subject to surveillance.
As Aart discovers during the course of his investigation, it is almost
impossible to escape ubiquitous surveillance and predictive shadowing;
Terry the computer knows better than people themselves what they will
do next. The only place that allows limitless mobility is the mirror space
where utopian technology links distant physical spaces and allows for
unrestricted travel—if one has the right credentials, that is, either govern-
ment permission to access the official version of the mirror world or large
amounts of money to access the unofficial version. In the mirror space,
there are no borders between countries and no oceans between conti-
nents. The only border that still exists is the one between the mirror space
and the real world. In order to cross this border, one needs access and the
right equipment: a special hood, special drugs and an escape patch to ease
the transition back to reality.
Irrespective of surveillance, the pre-eminence of technology also
impacts citizens’ range of movement in other ways that reflect social
inequalities. While new technologies allow for faster, safer and easier
travel, personal choices are severely curtailed by these same technologies
and are not available to all citizens to the same extent. The self-
driving cars that occupy the streets in Drohnenland are one example of
this conundrum. Cars with priority clearance, afforded to high ranking
government officials and the super-rich who can pay for them, steer other
cars out of the way, clearing the roads for fast passage, while at the same
time backing up other cars. This is yet another instance in which Hillen-
brand, through his fiction, comments on social reality and the politics of
mobility.
Personal Agency
In a technologically constructed and connected world, personal agency
takes on a new urgency and significance. People generally accept and often
embrace technological advances; as Lyon reminds us, this even includes
surveillance: “most of the time, and in most contexts, people comply with
surveillance” (164). The majority of people tend to accept surveillance as
harmless and necessary, or a danger only to those with something to hide.
The promise of safety and appearance of control make people tolerate
restrictions to their personal freedom and mobility. Even when they are
196 H. HENDERSON
uncomfortable with it, most people rationalise the need for surveillance
and its benefits.10
Aart starts to change his disposition towards the EU government of
which he, as a police inspector, is a representative and enforcer, only after
he discovers the widespread manipulation of data by his own govern-
ment. After he discovers that the secret service tried to cover up murders,
making them appear as a string of accidents, he starts to wonder what the
reason for this cover-up might be. This leads him to the secret service’s
elimination of representatives whose votes in an upcoming election could
not be predicted. The government also implicated an innocent citizen as
the perpetrator of the murder that Aart is charged to solve in the opening
pages of the novel. Thomas Winterfuhr, a member of the Hamburg anar-
chist scene and an outspoken critic of the surveillance regime, had been
fingered to take the fall for a murder that the secret service committed.
Ironically, it is the detective’s fondness for old American films that
makes him realise, after a late-night stint of watching Casablanca, that
in the same way as portrayed in that film, the all too obvious suspect
in this crime is just one of the “usual suspects” (Hillenbrand 291) and
not the real perpetrator. This same intuition comes into play when he
watches the film Reservoir Dogs and notices that all gangsters wear Ray-
Ban sunglasses, making him wonder if all of the videos that he had been
investigating had been made with the same brand of specs. It is thus not
one of the new technologies by itself that allows the detective to solve
the case, but intuition and creativity in the use of these new technologies.
Mobile technologies allow and necessitate both new forms of detective
agency and the ability to decide when to fall back on human creativity
and intuition, such as trusting the inspiration gained from an old crime
film over the seemingly impeccable string of data evidence produced by
surveillance and computer calculations.
Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon, who in Liquid Surveillance reflect
on our fluid and unsettling regimes of in/visibility that are characterised
by data flows and mechanisms of sorting, pose the question where agency
can be found or fostered (142). While Hillenbrand paints a generally
bleak futuristic world, he also shows instances where human beings can
outsmart the powerful machines that surround and control their lives.
Aart’s colleague Ava, the female forensic analyst who is assigned to work
with him, initially grasps this ability to outsmart machines more easily
than the male police inspector Aart does. She knows how to trick Terry
to divulge information that the computer is not supposed to share. For
example, when she tries to find out if Terry possesses data he legally
should not have had access to, she tricks him by asking if, hypothetically,
more data would help him reach a better prediction. When Terry answers
no, she knows that he already possesses the data that was supposed to be
sealed.
Aart does, however, catch on and starts to use his own intuition while
learning ways to work with, and despite, the powerful technologies that
surround him and restrict his mobility. Although the availability of exten-
sive amounts of data in Drohnenland’s Europe has led to a very high
crime solution rate, true detection also requires creativity and epiphanies.
Aart realises the pitfalls of virtual forensics, for example, that one might
easily forget rather obvious things including that a real-life killer would
not have been able to fly up into a tree, but would have had to climb it.
He also reaches the important conclusion not to blindly trust the stream
of data that, as it turns out, had been manipulated to make him reach
erroneous conclusions. It is only when he visits the crime scene in real life
that he discovers that the tree from which the murderer supposedly shot
his victim had been felled four years earlier. The perpetrator used a killer
drone instead, and only added the tree afterwards to the digital simulation
of the crime scene that Aart explored in the governmental mirror space.
This manipulation of data shows the dangers of blindly trusting tech-
nology. Drohnenland explores an issue of great urgency, timeliness and
social relevance: due to the complexity of surveillance regimes, mobile
technologies and digital news, it has become harder to differentiate
between real and fake accounts of current developments and of recol-
lections of the past. In Drohnenland, when the secret service realises that
Aart is catching up to its wrongdoings, it adds wrong information to
his personnel file, causing the department to suspend him for excessive
use of force. Since all digital data is interlinked and instantly accessible,
it becomes almost impossible for Aart to further investigate the murders
without being caught by Terry, who would then immediately pass on the
information to the secret service. Aart needs to employ creative thinking
in trying to escape surveillance and outsmarting the powerful computer.
Even harder than escaping surveillance, however, is to behave in ways that
do not conform to Terry’s predictions about his future behaviour, which
of course is the reason for the murders that set the events of the story in
motion. Due to his discoveries of the widespread data manipulation, Aart
is forced to develop new forms of agency, and he ultimately changes from
a figure of compliance to one of resistance.
198 H. HENDERSON
Conclusion
Through his crime novel, Hillenbrand warns of the dangers of basing all
decisions on digital data and of trusting computers more than human
intuition. He illuminates the consequences of a complete loss of privacy,
as private conversations are only possible in special rooms or using
advanced trickery, and moving without being noticed is almost impos-
sible. He considers restrictions in, as well as new imaginative forms of,
mobility. He also contemplates ways to circumvent and counter this
predicament, and to develop personal agency and perhaps even resis-
tance in a time when these forms of behaviour are highly discouraged.
His future envisioning of current societal developments asks us to reflect
on the price of convenience and perceived security, making us question
whose security we are talking about and which restrictions we are willing
to embrace or tolerate. He shows the downsides of technological advance-
ments through examples such as the fact that the new iteration of the
super-computer Terry makes it harder to access raw data, which ultimately
makes it impossible to know how it reached a conclusion, and the dangers
of relying on these technological developments and trusting that they are
in our best interest.
Finally, Drohnenland shows the many ways in which we have become
used to these technological devices. For example, when Aart tries to
escape from Terry’s surveillance, it is very hard for him to find his way
without specs. His mobility is restricted by the absence of technology
that he has become used to; but using the technology would enable his
immediate capture, thus impacting his mobility even more. By depicting
a dystopian yet all too plausible future, Hillenbrand explores the dark
side of our frantic chase after efficiency, productivity and achievement.
While committed to the conventions of the genre, his sociocritical crime
novel thus also stands in the tradition of dystopian narratives that “explore
the complex and often impossibly blurred junctures between information
and identity, agency and complicity” (Marks 161). Hillenbrand questions
efficiency’s primacy over ethical concerns and asks us to consider the rami-
fications of a future world that might be less appealing than the individual
components of this world’s technological advances suggest.
Notes
1. Among other awards, the novel received the 2015 Friedrich Glauser Prize
for best crime novel of the year. It has also been on both Der Spiegel and
Die Zeit bestseller lists.
2. Although Drohnenland cannot be categorised as a dystopian ecothriller
(the ecological crisis does not provide the basis for the plot, but merely
its setting), it shows some parallels with this genre that has enjoyed
vast popularity in Germany (for a discussion of ecothrillers, see Dürbeck;
Fritzsche).
3. Keith M. Booker asserts that the imagined futures are “most interesting
for the way they create new and defamiliarizing perspectives on the
present” (150). Leila E. Villaverde and Roymieco A. Carter discuss how
SF films have illuminated the possibilities of the future while providing
“cautionary tales that ask us to reflect on the outcomes of our current
behaviors and choices” (123). Additionally, see Peter Marks who investi-
gates how utopian and dystopian literature and films “extend and enhance
our understanding of surveillance, and how they supply provocative spec-
ulations about what lies ahead” (6) and Nicoletta Vallorani who suggests
that “the increased permeability of the borders between crime fiction and
science fiction … have evolved from a shared tendency to address social
issues” (406).
4. The fear of surveillance seems to be particularly strong in Germany and
has been explored in many bestselling books and media reports (see
Trojanow and Zeh, who have garnered a great deal of attention, and
also Simanowski).
5. In “Mapping the Future?” I analyse Drohnenland alongside other
contemporary techno thrillers.
6. See also Nicole Kenley who likewise observes: “As digital technology
advances, crime fiction as a genre continues to investigate the ways in
which the new options such technology affords offer both security and
threats” (262).
7. Jude McCulloch and Dean Wilson also remind us that while “much
attention has been focused on pre-empting terrorism, serious completed
corporate crimes that result in enormous environmental harm, massive
financial damage and/or loss of life through workplace deaths and
other disasters are often not even thoroughly investigated or prosecuted,
let alone targeted for pre-crime interventions” (10).
8. Since pre-crime laws are typically vague, police and security agencies gain
wide powers of discretion. This creates “uncertainty about what activities
might fall afoul of such laws” (McCulloch and Wilson 7).
200 H. HENDERSON
9. While at least until recently the borders within the EU have become more
open, those around the EU have become fortified and more difficult to
cross.
10. Roy Coleman and Mike McCahill observe that developments in surveil-
lance are often couched by referring to “public interest” (2).
References
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lance in Contemporary German Literature and Film.” Seminar: A Journal of
Germanic Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, Nov. 2016, pp. 353–63.
Bauman, Zygmunt, and David Lyon. Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation. Polity
Press, 2013.
Booker, Keith M. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social
Criticism. Greenwood Press, 1994.
Coleman, Roy. “Surveillance and Social Ordering.” Criminal Justice: Local and
Global, edited by Deborah Drake and John Muncie, Taylor & Francis, 2009,
pp. 141–75.
Coleman, Roy, and Mike McCahill. Surveillance and Crime. Sage, 2010.
Dürbeck, Gabriele. “The Anthropocene in Contemporary German Ecothrillers.”
German Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene, edited by Caroline Schaumann and
Heather I. Sullivan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 315–31.
Eggers, Dave. The Circle. Knopf, 2013.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by
Alan Sheridan. 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 1995.
Fritzsche, Sonja. “Eco-Eschbach: Sustainability in the Science Fiction of Andreas
Eschbach.” Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre
Fiction, edited by Bruce B. Campbell et al., Camden House, 2014, pp. 67–87.
Henderson, Heike. “Mapping the Future? Contemporary German-Language
Techno Thrillers.” Crime Fiction Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, pp. 96–113.
Hillenbrand, Tom. Drohnenland. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2014.
Kenley, Nicole. “Digital Technology.” The Routledge Companion to Crime
Fiction, edited by Janice Allan et al., Routledge, 2020, pp. 261–69.
Lyon, David. Surveillance Studies: An Overview. Polity Press, 2007.
Mantel, Barbara. “High-Tech Policing.” CQ Researcher, vol. 27, no. 15, 21 Apr.
2017, pp. 339–59.
Marks, Peter. Imagining Surveillance: Eutopian and Dystopian Literature and
Film. Edinburgh UP, 2015.
McCulloch, Jude, and Dean Wilson. Pre-crime: Pre-emption, Precaution and the
Future. Taylor & Francis, 2015.
Nilsson, Louise, et al., editors. “Introduction: Crime Fiction as World Litera-
ture.” Crime Fiction as World Literature. Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 1–9.

Contemporary Crime Fiction: A World of Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016,
pp. 1–19.
Simanowski, Roberto. Data Love: The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Tech-
nologies. Translated by Brigitte Pichon et al., Columbia UP, 2016.
Staples, William G. Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern
Life. 2nd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Stougaard-Nielsen, Jakob. Scandinavian Crime Fiction. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Trojanow, Ilija, and Juli Zeh. “Attack on Freedom: The Surveillance State, Secu-
rity Obsession, and the Dismantling of Civil Rights.” German Studies Review,
vol. 38, no. 2, 2015, pp. 271–84.
Vallorani, Nicoletta. “Crime Fiction and the Future.” The Routledge Companion
to Crime Fiction, edited by Janice Allan et al., Routledge, 2020, pp. 406–13.
Villaverde, Leila E., and Roymieco A. Carter. “Singularity, Cyborgs, Drones,
Replicants and Avatars: Coming to Terms with the Digital Self.” Science
Fiction and Speculative Fiction: Challenging Genres, edited by P. L. Thomas,
Sense, 2013, pp. 119–31.
PART III
Genre Borderlands: Generic Mobility

and Hybridisation
CHAPTER 11
Criminal/Liminal/Seminal: Nordic Border

Crossings and Crossers in Contemporary
Geopolitical Television
Robert A. Saunders
Introduction
Focusing on televised Nordic Noir crime series originating and set in
northern Europe, this chapter assumes a geocritical approach to screened
border spaces and the border crossings of screened spaces. I employ
two interrelated concepts: (1) the geopolitics of (transnational) television
drama and (2) geopolitical drama as a (transnational) televisual genre.
The first is associated with how such series “travel” via Netflix and other
transnational digital distribution platforms (TDDPs) therein influencing
styles of television production outside the region. The second deals with
the increasingly geo-politicised content of contemporary television drama
as “an active instrument in the process of forming and re-forming inter-
national relations” (Ridanpää 193). I am also interested in how reception
of such content merges with production to create a feedback loop of
worldviews that has ramifications for everyday understandings of how the
world works, particularly given the genre’s well-documented “anxious
R. A. Saunders (B)
Farmingdale State College (SUNY), Farmingdale, NY, USA

206 R. A. SAUNDERS
gaze” when it comes to the state and society. My analysis applies three
conceptual lenses: the criminal, focused on the detection of illicit flows
and transgressive acts as entertainment; the liminal, examining movement
across borders both in terms of representation and as televisual prod-
ucts themselves; and the seminal, interrogating the notion of sexualised,
evil and/or polluting seeds which germinate as a result of globalisation.
Consequently, this chapter investigates the detective genre as a tool for
social critique across time and space‚ and offers a structural approach that
examines how such noirish narratives move across borders.
Methodological approaches drawn from popular geopolitics and
geocriticism draw our attention to the ways in which mobility and
(b)ordering inform our spatio-cultural understandings. With this in mind,
my analysis focuses on the following series: Bron/ Broen (2011–2017);
Sorjonen/Bordertown (2016–2019); Ófærð/ Trapped (2015–2018); Dicte
(2013–2016); and Nobel (2016). In addition to hewing to Barry
Forshaw’s declaration that Nordic Noir “somehow contrives to be both
geographically specific and universal in its application” (40), these tele-
vision series have been selected to represent all five Nordic countries
(Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Denmark and Norway) and are all available
via international platforms. In the first three, the classic police detec-
tive is represented, while in the latter two, the agents of detection are
a crime reporter and special forces operative, respectively, thus allowing
for multiple approaches to crime-solving.
Theoretically, I link television studies to popular geopolitics through
the medium of Nordic Noir, contextualising the genre’s popularity
within the field of “world-building” (see Tischleder). I focus on viewing
practices in a post-national environment where TDDPs allow viewers
the freedom to “travel” via an augmented reality enabled by “Televi-
sion 3.0” (Arnold). Empirically, this chapter investigates the television
series through the lens of popular geopolitics and a televisually-focused
form of geocriticism, assessing how their respective cultural producers
imagine a crime-ridden Norden1 afflicted by its exposure to neolib-
eral globalisation. In each section, I provide a case study, followed by
an analysis of the geographic/geopolitical situating of the narrative. I
provide a geocritical interpretation of the borderscapes (see dell’Agnese)
presented in the series,2 paying special attention to the aforementioned
conceptual lenses. In examining these twenty-first-century challenges to
Nordic Gemeinschaften and the welfare state, the focus is on represen-
tational strategies that critique and affirm the role of the (post)modern
11 CRIMINAL/LIMINAL/SEMINAL: NORDIC BORDER CROSSINGS … 207
northern European state. Lastly, this chapter provides a structural contri-

bution via its reformatting of the geopolitics of television/televisual
geopolitics as a continuum of actions/reactions, agencies/structures and
spaces/non-spaces, therein shifting the scholarly gaze towards a more
holistic approach to how television produces worlds of meaning for its
viewers, regardless of their country of origin, citizenship or location on
the planet.
The Nordic Crime Procedural

as a Transnational and Geopolitical Modus
In the past decades, the morose Nordic detective has achieved global
fame. Inarguably, this process began via the Scandinavian crime novel,
which has a rich history, particularly in addressing questions of “real-
world geographical specificity” (Jenkins 285). Like their fictional fore-
bears, Nordic investigators demonstrate the crime genre’s “continuous
affinity to the subject matter of geography” and obsession with “geo-
graphical orientation” (Erdmann 274). Throughout the Victorian era and
the twentieth century, places, spaces and peoples of the earth became
increasingly imbricated due to globalisation, and this process has shaped
the content of the crime novel, including Scandinavian noir. However,
it is important to note that the genre has steadfastly preserved its close
attention to the local realms, explicitly linking its narrative to “particular
socio-cultural and geographical landscapes” (Jenkins 285).
From the Inuit villages of Greenland/Kalaallit Nunaat to the wealthiest
districts of Stockholm, Scandi-noir literature privileges place via mean-
ingful connections to the crimes being investigated. The new millennium
produced an increasing trend of looking outwards, exemplified by the
Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s protagonist, Harry Hole, whose investiga-
tions take him to Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong and elsewhere (Pratt),
or the Swedish author Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren, who oper-
ates in the fictitious city of Maardam, thus allowing for highly specific
geographic tales to be told despite their being “out of place” (Jenkins).
While there is nothing new about internationalising the crime novel,
Nordic crime fiction has maintained its commitment to examining the
role of the state, which has made for an interesting confluence of these
trends, and one in which the border is increasingly highlighted through
“discourses, practices, sites, objects and bodies” (Dodds 568).
208 R. A. SAUNDERS
The global success of Scandinavian noir on the page has recently trans-
lated into a veritable industry of televisual adaptations and original series,
collectively known as “new Nordic Noir.” Glen Creeber identifies the
genre by a “dimly-lit aesthetic … that is matched by a slow and melan-
cholic pace, multi-layered storylines and an interest in uncovering the
dark underbelly of contemporary society” (22). Possessing a “recognis-
able international brand” (Stougaard-Nielsen 1), these series are further
defined by high production values (Waade and Jensen), a strong commit-
ment to place-based authenticity (Eichner and Waade), employment of
the “Nordic tone” with regard to affect and emotions (Agger, “Nordic
Noir”) and the utilisation of clashing elements of tradition and modernity
to sculpt moral narratives (Agger, “The Killing ”). Kim Toft Hansen and
Anne Marit Waade point to the Danish television crime drama Forbry-
delsen/The Killing (2007–2012) as triggering a wave of enthusiasm that
has spread far beyond Scandinavia. Rooted in the Nordic tradition of
crime literature and shaped by public service broadcasting norms which
tend to highlight problems associated with the mature welfare state, tele-
vision series such as Beck (1997–) and Wallander (2008–2013) reflect
their novelistic counterparts in featuring “world-weary cops with broken
families” (Davis 11), whose task is to unravel the mysteries behind some
heinous crime (usually the brutal murder of a woman or a child). In the
course of their detection, they often discover some form of state-based
and/or corporate malfeasance linked to the crime(s). Increasingly, these
narratives have become transnationalised, keeping pace with the growing
global consumption of Nordic Noir.
The seeming universality of dark stories set in bleak climates where the
colour palette tends to range between black, grey and white may seem
counterintuitive. However, as several screen scholars have concluded, the
attraction to the Nordic televisual modus reflects a burgeoning sophisti-
cation of (elite) international audiences that are seeking stories that speak
to the complexity of contemporary existence. As Warren Buckland notes:
People from all cultures understand their experiences and identities by

engaging the stories of others, and by constructing their own stories. But
in today’s culture dominated by new media, experiences are becoming
increasingly ambiguous and fragmented; correspondingly, the stories that
attempt to represent those experiences have become opaque and complex.
These complex stories overturn folk-psychological ways of understanding
and instead represent radically new experiences and identities, which are
usually coded as disturbing and traumatic. (1)
As I have argued elsewhere (Saunders, “Geopolitical Television”), we

can refer to this construction of reality as a form of world-building, an
aesthetic-affective process wherein distant and different realms depicted
in popular culture shape social understandings, helping viewers map their
own emplacement within a globalised, neoliberal milieu. We should also
keep in mind the powerful attraction of the “Other” when considering
the popularity of Nordic Noir television overseas, particularly the notion
of “Norientalism” (Hauge), which—unlike other “Orientalisms” (i.e.
Middle Eastern, “African,” East Asian or indigenous)—exemplifies what
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen refers to as the “allure of accessible difference”
that is ensured through “neat packaging and presentation” and, especially,
whiteness (6–9).
While the advent of Television 2.0 allowed for increasing interna-
tionalisation of content and created niche viewing patterns enabled by
an increasingly liberalised marketplace, technological innovations (e.g.
DVDs, DVRs) and incipient online fan forums, there is a further change
underway in viewing protocols, which can be defined as “Television3.0.”
This new world order of television pushes a variety of “post-television”
trends (Spigel and Olsson) into the realm of the geopolitical. The
rise of TDDPs, when combined with the proliferation of free-standing
devices (e.g. PCs, tablets, phones), has unleashed the viewer from the
historic confines of the televisual experience. Freeing small screens from
the purview of the nation-state via Netflix and the like has disrupted
cultural geographies that were once sacrosanct, making deterritorialisation
the norm in a huge slice of international programming. This delinking
of the medium from the country of origin has pushed showrunners
and writers to increasingly consider questions of transborder politics,
resulting in what I have previously labelled “small screen IR” (Saun-
ders, “Small Screen”). Via increasingly immersive viewing experiences,
binge-watching, complex algorithms, global licensing deals, dramatically
improved production values, evermore intense storytelling and changing
consumer tastes, providers are now able to deliver tailored content choices
to prosumers who enjoy murderous narratives set in dark, cold climates
where people speak comparatively obscure languages.
As television series cross borders via TDDPs, they complicate,
comment on and increasingly challenge established geopolitical visions,
210 R. A. SAUNDERS
orders and codes (Dijkink) via new narratives, which provide viewers with
choice in what sorts of “fictional space-times” they want to affectively
engage with (Tischleder 121). This has important ramifications for world
politics as Paul Musgrave and J. Furman Daniel argue:
Synthetic experiences—which can be produced by narratives, fragments

of a story, descriptions of a place, impressions of a culture, dramatized
portrayals about “real” processes, or illustrations of a strategy’s conse-
quences—affect how people interact with the real world through pathways
similar to memories and knowledge derived from textbooks or data anal-
yses. They encode information in ways that affect judgment and can even
displace factual information through other sources because narratives allow
for the portrayal of unrealistic or unprecedented events as being natural-
ized. They thereby enable fictional sources to influence world politics not
because the fictions serve as a delivery mechanism for factual content but
because they prompt the inward experience of a fictional reality. (506)
This passage succinctly expresses the motivation behind the burgeoning

interdiscipline of popular geopolitics, a field of study that exists as a “form
of post-language, or an occurrence that exceeds structuralist categories
and yet makes creative use of them” (Saunders and Strukov 1). With this
in mind, I will now present the case studies, narrowing the scope to the
role of borders in border-crossing crime procedurals.
Criminal/Liminal/Seminal: The
Shimmering Borderscapes of Nordic Noir
Mirroring the technology-content dyad referenced above, the analysis
of the porousness of borders in scholarly literature and the screening
of borders in Nordic Noir both tend to highlight national frontiers, or
those geographies where the (b)order is realised as spaces where criminal
activities occur (see Fig. 11.1). As a 2006 New York Times article on the
popularity of the genre asserted, “You just can’t separate mystery and
place” (Gates 21). It is possible to go a step further and claim that the
very essence of Nordic Noir is place, an argument which a geocritical
analysis of my case studies assumes via the contention that “border
stories” are negotiations that challenge the notion that international
boundaries must produce spatial binaries.
Fig. 11.1 Primary Sites of Investigation in the Series-based Case Studies (Source
Emily A. Fogarty, Robert A. Saunders, DIVA-GIS, Global Administrative Areas
and Natural Earth)
The Bridge Between Life and Death

Available in over 170 countries, Bron/ Broen represents the current
pinnacle of new Nordic Noir on the international stage. While the series
is a Swedish (SVT1)-Danish (DR1) co-production, it was primarily filmed
within Sweden and strongly reflects the worldview of its Swedish creators
(Saunders, “Dark Imaginarium”). Following the discovery of a dead body
(which turns out to be the top half of a Swedish politician and the bottom
half of a Danish sex-worker) on the Öresund Bridge, which connects
Zealand (Sjælland) to Scania (Skåne), Malmö’s lead homicide detective
Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) and her Copenhagen-based counterpart, Martin
Rohde (Kim Bodnia), are forced into a tendentious partnership in order
to catch a serial killer who operates across their respective jurisdictions. In
the second series, terror attacks by radical environmentalists sustain the
relationship until Rohde is imprisoned for the murder of his son’s killer
(the perpetrator of the first series’ deadly spree). In the final two series,
Norén teams up with a new partner, Henrik Sabroe (Thure Lindhardt),
as transnational cooperation remains necessary due to the murder of the
pioneer of Denmark’s first gender-neutral preschool (series 3) and then
the stoning-death of Copenhagen’s migration agency director (series 4).
212 R. A. SAUNDERS
Drawing on the tradition of Nordic crime fiction, Bron/ Broen is highly

attentive to the spatial dimension. Yet, from the inception of the series’
development the showrunners sought to confound the viewer through
filming techniques which are geographically, if not cinematographically
anamorphic. Even the seasoned resident of Copenhagen and/or Malmö
is sometimes bewildered when it comes to discerning which urban realm
is set before them (while at other times, key landmarks are presented
to ensure understanding). This is clearly by design. In fact, the series’
creators meant to produce such dis placedness to create an unreal, but
easily-recognisable southern Scandinavian city defined by shadow, “a
carefully-constructed, well-thought-out world which is falling apart”
(Siebling et al.). While the human-built geography remains fluid, the
geopolitics of the show are unusually concrete. Avuncular Danes are
counterpoised against humourless Swedes, Copenhagen’s complicity in
the United States’ global campaign of military dominance is held up as
shameful, and a host of neoliberal excesses are targeted for exposure by
the so-called Truth Terrorist, from child labour to the failure of Norden’s
integration schemes (Saunders, “Geopolitical Television”). While viewers
may not know where exactly they are within the transnational Öresund
Region, one is forced to think about the region’s larger relationship to
the world throughout the programme’s narrative arc.
From its opening scene, Bron/ Broen places the border at the heart of
the series, making it a place where criminal, liminal and seminal threats
abound. The namesake bridge features throughout and makes an appear-
ance in most episodes via a screened “crossing.” Reflecting the interzonal,
bidirectional status of all bridges—mythologically referenced in Janus,
the two-faced Roman god of thresholds—Bron/ Broen presents the
transportation assemblage that links Malmö and Copenhagen as neither
Swedish nor Danish, but an “elsewhere” that is always in-between (see
Flygt). The Öresund Bridge haunts the narrative even when it is not
present in the frame, presenting as a perennially “guilty landscape”
(Eichner and Waade 8). Via its grey aesthetics and the perpetual promise
of transmission, the bridge is the paradigm of a borderscape: whether
the deposit site for a dead body, an impediment to solving a crime or
simply a backdrop to invoke the power and weakness of borders within
the European Union, the span represents a channel of evil seeds that
reflect the ineluctability of contemporary globalisation.
Vice on the Russian-Finnish Frontier

Following in the footsteps of the wildly successful Bron/ Broen, Finland’s
state broadcaster YLE launched Sorjonen (Bordertown) in 2016. The
series became available on Netflix shortly after its premiere in its country
of origin. Like Bron/Broen, the series pairs a male and female detec-
tive from different national backgrounds. Volunteering for a peripheral
posting in his wife’s hometown of Lappeenranta near the Russian fron-
tier, Detective Inspector Kari Sorjonen (Ville Virtanen), a veteran of the
National Bureau of Investigation, discovers that this sleepy border town is
writhing in criminal activity. Finding herself on the wrong side of the FSB,
Detective Constable Lena Jaakkola (Anu Sinisalo) is forced to quit Russia,
ultimately partnering with Sorjonen to solve murders, break up human
trafficking rings and interdict drug smugglers. Inverting the expectations
of audiences weaned on decades of Russophobic popular culture, the vast
majority of the crimes depicted in the series emanate from within Finland,
rather than “leaking in” from the Russian side.
While Bron/Broen brings together detectives (and problems) from
two relatively similar countries with related languages, political systems
and social problems, Bordertown’s geographical pairing is shaped by an
epic culture clash, thus making it somewhat more comparable to FX’s
The Bridge (2013–2014), the US-Mexico-based iteration of Bron/ Broen.
Likewise, Bordertown and FX’s The Bridge share a close geopolitical atten-
tion to the disparate sociopolitical systems within and power dynamics
between the two polities on display, that is, Finland-Russia and United
States-Mexico. In fact, Anssi Paasi argues that the border between Finland
and Russia has an extensive history as a fundamental line of division
between substantively different political and cultural systems (see Paasi).
As the gateway to the popular destination of Lake Saimaa, Detective
Sorjonen’s new base of operations is the site of an expanding Russian
tourist market, one which has resulted in a measurable increase in Russian-
language use in Finland in recent decades. While not explicit, Finland’s
geopolitical situatedness in the shadow of the Russian Federation bleeds
onto the screen, especially when the small state is at pains to assert
its sovereignty on the frontier (typically invoking membership in the
EU).3 As a peripheral outpost charged with “policing” the protean nature
of Finnish-Russian relations in an era of heightened tension between
Moscow and the West, Sorjonen—while never articulating his role as a
geopolitical actor—nonetheless soldiers on in defence of the “European”
cause.
214 R. A. SAUNDERS
By situating the action in the sleepy region of South Karelia, Border-

town also differs from Bron/Broen in that it is far removed from the
urban(e) cosmopolitanism of the Copenhagen-Malmö conurbation refer-
enced in the previous section. Given its geopolitical location, Sorjonen’s
Lappeenranta is an often-involuntary space of liminality between Russia
and Europe (serving as a microcosm of Finland, which has long played
the role of Nordic Europe’s threshold to the Russian “Orient”). Defined
by its quiet comforts and proximity to nature, Lappeenranta is constantly
placed in opposition to the “big city,” whether this is Helsinki or St.
Petersburg. Consequently, this small town is presented as pristine, some-
thing which can only be polluted by contact with the metropolis, thus
lending a sheen of ecocriticism to the series. However, as mentioned
above, the showrunners frequently invert the viewers’ expectations,
making Finland (rather than Russia) the font of cross-border criminality.
The frequently sexualised seeds of evil, according to the series’ structura-
tion, are produced by Norden’s suffocating “near-perfection” (Booth),
which darkens the hearts of men, who—at least on the surface—must
maintain the artifice of goodness in the land of the midnight sun, where
the Nordic welfare state has ostensibly produced a model that is to be
emulated by all.
Exposing the Insidious Evils of Transnational Capital

Like a number of other contemporary Icelandic dramas, including
Hraunið/The Lava Field (2014), RÚV’s mystery series Trapped critiques
the island nation’s involvement in the global financial markets, which
hit the country extremely hard during the 2008–2009 financial crisis.
Affecting Iceland for many years afterwards, the “great recession” trig-
gered the collapse of the banking system and political upheaval (including
the fall of Prime Minister Geir Haarde’s government in 2009). Set in tiny
Seyðisfjörður, a remote town on the eastern coast, the initial drama swirls
around the discovery of a mutilated torso in the waters near a ferry that
recently arrived from Denmark. The local police chief Andri Ólafsson’s
(Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) investigation ostensibly implicates the ferry’s
Danish captain and a Lithuanian people-smuggler (suspecting foreign
malfeasance is a natural reaction in a country that can easily go a year
without a homicide). However, the trafficking of Nigerian girls by the
eastern European and the imperious captain’s resistance to the investiga-
tion are red herrings. While the original suspects are not innocents, the
actual motive for the murder is a tangled skein that connects the fallout
from the economic crisis to real-estate deals that now involve Chinese
investment, all of which is obfuscated by banal intrigues, irrational secrecy
and small-town rivalries.
The Guardian described Trapped as “claustrophobic, horrifically
intense and set in a landscape that humans cannot possibly take on
and win” due to the “hulking presence of nature” (Bramley). The first
Icelandic drama to be acquired by the BBC, the series was well-received
in the UK; however, as the comments above suggest, the shift from the
glaucous cityscapes of Bron/ Broen and The Killing to the whited-out
wilderness was jarring for many viewers. Indeed, the hostile septrional
environment is—for all intents and purposes—one of the most impor-
tant characters in the series; fittingly, landscape qua death is the visual
theme of the opening credits which blends extreme close-ups of dead
bodies with the unique and often unforgiving arctic geography. From
a geopolitical perspective, Iceland, as a former Danish colony that was
involuntarily, though not forcibly occupied by British and US forces in
the context of World War II, stands apart from Europe in a number of
ways. While included in the European Economic Area and the Schengen
Accord, Iceland is not a member of the EU. Likewise, it is only partly
considered within the geographic construct of “Scandinavia,” being—like
Finland—a marginal component at best, with Michael Booth going so
far as to label Icelanders as “feral Scandinavians” (11), whose very origin
story is founded in trying to “get away” from the region (117).
As an island that sits on fissure between the North American and
Eurasian continents, Iceland functions as an interstice in terms of meta-
geography—a role which often translates into constructions of Icelanders’
Selbstbild. This clearly manifests during the first series of Trapped, as the
population of the sparsely populated eastern coast become witnesses to
foreign/outlandish crimes that wash up on their shores (literally and figu-
ratively). Referenced in the gloss of the Icelandic title (Ófærð ), the notion
of being “inaccessible” works on two levels: it both reminds viewers that
the Seyðisfjörður police are beyond the help (and effective reach) of
the Reykjavik authorities‚ and reinforces the remoteness of the country,
playing up issues associated with Icelandic identity in a rapidly global-
ising world. As the twisting plot reaches fruition, viewers learn that the
seeds of the community’s destruction were planted years before in the
greed of a few mercenary locals who sought to profit from Iceland’s geo-
financial interstitiality. Ultimately, Trapped lays bare the myth that the
216 R. A. SAUNDERS
country’s spatial remoteness can protect it from the outside world. Or

perhaps, as some have suggested, the Icelanders have taken Nordicness
“too far” (Booth 114) into a neoliberal realm defined by naked avarice,
thus imperilling the very community they cling to with fervour.
Finding Foreign Contagions Far from the Border

Somewhat paralleling Bordertown, the TV2 Danmark series Dicte—Crime
Reporter begins with the main character Dicte Svendsen (Iben Hjejle)
relocating from the Danish capital to her hometown of Aarhus. In the
first two series, she works for Dagbladet, a prominent national news-
paper based in the city, later quitting the paper to write a crime novel.
As a shunned Jehovah’s Witness (she became pregnant as a teen and her
parents forced her to give up the baby), Dicte must navigate her trou-
bled past, often inadvertently projecting her own issues onto the victims
of Aarhus’ blooming criminality. Despite the fact that the eponymous
protagonist is not a detective, she is frequently integral to solving the
crimes that drive the narrative, typically through aid provided to the surly
Chief Inspector John Wagner (Lars Brygmann). Adapted from the novels
of Elsebeth Egholm and evincing Nordic Noir’s “engagement with social
issues,” each paired-episode set reflects on some problematic aspect of
the Danish society, often delving into the country’s well-documented
nativism (Thomsen).
The series is set in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city on the
peninsula of Jutland (Jylland) that is home to Scandinavia’s largest univer-
sity with a significant international student population. Aarhus is quite
cosmopolitan, and in 2017 it served as a European Capital of Culture
and received the title of the European Region of Gastronomy. Yet, the
city has an insular reputation among Copenhageners, reflecting perva-
sive attitudes towards the mainlanders in general. Filmed around the port
town, Dicte—a prestige project for expanding television production in
Jutland—captures Aarhus’ Old World charm and (post)modern architec-
ture (e.g. the functionalistic City Hall, the stylish Aarhus Universitet and
the rainbow panorama on the roof of ARoS, all of which are marketed as
sites associated with Dicte on the city’s tourism portal). As Toft Hansen
and Waade point out, the premiere of Dicte skilfully adapts the novel
series’ theme of Skjulte fejl og mangler, meaning “hidden defects” (related
to Dicte’s newly purchased home), to Denmark’s myriad social issues
(139).
Small‚ personally motivated crimes usually point to larger problems

that emanate from outside the university town, thus serving as seeds that
will grow and ultimately challenge the communal myths of the Danish
dream. In her encounters with “foreigners,” whether from West Africa
or the Balkans, Dicte engages in a spatial mapping of Aarhus, which sits
at the geographic centre of the country (thus quite far from any offi-
cial borders, though crisscrossed by imaginary ones). Often stretching
viewers’ ability to suspend disbelief, Dicte is frequently a witness 4 to
violent crime (even once finding a dead body after urinating behind a
dumpster alongside the popular riverside quay), and as she untangles the
web of malfeasance, she often finds that it starts abroad. Her subjects
of investigation over three series have included illegal surrogacy, organ-
trafficking, diamond-smuggling, prostitution and transnational financial
improprieties, each of which is narratively marked as “non-Danish” via
border-crossing criminality that features Dutch, Bosnian, Nigerian and
other foreign “victims” and “villains.” By series three, Dicte takes the
action abroad when her photographer and now husband Bo is kidnapped
in Lebanon and later taken to Syria. This climactic and actual border
crossing, which results in Wagner’s killing at the hands of the hostage-
takers, makes explicit many of the themes of the series, relishing the
(artificial) insularity of Aarhus and exhibiting many of the “dominant
themes” of Nordic crime fiction including “racism, marginalisation and
othering” (Stougaard-Nielsen 4) by underscoring that while Aarhus is not
safe (due to transborder criminality), leaving town is a lethal proposition.
Bringing the War Back Home

Blending the geopolitical thriller with a crime procedural, NRK’s highly
successful Nobel —fred for enhver pris (Nobel: Peace at Any Cost) follows
a Norwegian special forces operator, Lieutenant Erling Riiser (Aksel
Hennie), from the battlefield in Afghanistan home to the lush countryside
of southern Norway and back again. Imbricated in a complex network of
intrigue surrounding Afghan politics, the post-9/11 NATO campaign,
international development and resource exploitation, the series functions
as a commentary on Norwegian national identity, counterbalancing the
nation’s high-minded goals with the messy compromises that interna-
tional engagement requires. Riiser, who is married to a senior Ministry of
Foreign Affairs official, is tasked with investigating a government cover-
up around his own extrajudicial-though-warranted killing of an Afghan
218 R. A. SAUNDERS
warlord in Oslo. The series is imbued with a long-standing noir tradi-

tion of critiquing the state, while finding fault in humankind’s everyday
venality. As one critic noted: “What the drama is thinking about is the
small difference between the extremism in Afghanistan and the extreme
capitalism that drives countries and corporations to take advantage of the
earth itself” (Doyle).
Created by Per-Olav Sørensen, Nobel is a geopolitical thriller that
makes obvious use of elements drawn from crime procedurals.5 Between
2001 and 2014, over 9,000 Norwegian military personnel served in
Afghanistan, with the loss of ten lives, and the government spending
NOK 20 billion (over 2.5 billion USD) on the conflict. Nobel presents
Norway as a small-but-vital country in global geopolitics, one which
always punches above its weight (Saunders, “Landscape, Geopolitics, and
National Identity”). Norway’s human-built and physical geography are
on display throughout the series, which enjoyed the ability to film within
the gates of thirteenth-century Akershus Fortress (thus shoring up its
credentials as a state-sanctioned national identity project). Growing out
of Sørensen’s desire to document his country’s involvement in Opera-
tion Enduring Freedom (2001–2014), Nobel received backing from the
Norwegian Film Institute, further reflecting government support of the
project. The series’ geographic sensitivities are anything but subtle, with
a green Norwegian countryside and an immaculate Oslo cityscape being
constantly contrasted with quick breakaways with endless taupe deserts
and trash-strewn “Afghan” villages.6
Drawing on a variety of Nordic crime drama tropes, Nobel innovates
on the style by pivoting back and forth from Scandinavia to Central Asia,
producing a dramatic tapestry of border crossings that scrape away at the
façade of national boundaries. While the criminality presented in other
series studied here often links to the state eventually, in Nobel it starts and
ends there. “This geographic back-and-forth (which is also temporal, as
the events in Afghanistan occur several months before those in Norway,
with space and time linking up in the series finale) is a hallmark of the
series” (Saunders, “Landscape, Geopolitics, and National Identity” 76).
It serves to remind viewers that if one decides to embroil themselves in
the affairs of the outside world, there are repercussions that afflict the
homeland, therein eradicating the notion of the border serving as an
effective threshold to threats. The early episodes plant the seeds of doom,
as a confrontation in a market square—which poignantly pits the gender-
neutral attitudes of the Norwegian forces against the misogynistic mores
of Afghan tribal culture—opens up a Pandora’s box that will tear at the

very heart of Norway’s “moral” foreign policy (see Johnsen).
Conclusion: Screening Reality at the Border

Nordic Noir television series are increasingly imbricated in what consti-
tutes the so-called real world, framing issues such as immigration, military
intervention, gender relations and the illicit flows of drugs and money. For
those audiences that have allowed such popular culture into their various
world-building schemes, certain types of crimes seem to be “naturally”
connected to Nordic space. Two criminal mysteries wherein life imitates
art—or at least were framed in the international media as such—testify to
this. The first is the murder of Birna Brjánsdóttir, whose body was found
on Iceland’s coast near Reykjavik on 14 November 2017. A Greenlandic
man, Thomas Møller Olsen, was convicted of her killing, as well as smug-
gling drugs aboard the trawler Polar Nanoq. The Icelandic crime novelist
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir described the murder as “right out of a Nordic Noir
novel” (Bilefsky and Bjarnason), reinforcing the embeddedness of popular
culture in our ways of seeing real-world events. The second centred on
Swedish journalist Kim Wall’s dismemberment (and suspected murder)
by the Danish inventor Peter Madsen aboard his homemade subma-
rine, in what Reuters called “a case bearing many of the attributes of
the region’s popular Nordic Noir books and films” (Thomsen). On 21
August 2017, Wall’s torso was found near Copenhagen, where Madsen
was based until taken into police custody. Wall’s remains, including those
recovered a month later, showed signs of torture and sexual assault, while
police discovered videos on Madsen’s laptops depicting the mutilation
and murder of women. With its connections to nautical smuggling and a
foreign murderer, the Brjánsdóttir case smacked of the events depicted in
Trapped, while Wall’s murder with its graphic and sadistic elements, and
especially news reporting on her last hours which occurred within sight of
the Öresund Bridge, have many of the chilling hallmarks of Bron/ Broen.
This brings us to the question: What does it all mean? As I have
attempted to convey in this chapter, television series—and particularly the
popular format of Nordic crime drama—have much to say about place,
space and people. These series’ attentiveness to the power, weakness and
perpetual presence of borders is manifesting in ways that have important
ramifications for our everyday geopolitical visions, codes and orders. This
220 R. A. SAUNDERS
is particularly true in a world where popular culture is increasingly imbri-

cated in international politics. As quality, long-form television steadily
encroaches on cinema’s domination of aesthetic world-building practices,
it is incumbent on researchers to both adapt and update methods once
applied to film to the realm of television. Series such as Bron/ Broen are as
cinematic as any motion picture. As I have argued above, the social, tech-
nological and geopolitical transformations associated with Television 3.0
also allow for new and deeper levels of immersion that go far beyond what
is possible in the movie theatre. In his review essay “The Geography of
Cinema: A Cinematic World,” Anton Escher argues that all good cinema
is about transgression, specifically the crossing of borders (e.g. physical,
cultural, social). In this chapter, I have endeavoured to provide a glimpse
of this tendency, focusing on the realm of Nordic Noir. In these series’
representations of detection across various types of borders, it is possible
to gain a better understanding of how the world actually works. More-
over, in the popularity of these serialised narratives around the globe, we
see a blossoming desire for tales of dark deeds that tell us a bit about who
we are and what borders we want to cross.
Notes
1. I use the geographic term Norden to refer to Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway and Sweden, while Scandinavia here refers to the countries of
Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
2. Drawing on Arjun Appadurai and other scholars, Elena dell’Agnese employs
the notion of a borderscape as a tool for understanding the limits of
sovereignty vis-à-vis frontiers between states and a mechanism for concep-
tualising the myriad influences of international boundaries on the spaces
that surround them.
3. Sorjonen works for the (fictitious) EU-funded SECRI unit policing “major
crimes” of a cross-border nature; consequently, his investigations bump
against the work of the FSB (which is often non-responsive to requests for
cooperation and conceals the nature of its activities within Finland).
4. Dicte’s heritage (American) faith should likewise be viewed as one of
these foreign tendrils that sews discord in post-Lutheran Denmark, where
everyone else (except the Muslims) seems to be unaware of religion (at
least in the scripting of the series).
5. The series sits comfortably alongside Jo Nesbø’s near-future series Okku-
pert/Occupied (TV2, 2015–), which depicts a velvet-glove invasion of
Norway by the Russian Federation.
6. In actuality, the exterior “Afghanistan” scenes were filmed in Morocco,

with many interior shots done in Prague.
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CHAPTER 12
Across National, Cultural and Ethnic Borders:

The Detectives in Olivier Truc’s Reindeer
Police Series
Andrea Hynynen
Introduction
Crime stories have crossed borders and languages since the birth of the
genre in the nineteenth century (King 8), but in this contemporary era
of globalisation, transnationalism and human mobility, issues of national
belonging and cultural identity have become increasingly complex. Since
crime fiction is highly attuned to changes in contemporary society, its
themes, settings and characters have been affected by this development
towards globalisation, which entails various kinds of mobility, including
geographical, social and ethnic mobility. This chapter analyses Olivier
Truc’s Reindeer Police series to highlight the ways in which mobility
and border crossings can be present in contemporary crime fiction. I
argue that these are predominant features of the novels studied and that
they challenge set notions of national, cultural and ethnic authenticity
and national genre traditions. In the early twenty-first century, Chris-
tine Matzke and Susanne Mühleisen (3) noted a growing number of
A. Hynynen (B)
University of Turku, Turku, Finland

226 A. HYNYNEN
crime fiction investigators with a migrant or transcultural background

whose professional (and personal) activities cross national borders. The
current popularity of crime fiction further ensures an abundance of
translated crime novels circulating on a global book market. Considering
these different types of mobility, the question of how to define what
constitutes, for example, French or Australian crime fiction becomes
both relevant and tricky. When authors, books, fictional detectives and
criminals (crimes) travel, “spatial uncertainty” increases (Rolls 26).
Olivier Truc and his series about a Reindeer Police force operating in
the Sami region in northern Scandinavia are a case in point. All types of
mobility mentioned by Alistair Rolls above apply to Truc and his novels;
additionally, the setting and detecting duo bring attention to social and
ethnic mobility. Mobility often involves moving between and/or across
separate geographical places, set categories or identities, which blurs fixed
definitions and creates a sense of flux. This chapter hence analyses borders
and border crossing in Truc’s series about the Reindeer Police inves-
tigators Klemet Nango and Nina Nansen on three levels. It highlights
the transnational nature of these novels in view of their place of publi-
cation, the original language and their setting in combination with the
author’s personal trajectory; it analyses different instances of geographical
mobility and border crossing in the novels and argues that they constitute
a prime characteristic of the series; finally, it takes a closer look at the two
main characters to discuss border crossing from the perspective of cultural
identity and ethnicity.
Author, Readers and Genre Tradition

Truc’s personal biography and books exemplify globalisation and the
literary market characterised by mobility. Born and raised in France, the
investigating journalist and writer Truc resides in Stockholm with his
Swedish partner. He has lived in Sweden for more than twenty years and
used to write articles and feature stories about Scandinavia and the Baltic
countries for French newspapers like Libération and Le Monde. Written
by a Frenchman living in Stockholm and set in the northernmost parts of
Scandinavia, the novels about the Reindeer Police align with the current
trend of transnational crime fiction that calls into question nation-based
definitions of the genre (see Erdmann 275; King).
12 ACROSS NATIONAL, CULTURAL AND ETHNIC BORDERS … 227
The Reindeer Police series includes three novels to date: Le Dernier

Lapon (2012, Forty Days without Shadow, 2014), Le Détroit du Loup
(2014 [The Wolf Strait]) and La Montagne rouge (2016 [The Red Moun-
tain]). Although Truc lives in Sweden and is considered an expert on
Scandinavia because of his long career as an investigating journalist and
documentarist, he writes his crime novels in French and publishes them
in France for a readership that seems easily definable, namely French-
speaking crime fiction lovers who live in France. Certain passing remarks
about typical Scandinavian traditions and behaviours are likely to appear
redundant or simplistic to Nordic readers and reveal that Truc’s implied
readers are outsiders to that region (cf. Hynynen 752). For instance, the
third-person narrator finds it necessary to explain the taste of polar-bread
and Norwegian mysost: “Klemet stocked up on sweet-tasting polar-bread
and mysost, his favourite, soft-textured, caramelised whey cheese” (Forty
Days 63). On another occasion, Klemet watches his partner Nina get up
in the morning and thinks to himself that she is perfectly comfortable
sharing sleeping quarters with him when they are on a mission, because
she is too Scandinavian to notice how her presence might affect men in
such situations and also used to sleeping alongside male friends, who are
just friends (Le Détroit 90). The use of interior monologue makes these
comments stand out. It is unlikely that a Scandinavian man would eval-
uate his female partner’s appearance in these particular terms, judging
her behaviour according to her level of Scandinavianness, though for
Truc’s implied readers the explanation might make sense or be helpful.1
These novels have been translated into various languages and are avail-
able to readers in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy,
Poland, Scandinavia and so forth, though only Le Dernier Lapon exists in
English.2
It is worth noting that while Truc may be an expert on Scandinavia
from a French or Central European perspective, the geographical and
mental distance between the Swedish capital, where he lives, and Lapland,
where he sets his novels, is long. This fact is frequently raised in the
novels, where many non-Sami characters living in the far North are as
hostile to ignorant or pretentious southerners and central authorities as
they are to the Sami. This attitude especially applies to matters concerning
the rights of the indigenous people, reindeer herding and the protection
of the environment. Sami people tend to be wary of both northerners and
southerners who are non-Sami because of past and present oppressions.
228 A. HYNYNEN
Truc’s novels illustrate the difficulty of circumscribing national or

regional genre traditions since they are published in France but share
many features with what is commonly regarded as Nordic Noir, partic-
ularly a severe sociopolitical commentary of the misfortunes, abuses and
corruption that lurk beneath the polished surface of the Nordic welfare
state. Nordic Noir “novels often articulate social criticism, critiquing
national institutions and gender politics in particular. And they are
frequently gloomy, pensive and pessimistic in tone. These factors are
evident in other crime fiction traditions, but combined in the Scandina-
vian crime novel they form a unique constellation” (Arvas and Nestingen
2). Similar arguments about social and political criticism being a trade-
mark of Scandinavian Noir are put forth by many other scholars. Kerstin
Bergman and Sara Kärrholm (41) have noticed an increase in non-
political, neo-romantic or cosy Swedish crime writing in recent years, but
also remark that such novels mark a departure from the established tradi-
tion of sociocritical police procedurals which have dominated the field
in Sweden since the 1970s. Karsten Wind Meyhoff identifies another
trend in Scandinavian crime fiction that is more akin to what Truc is
doing: she argues that contemporary Nordic writers who reinterpret and
rewrite the national past set out “to expose the complex reality behind
the official, homogeneous version of Scandinavian history” and dismantle
national myths which have been idealised and homogenised (68). This
applies perfectly to Truc, who sees crime fiction as particularly suitable for
describing and criticising society by unveiling its hidden truths and dark
sides (Pellerin). In his opinion, crime fiction is a critical genre, and he
often makes use of his own investigating journalistic work in the novels.3
Truc’s assessment of crime fiction as a means of social criticism is
visible in the Reindeer Police novels, as they expose various forms of
abuse, marginalisation and oppression, and the focus lies on the past
and present mistreatment of the Sami by Nordic state institutions, inter-
national companies and the majority population. Police agent Klemet
Nango’s personal experiences illustrate a strict politics of cultural assim-
ilation imposed through boarding schools for Sami children (Forty Days
196), and the racial biology doctrine developed and promulgated by
the Swedish State Institute in Uppsala is evoked throughout the series
(see, e.g., La Montagne 213). In Forty Days without Shadow, Nina is
shocked to discover this part of Swedish history: “She was disturbed
by what she had heard so far—horrified by some of it. She had grown
up firmly believing that the Nordic countries had created one of the
best, most just societies in the world. Perhaps Mon’s account of skull
measurements, the racial biology institute, was exaggerated. She had
never heard about it before” (182). At this point of the story, Nina still
doubts the veracity and seriousness of the claims put forth by this French
character Mon, whose first-hand knowledge stems from a scientific
excursion to Lapland he participated in just before World War II, but she
soon discovers that he is not exaggerating. Le Détroit du Loup illumi-
nates how oil drilling companies owned or supported by the Norwegian
state exploited deep-sea divers to secure the oil-miracle which, in the
1970s, transformed Norway into one of the world’s richest nations. The
divers, many of whom lacked proper training and experience, worked
in extremely dangerous conditions in the depths of the North Sea, but
were left to their own devices as soon as they began to display symptoms
caused by diving or in case of an accident. During the investigation, Nina
discovers that her own estranged father once worked for such companies
and that his departure from her life was partly due to his physical and
mental health being permanently destroyed as a result. La Montagne
rouge highlights how academic rivalry and scholarly debates about the
historical presence or non-presence of Sami people prior to Scandinavian
settlers in southern parts of Lapland affect the livelihood of people today:
the Swedish High Court will decide whether the forest industry or Sami
reindeer herders are allowed access to a large portion of land in the
Jämtland region. The investigation of an old skull found in the area
leads to the discovery of ongoing illegal smuggling of Sami artefacts and
bones, in addition to which unknown past and present events connected
to politics informed by racial biology or racism are uncovered. The novel
draws a parallel between the skull measurements in the Nazi era and
the methods of establishing the biological age of immigrants used in
present-day Scandinavia. Such a denunciatory stance is found in both the
French Noir and American hard-boiled traditions, but the idea of the
welfare state and its shortcomings is particularly relevant to Nordic Noir.
The above quotation by Paula Arvas and Andrew Nestingen mentions
another prominent feature of Nordic Noir that defines Truc’s Reindeer
Police series, namely gender politics. While this is not a particularly
important or widespread theme in French crime fiction (Kimyongür
239–41), many scholars recognise a prominence of women protagonists
and writers who promote an egalitarian worldview in the Scandinavian
230 A. HYNYNEN
tradition (see Bergman and Kärrholm 46, 167; Kärrholm 131–47). In

Truc’s novels, women’s rights and egalitarianism are mostly expressed
through Nina, who defends victims of sexual abuse and objects to men’s
inability to comprehend the seriousness of such offences (see Forty Days
245). Moreover, the series represents several impressive female secondary
characters, and the narratives often express admiration for women’s
abilities and achievements, personal and professional. A corollary to this
is that chauvinist and predatory sexual behaviour typically characterises
male criminals.
Truc’s novels thus hardly fit into a neatly circumscribed crime fiction
tradition. The implied readers, place of publication, author’s hometown,
themes and atmosphere, and setting connect the novels to very different
geographical locations. This raises the question of how such novels could,
or should, be classified from a geographical or national perspective, and
which criteria are the most crucial: the author’s nationality or place of
residence, the place where the books are originally published, the setting
and/or nationality of the detective, or something else? There is no definite
answer to these questions. In fact, these novels seem to support King’s
(14) suggestion that it would be more fruitful to approach crime fiction
from the perspective of world literature than cling to overly restrictive
national genre traditions, as that would allow an in-depth analysis on a
global scale of how similar trends and phenomena in the genre develop
over time in different places and contexts. Clearly, such developments are
affected by the mobility of authors, books, translations and ideas. Though
it is difficult to assess the precise impact of these different types of mobility
on local literary genres and traditions, there is much to learn from exam-
ining how, where and when authors and texts travel and how this affects
the spreading of topics, themes, literary tropes and narrative devices in
the crime genre.
A Transnational Setting
and Cross-Border Investigations
Truc’s novels are set in Sápmi, the traditional Sami region originally
inhabited by indigenous Sami people before Scandinavian settlers arrived
in the area and national borders were fixed. Sápmi covers approximately
388,000 square kilometres in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden,
Finland and Russia (Sametinget 4), but Truc is mainly concerned with the
Swedish and Norwegian parts. The investigations have not yet ventured
into Russia, but the stories occasionally involve Finnish locations and
characters originating from Finland.
The selected setting is cross-national and has fluid borders, since Sápmi
of today is formed on the basis of a loosely defined territory which never
had any strict frontiers; like other indigenous people, the Sami did not
claim ownership over the land and their culture and traditions were mostly
orally transmitted. Consequently, few written records exist to prove where
traditional Sami settlements and pastures were once located and for how
long, and opinions diverge as to the exact size of Sápmi. As mentioned,
this question and the heated debates it provokes are a central theme in
Truc’s third crime novel.
In Sápmi, indigenous Sami people and culture struggle for survival
in a contemporary world whose understanding of cross-national reindeer
herding is limited at best. Truc’s portrayal of his setting emphasises how
traditional transhumance, which is conditioned by natural and weather
conditions, clashes with the notion of a sovereign state with clear-cut
national borders and circumscribed private property. This conflict and
the disastrous effects of closed national borders on the Sami’s reindeer
herding are explicated already in Forty Days Without Shadow:
The national borders really screwed things up for the breeders.… Before,
Sápmi was one territory and the Sami lived here alone. But with the
borders in place, the Finnish breeders found themselves marooned, unable
to cross to the summer pastures on the Norwegian coast, or the winter
pastures in what is now northern Sweden. They had no choice but to
start feeding their reindeer themselves.… Their traditional, nomadic life
was destroyed. (358)
Sápmi is thus a place where national borders and settlers who buy land
and divide it with fences have created an unsurmountable obstacle to
Sami transhumance, an integral part of Sami culture. Traditional reindeer
herding functioned according to the need of the animals to move between
different pastures to find enough to eat: because of the severe climate and
the shortage of food, the survival of the animals and the herders depend
on their ability to move freely and undisturbed.
Even though these novels demonstrate how closed national borders
have harmed or destroyed the Sami way of life (and continue to do so),
they also convey that contemporary Sápmi retains some of its original
borderless nature: “Passports and frontiers don’t count for a whole lot
232 A. HYNYNEN
up here, except if you’re trying to get into Russia. People roam free.
Everyone is of mixed blood. Well, most people” (Forty Days 81). Thus,
not only are the reindeer herders and their descendants used to a nomadic
lifestyle, but everyone is also accustomed to moving about and travelling
across regional and national borders to ensure their livelihood. Despite
their different social and ethnic backgrounds (see below), both detec-
tives have either a personal or family history which includes working at
different jobs in various places because of changed circumstances and
seasonal fluctuations: Nina’s Norwegian father is a former whale-man,
fisherman and diver, whereas Klemet’s Sami grandfather was forced to
give up reindeer herding because of imposed national border restrictions;
hence, Klemet’s father adopted a completely different way of life, working
in mines, fishing or on Norwegian farms. Sápmi is a vast and sparsely
populated space where, to use Klemet’s words, “No one was afraid of
travelling long distances. Migration was in their blood, up here in the
North” (Forty Days 287). Freedom of movement, mobility and undis-
turbed vast spaces are associated with an ideal and true Sápmi, as intrinsic
qualities of this territory.
Cross-border crimes and investigations are common in much contem-
porary crime fiction, especially in postcolonial crime novels. Truc takes
this phenomenon one step further, as the idea of mobility and geograph-
ical border crossing is inscribed within the very core of the detecting
agency in his series. The Reindeer Police depicted by Truc is a pan-
Nordic police force whose district extends over Norway, Sweden and
Finland, when the real Reindeer Police is an exclusively Norwegian insti-
tution. Considering that Truc made a documentary about the Reindeer
Police for French television, broadcast in 2007, there is no doubt that
he knows how the organisation is structured. Rather than sticking to the
actual Reindeer Police institution in his fiction, he has transformed it into
a transnational police agency, thereby emphasising the constant moving
about and border crossing that characterises the Sápmi he portrays to his
readers. Gathering up the reindeer belonging to a murdered herder at the
beginning of the first novel introduces the cross-national collaboration
which is ascribed to the Reindeer Police in this fictional universe: “Four
Reindeer Patrols had been called in: from Karasjok and Alta in Norway,
from Enontekiö on the Finnish side, even from Kiruna in Sweden” (54).
Because of Truc’s choice to make the Reindeer Police Nordic instead
of Norwegian, the investigators and investigations are not bound to one
specific location or nation. The Reindeer Police agents’ transnational juris-

diction is vast, and every story requires the main protagonists to travel
extensively. While their investigations and jurisdiction are rarely limited on
a geographical scale, they often bump into institutional and hierarchical
borders: members of the regular national police force are often reluctant
to let them handle serious cases and try to exclude them, accusing them
of incompetence and bias.
The series is spatially mobile and rejects fixed locations: in each novel,
the crucial events which spark the ensuing investigation happen in a new
place. Forty Days without Shadow focuses on Kautokeino in northern
Norway, where Nina and Klemet’s unit is based and where they live, but
as the story unfolds, readers are taken further north to Alta, as well as to
Karesuando, Kiruna and Malå in Sweden and to various indistinct places
on the tundra in Central Sápmi. The investigators cover long distances
by car and snowmobile in Norway and Sweden, and occasionally cross
over into Finnish territory. To solve the initial murder and uncover the
story behind it, a trip to France is also needed, as the murder is linked to
a legendary Sami drum, which has been in the possession of a French
scientist for years. The main events of Le Détroit du Loup take place
approximately 260 km further north, in the city of Hammerfest on the
Norwegian coast of the Arctic Ocean. From there, the investigation leads
the agents to explore past incidents on the Norwegian west coast and the
North Sea, amongst other places in Sápmi. In La Montagne rouge, the
main events occur in and concern the valley of Funäsdalen, which lies in
the Jämtland region in Sweden, more than 1200 km south of Kautokeino.
In all of these places, the crimes connect to dealings or conflicts between
Sami and the majority population, which explains why Klemet and Nina
become involved in the investigations.
Geographical and cultural settings have become one of the most impor-
tant points of contemporary crime fiction, as affirmed by Erdmann (274),
who notes a visible sign of this evolution in the use of maps in contem-
porary crime novels. Maps are a common device used since the beginning
of the genre, but Erdmann suggests that they have recently become
more prominent and their function has evolved. In Truc’s novels, a map
of Sápmi with cities and places that are most important to the plot is
placed at the beginning of every book, a slightly different version for each
novel. Readers today are less interested in methods of deduction and how
crimes are solved than in constantly discovering new exciting places or
234 A. HYNYNEN
digging deep into the details of a specific location which becomes increas-
ingly familiar as a crime series develops (Poole 29). Truc introduces a
universe that is unfamiliar to many readers, the “exotic” world of the
Sami and reindeer herding in a distant and harsh but beautiful landscape,
but instead of maintaining his focus on one small village and its inhabi-
tants throughout, he widens the perspective to explore different corners
of Sápmi. The cross-national setting and transnational status of his heroes
create a multifaceted fictional universe which is simultaneously one and
plural.
Across Cultural Borders

Besides geographical border crossings undertaken by characters and
undergone by objects (such as the Sami drum, smuggled artefacts, bones
and skulls), the novels feature another kind of border crossing, that
of cultural or ethnic borders. Social and ethnic mobility is expressed
through Nina and Klemet, the former a representative of the Scandinavian
majority, and the latter a Sami with a conflictual relationship to other Sami
and Sami culture. Social mobility refers to individuals moving from one
position in a hierarchical society to another, either upward or downward,
but it can also be horizontal, which means that the change of position
does not involve a change of social class. Nina’s and Klemet’s personal and
family histories contain examples of both upward and downward social
mobility. While ethnicity is often an important factor in social position
and thus affects social mobility, here ethnic mobility refers to changes
in ethnic boundaries and the characters’ shifting sense of ethnic identity,
especially in connection with the divide between Sami and non-Sami. The
detective duo is directly affected by each other’s background, which gives
rise to both cultural confrontation and cross-cultural collaboration.
The reader discovers the Sápmi region and its conflicted past through
the eyes of the police agent Nina, who as an outsider is initially obliv-
ious to the mistreatment of the indigenous population by the state, other
authorities, settlers and powerful organisations and corporations. Nina is
a newcomer to the North; after graduating from the police academy in
Oslo, she was assigned to the Reindeer Police, first in Swedish Kiruna and
then transferred to her current post in Kautokeino in Norway, where she
has been for only a few months at the beginning of the first novel. She
grew up in a small fishing village in southern Norway under the vigilant
eyes of a Christian mother. To her, Sápmi is “the other face of Scandi-

navia.” Nina’s first visit to a Sami reindeer herder’s trailer in the tundra
is described as “venturing into unknown territory, beyond her compre-
hension”: “How could people live like this here in Norway, in her own
country? … could this really be Norway?” (Forty Days 18). Geographical,
social and cultural mobility are constitutive characteristics of this detec-
tive figure, who has moved to Sápmi from the south, ascended on the
social ladder by becoming a police officer and left her pious Christian
upbringing behind her to work and socialise amongst Sami people.
Nina’s ignorance and curiosity are a perfect excuse for her partner and
others to explain the history of the Sami and important facts about Sápmi
to her and, indirectly, to the reader. The information that is communi-
cated to the reader—presumed to be unfamiliar with the region and the
topics that are dealt with—is often channelled through this outsider char-
acter via her questions, reactions and (mis)perceptions when confronted
by unexpected events or characters. Nina’s age and gender also play an
important role in her relationship with both Klemet and the people they
investigate, because there are few women on the tundra, or vidda. Never-
theless, her outsider status is not absolute: it is sometimes easier for her
to relate to and establish a connection with important local witnesses or
other characters than it is for her partner, who originates from the region.
This mostly applies to female characters, especially young girls who have
been sexually harassed or abused, but also to her partner’s uncle, Nils-
Ante Nango, a master of Sami joik singing, as well as the aforementioned
scientist she visits in France. Nina’s relationship with her own family and
hometown is difficult, whereas Klemet can connect with her reclusive
father. The inside/outside boundary becomes porous, as some things
and experiences are shared by members of the Sami population and this
Norwegian from the south, while other things separate them.
Nina’s senior partner, Klemet, has the opposite role in their partnership
and the narrative. Klemet is originally Sami, but he was cut off from his
family as a child and placed in a public boarding school, which promoted
“complete” cultural assimilation: in this foreign environment, pupils were
forbidden to use their Sami mother tongue, the only language they knew,
or to display any Sami customs so as to become truly Swedish. Klemet’s
Sami background positions him as a cultural mediator between the Sami
and members of the majority, though he has lost touch with much of Sami
culture during his life journey. Another prime example of social, cultural
236 A. HYNYNEN
and ethnic mobility is Klemet’s late father, who abandoned his Sami iden-
tity and traditions after the family was forced to give up reindeer herding
and opted for what one could perhaps, for lack of a better expression, call
a non-Sami Scandinavian way of life. Giving up reindeer herding meant a
significant descent in social status amongst the Sami. Nina’s presence and
her efforts to comprehend her new surroundings in combination with
the investigations which raise numerous questions about Sami culture,
their rights and the oppression to which they have been subjected, force
Klemet to confront his past and re-evaluate his current identity. His self-
image and position are strongly affected by the fate once imposed on him
by his father and the authorities.
Regardless of the Reindeer Police Chief’s offhand remark to Nina that
the vidda in Sápmi is probably “no place for us Non-Sami,” Klemet is the
only Sami on the force (Forty Days 108). Klemet has undeniable insights
into Sami society and understands, for instance, the precarious situation
of reindeer herders and their distrust of official authorities for historical
reasons, but his role as a mediator in the criminal investigations is often
fraught with misunderstandings and difficulties. From the perspective of
certain non-Sami, he is too close to the Sami; even Nina accuses him of
being too lenient when he avoids confronting or accusing Sami suspects
for reasons that to her initially are incomprehensible. What he recognises
as an expression of a functional internal justice system and a legitimised
lack of trust towards oppressive foreign authorities, she sees as disobe-
dience, arrogance and lack of respect. At the same time, some Sami no
longer consider Klemet as one of them and are outright hostile or reluc-
tant to share information with him. Klemet repeatedly questions his own
cultural and ethnic identity, asking himself if he is “a true Sami” (Forty
Days 287), and is forced to acknowledge that the symbols on a traditional
Sami drum mean as little to him as to Nina.
Klemet’s outsiderness in relation to the “true Sami” is reinforced by
his profession; as a police agent he is associated with an oppressive state
apparatus by many Sami who lack faith in the national justice system.
Klemet hence recalls several characteristics ascribed to the postcolonial
detective in Ed Christian’s The Post-Colonial Detective: he is a cultural
informant who is partly marginalised but still acts as an intermediary
between cultures:
Post-colonial detectives are always indigenous to or settlers in the coun-

tries where they work; they are usually marginalized in some way, which
affects their ability to work at their full potential; they are always central
and sympathetic characters; and their creators’ interest usually lies in an
exploration of how these detectives’ approaches to criminal investigations
are influenced by their cultural attitude. (qtd. in Davis 15)
Christian’s volume is one of the first to specifically focus on this

detective figure, but it has also been criticised for being overly
simplistic in its reliance on clear-cut binaries like coloniser/colonised
and oppressor/oppressed (Pearson and Singer 7) and the idea of an
“authentic” insider (Davis 14).
Truc’s novels belie such an essentialist notion of ethnic authenticity:
the main character, who occupies the role of the insider, points to internal
conflicts amongst the Sami and describes a strict hierarchy of values
between reindeer herders, educated Sami who have adopted a Scandi-
navian lifestyle, impoverished fishermen, and the lowest group of all, the
outcasts who have given up reindeer herding and betrayed their family
legacy. Klemet himself oscillates between the position of a Sami and that
of a non-Sami, as the position assigned to him largely depends on the
circumstances and who is looking. As already mentioned, most people
are said to have mixed origins. The Sami disagree on how to maintain
their cultural specificity and survive in today’s world; there is no common
accord as to what a “true Sami” is or should be. In the novels, cultural and
ethnic identities are mobile and fluctuate: different individuals propose
different solutions, but rather than clinging to an already lost past or
uncritically adopting a Scandinavian way of life, the best way forward
seems to be a willingness to try new things, for example, combining Sami
traditions with elements from other communities. This becomes apparent
when we compare the tragic fate of Mattis Labba, the Sami who dies at
the beginning of the first novel, with Klemet’s uncle Nils-Ante.
Mattis descends from a respected shaman family and considers it his
duty to carry on this legacy. Mattis is less gifted than his predecessors and
haunted by constant feelings of inadequacy and gradually sinks into alco-
holism, and, in a final gesture of desperation, steals a traditional shaman
drum in the hope that its magic powers will be transferred onto him. He
is killed the same night, and his death brings an abrupt end to a life char-
acterised by failure and despair. These negative feelings stem from Mattis’s
vain efforts to live up to an idealised traditional role based on essentialist
assumptions about Sami ethnicity and culture. Klemet’s unorthodox uncle
represents the other end of the spectrum: he has expert knowledge of
238 A. HYNYNEN
Sami oral culture, myths and joik singing, but criticises the repressive and
closed worldview cultivated in certain Sami circles. He enjoys creating
music that combines joiks with contemporary rock or elements from
Chinese singing and finds happiness with a Chinese girlfriend. However,
this does not mean that the novels embrace multiculturalism as a joyous
fix-it-all solution to the difficult questions of Sami identity and Sami
rights. This eccentric character is but one example in the novels of Sami
individuals trying to redefine their Sami identity in a changing world.
When crime narratives move into indigenous non-Western contexts,
it affects the investigation methods, ways of reasoning and justice system.
As Maureen Lauder argues, “The explicit handling of questions of knowl-
edge and unknowability is fairly common to postcolonial detective fiction:
… weaknesses and uncertainties of Western epistemologies and method-
ologies are often highlighted in their collision with other ways of knowing
and other methods of investigation” (51). This phenomenon is noticeable
in Truc’s series, where Klemet is torn between his belief in rational knowl-
edge and intuitive reactions, like protecting his new-born shadow when
the sun finally rises above the horizon for the first time after the long
polar night. He actively suppresses what he calls superstitious beliefs and
rejects any effort to move the investigations forward if they are not based
on conclusive evidence, thoroughly examined and proven, because he “is
a rational man after all, a police officer” (Forty Days 9). Police work and
investigations are, in his view, based on rational and scientific methods,
which is why he is so reluctant to follow Nina’s hunches and firmly
objects to his racist colleague’s gut feeling that the Sami herders must
be guilty and the situation will be resolved as soon as the troublemakers
are imprisoned.
Despite Klemet’s efforts to combat intuition and superstition, the
stories challenge the firm link that he wants to maintain between Western
rationality and detective work: other kinds of knowledge are introduced
and become crucial to solving the cases. The magic symbols on the
shaman’s drum and the traditional joik, which have been passed through
generations of Sami, provide Klemet and Nina with the clues to track
down a dangerous criminal. In La Montagne rouge, a satisfactory solution
to the conflict regarding the Sami’s traditional presence or non-presence
in the disputed area cannot be reached until Klemet ventures into the vast
forests and allows himself to be guided by his instincts and nature, like
Sami people did in the old days. Only then can he find traces of their
existence, which are crucial for the outcome.
Concluding Thoughts
This chapter began by demonstrating how difficult it is to define the posi-
tion of Truc and his crime novels from a strictly regional or national
standpoint. Neither “French” nor “Nordic” are adequate categories,
since they cover only part of the picture, which is inherently transna-
tional because of today’s global book market and the author’s travels
and move to Sweden. Having posited border crossing as a central aspect
of mobility, I then moved on to intranarrative elements which further
confirm my argument that border crossing is the most appropriate vantage
point from which to approach the Reindeer Police series. The investi-
gators’ cross-cultural, cross-gender and cross-generational collaboration,
a transnational setting, investigations that require extensive travels as
they cross over national borders and stretch back in time, and Klemet’s
complex cultural identity are the main examples of the different types
of mobility (geographical, social and ethnic) and border crossings that
characterise these novels.
Yet, Truc’s protagonists do not succumb to a naïve celebration of
multiculturalism and hybridity or convey a black and white picture of
oppressors (Scandinavians) versus the oppressed (the Sami), since they
also foreground the sufferings of other marginalised groups and demon-
strate that the Sami population—like all communities—is inherently
heterogeneous; identities and ethnicity are mobile and fluctuate. Instead,
the novels highlight the many complex connections that develop between
individuals and within/between different communities.
Notes
1. Truc depicts Scandinavia as a place where women can be strong and femi-
nist and expect an equal, non-sexual relationship with men. This scene
supports that image, but because of cultural stereotypes about Scandinavian
women’s open attitude to sex (which for some people equals promiscuous-
ness), it seems plausible that some readers would interpret the detectives’
sleeping arrangement in quite a different manner, were it not for Klemet’s
explanation.
2. References to and quotes from the first book in the series refer to the
English translation, Forty Days without Shadow, whereas all the remarks
and quotes pertaining to the later novels are based on the original French
ones and translated by me.
240 A. HYNYNEN
3. Truc’s second crime novel deals with the tragic fate of deep-sea divers
during the early years of the oil boom in Norway. Six years earlier, in 2008,
Truc published a non-fiction book on this topic together with Christian
Catomeris, a Swedish journalist. Its title is telling: Dykaren som exploderade
(The diver who exploded).
References
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Crime Fiction. U of Wales P, 2011, pp. 1–20.
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2011.
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Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.” Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational
World, edited by Nels Pearson and Marc Singer, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 15–30.
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auteur/olivier-truc/. Accessed 7 Apr. 2018.
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CHAPTER 13
Splatter Horror Crime: Crossing Medial

Borders in Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman
Niklas Salmose
Introduction
A relatively little-discussed factor behind Nordic Noir’s tremendous
success is how the genre trespasses many borders. In translation, Nordic
Noir moves beyond national interpretations of the works; in content,
it negotiates normative borders, such as culture, ethnicity and gender.
We can also identify three categories of medial mobility within Nordic
Noir: (1) genre mixing between popular genres (which accounts for this
chapter’s title), (2) transmedial storytelling, adaptations between different
media formats including film and TV adaptations, translations, gaming
and (3) the filmic modes of Nordic Noir fiction. This medial mobility
attracts a contemporary audience that is versed in a multimedial discourse
through popular culture, art and social media.
In the past decade, Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø has pushed on in
the Millennium trilogy author Stieg Larsson’s popular and commercial
spirit, especially with his series about the self-destructive but brilliant
Oslo detective Harry Hole (1997–). Similar to Larsson’s trilogy, Nesbø’s
series displays a complex layer of medial modes that might account for
N. Salmose (B)
Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

244 N. SALMOSE
the novels’ success. His series caught worldwide attention with the first
translation into English, The Devil’s Star (2005), which occurred at the
outset of Larsson’s fame in 2005. One of Nesbø’s most accomplished
and successful novels, The Snowman (2007), is the focal point in this
chapter. It tells the story of Norway’s first serial killer, the Snowman,
who brutally murders women who have extramarital affairs resulting in
children. Oslo detectives Harry Hole and Katrine Bratt pursue the serial
killer in a twisted suspense plot, and Hole becomes personally involved
as it turns out that the Snowman is living with Hole’s former girlfriend
Rakel and her son Oleg.
This chapter aims to analyse how The Snowman appropriates what
Christine Schwanecke describes as the filmic mode to immerse its readers
in a cinematic way.1 Hence, I will look into medial mobility mostly in
terms of filmic mode (introduced above) and the closely related genre
mixing. Schwanecke defines the filmic mode as a literary phenomenon
that “trigger[s] the actualization of the ‘filmic medium’ in a reader’s mind
while s/he is actually reading and processing nothing but words. Filmic
modes can establish the illusion of the filmic medium being (materially)
present in the literary text even though it is not” (268). The analysis of
filmic modes in The Snowman will be framed within the overall concept
of generic and aesthetic blending (blending theory), first between film
and literature on a more elementary level, and then between horror film,
serial killer narratives and crime fiction specifically. I will investigate filmic
modes in terms of how cinematic montage, transitions, intertexts, the
camera-eye, and diegetic and non-diegetic sound permeate the overall
construction of, and facilitate the generic blend between, horror film and
crime fiction in The Snowman.
Filmic modes in literature have usually been classified into three
interconnected categories. Keith Cohen writes in Film and Fiction:
The Dynamics of Exchange that cinema quickly became the epitome of
twentieth-century modernist literary experimentation “in the dynamic
handling of space and time, the radical shifting of point of view, and the
reconstituted patterning (montage) of fragmented narration” (108). This
chapter mainly focuses on point of view (narrative voice and mood, focal-
isation) but will occasionally also involve the first and third categories.
Cohen’s categorisation is representative of both the dominant attention
to the visual aspects of the film media and the overall lack of auditory
analysis in literary filmic modes. Schwanecke acknowledges this when she
writes that research on “paradigmatic movie sounds (e.g. a door creaking
13 SPLATTER HORROR CRIME: CROSSING MEDIAL BORDERS … 245
and a high-pitched woman’s scream in a horror movie) and film music

as imitated in literature … ha[ve] remained until this very day a major
desideratum” (270). This chapter will therefore also pay attention to the
imitation and integration of cinematic sounds in The Snowman as part of
its filmic mode. Situating The Snowman in a cinematic horror genre thus
encourages a focus on how cinematic sound is transmediated into litera-
ture. Furthermore, the use of cinematic sound and music in The Snowman
can also account for some of its popularity since the novel operates within
a general framework of popular culture’s attention to the auditory in
addition to the visual.
Previous analyses of filmic modes in literature have mostly been allotted
to either pre-cinematic fiction, such as Gustave Flaubert’s writing, or the
modernist narratives of James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos
and Virginia Woolf (Schwanecke 271). Some attempts have been made
to investigate the intermedial relationship between film and literature
in hard-boiled detective fiction: for example, William Luhr’s Raymond
Chandler and Film argues that Chandler’s emphasis on first-person narra-
tion and distinct prose style influenced the emergence of the film noir style
(4–5; 16). Similar to Luhr’s work, studies on the medial relations between
film and literature have predominantly concentrated on adaptations rather
than filmic modes within literature; this chapter adds to the emergence of
medial analyses of filmic modes by looking at a modern primary text.
However, it is outside the scope of this chapter to discuss the reception
of The Snowman in terms of readers’ actual cinematic experience of the
novel. Yet, my analysis forms a basis for understanding certain elements
of the novel that could account for its success.
I will first discuss filmic modes in relation to the overarching theory
of intermediality and how some of them operate in The Snowman. To
understand the correlation between horror film and those sets of filmic
codes in the novel, a brief discussion of the aesthetics of horror film will
be provided. Finally, I will perform a close reading of two scenes from
the novel, drawing from the theoretical discussions and earlier examples
of filmic modes.
Intermediality and Filmic Modes

One aspect of intermediality is the blending of media; this idea of mixed
media can be approached in different ways. With his concept of hetero-
mediality, Jørgen Bruhn advances W.J.T. Mitchell’s idea that all media
246 N. SALMOSE
are mixed media. Heteromediality, according to Bruhn, is a way of under-

standing media not only in terms of pure medial representation but also as
the representation of different medial representations (31). This approach
to intermediality opens for a medial analysis of blending that investigates
how a certain medial style (form rather than narrative) can be emulated
in another medium. This kind of remediation can be interpreted as a
“medium imitating the techniques of another” (Ryan 33) and an illu-
sion of the other medium, an as-if quality (Rajewsky 39–40). Schwanecke
presents three variables for analysing filmic modes in literature, the what,
the how, and the where (274–78). The “what” involves what a filmic mode
refers to. Schwanecke (275–76) builds on Siegfried J. Schmidt’s universal
categorisation of media features and also includes filmic technologies and
materiality (e.g. cameras, projectors, film screens), semiotic symbols (e.g.
moving images, verbal language, sounds, jump cuts, montage), social
factors (e.g. movie institutions, film reception and criticism) and specific
film products (e.g. film titles, film directors, genres).
“How” these references are actualised in literature by authors and
readers Schwanecke defines with the help of Irina O. Rajewsky’s inter-
medial theory of reference and contamination (Rajewsky 158–62; Schwa-
necke 276). According to Rajewsky, references can be either explicit or
implicit. Explicit filmic references are directly mentioned or pondered
in the text; these references, however, might signal the more implicit
filmic modes. Implicit references are filmic modes that “evoke, simulate,
or (partly) reproduce filmic elements in literature; the trigger for such a
‘filmic’ reception is … a combination of explicit references (vocabulary)
and the establishment of iconic analogies between literary structures and
filmic conventions, qualities, and structures” (Schwanecke 276). Finally,
the issue of “where” in the text the filmic modes are produced: they
“can be realized on compositional levels, such as the overall structure,
imagery, plot design, or character constellation. Filmic modes can appear
on diegetic levels, extra-diegetically, and even paratextually (as in titles
of plays, poems, novels, or short stories, chapter headings, and tables of
contents)” (Schwanecke 278).
Studying The Snowman from a heteromedial perspective yields an
impressive variety of medial representations, ranging from filmic genres
to music, newspaper clippings, letters, labels, illustrations, photos, African
masques, radio, TV and a full medial integration of a paratextual map
of Oslo City Centre. Some of these medial representations also involve
intertextual references and allusions to cinema in different ways and
thus represent several different filmic modes, mostly references to social

factors and specific film products. One prominent example is the discus-
sion between Harry and Rakel where they refer to such film titles as
The Rules of Attraction and Starship Troopers, and, more significantly,
to The Conversation, a film that inspires both the title of Chapter 12
and the aesthetic construction of several key scenes, such as Detective
Rafto’s meeting with the serial killer in Bergen.2 These filmic references
are explicitly produced in the diegesis of the novel. A prominent example
of a paratextual filmic mode is the chronological ordering of chapter titles,
from Day 1 to Day 22, and such chapter titles as “4 November 1992.”
These titles allude to Stanley Kubrick’s use of intertitles in his horror
classic The Shining to create temporal intensity and determinism in the
narrative and will only be recognised as filmic modes if readers are aware
of the original film.3
The more explicit referential filmic modes act as an invitation to
read The Snowman in a filmic mode, to rethink perception in relation
to cinema. Schwanecke also stresses that filmic modes must be appre-
hended in terms of context and convention: “[W]hat people understand
as ‘film’ or as distinctly ‘filmic’ is a cognitive concept or a mental schema
that depends on convention; like any convention, it is prone to cultural
and historical variation and change” (273). Hence, filmic modes in The
Snowman must be understood in the particular context of the status and
preferences of its main readership.
Genre Blending in The Snowman

Barry Forshaw acknowledges that Nordic Noir writers more often than
other contemporary crime authors experiment with genre (4). Kerstin
Bergman stresses that the Millennium trilogy “is characterized by a
diverse mix of genres, crime fiction genres and other genres of popular
fiction” (130). She argues The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a “fusion
of an intellectual whodunit mystery and a suspenseful serial killer thriller”
that displays a gradual change from the whodunit to the thriller where the
latter is manifested through “an increase in tempo and suspense” (130).
Similar to Larsson’s novel, The Snowman mixes the crime genre with
other popular, often cinematic, genres. It is mostly in the use of the filmic
mode of montage that The Snowman achieves the kind of tempo and
248 N. SALMOSE
suspense Bergman attributes to Larsson’s novel. In Schwanecke’s cate-

gorisation above, montage would be a semiotic filmic mode where litera-
ture imitates the typical filmic montage. Alan Spiegel defines the filmic
mode of montage in literature as “the arrangement of photographed
perspectives … in sequence … to describe certain treatments of temporal
and spatial continuity” (Fiction 88). From the perspective of montage,
the narrative structure of The Snowman is anachronistic. The narrative
order of events is arranged around three dominant times, mainly the 1980
recollections of the serial killer, Detective Rafto’s search for the killer in
1992, and 2004, when Harry and Katrine investigate new disappearances
and murders. Within these principal narrative times, there are numerous
brief analepses: memory flashes from characters or slightly longer reces-
sions into past times. At the novel’s end, there is a remarkable recurrence
of the first temporal event in the novel, “Wednesday, 5 November 1980.”
The double frequency (repetition) of an event in literature is unusual, but
much more common in film. The recap’s first paragraph is identical with
the opening of the novel, but in the second paragraph, we notice a shift in
focalisation from mother to son. Emotionally, the repeated event’s change
of perspective satisfies readers’ lack of explanations in the opening chapter,
but the aesthetics of retake also inhabits a distinctive cinematic character.
The most evident and effective cinematic example of montage in The
Snowman is the lateral scenes between Katrine investigating and terror-
ising publicist Arve Støp, while Harry is finding out more of the secret
background of Katrine (Nesbø 370–91). Here each parallel sequence is
separated by a couple of line breaks not unlike the ellipsis between one
frame and another in film.
These parallel montage scenes also exemplify how transitions between
the aligned scenes are constructed in a cinematic way. Cinematic transi-
tions where one scene should connect to the next to create a seamless
and paced temporal movement forward are usually called “hooks”; hooks
are not uncommon in modern popular literature but they are still
mainly connected to the history of cinema (Bordwell). Two passages
in The Snowman illustrate the cinematic technique of the hook. The
first is a transition from Rakel’s house to Katrine at Police Headquarters
connected by a dialogical question and answer:
He tiptoed. “Can I go now?”

“Yes, you can go?” (Nesbø 198)
The second transition is a typical ellipsis where the same person is present
in both scenes but in a different place and time:
“Get your coat and meet me down in the garage.” Harry said. “We’re
going for a drive.”
Harry drove along Uranienborgveien…. (Nesbø 285)
Nesbø utilises the cinematic hook for effect on several occasions in the
novel and some of them echo his comment in an interview on the vacilla-
tion between dark interiors and bright exteriors in a cinematic way: “It is
about scene transitions. If you have a long scene in a dark room there is
a tendency to put the next scene outside in daylight” (Cato; my trans.).
The Snowman also belongs compositionally to the genre of serial killer
and psychopath fiction. As Philip L. Simpson has convincingly argued,
the serial killer narrative is intimately linked to the narrative structures
of crime fiction (73–83). As Simpson shows, this genre blending is quite
common, and both genres share a fascination with and anesthetisation
of murder. He describes how the inclusion of the psychopath in varied
popular genres and media has strong marketing advantages (2).
What sets The Snowman apart from this frequent genre combination is
the inclusion of more cinematic genres: the thriller in terms of narrative
pace and speed, montage; the horror film in terms of a particular cine-
matic aesthetics involving the use of a literary camera-eye and generic
horror sound effects; and the splatter film where the focus is on the
graphic violence of the murders. According to Steven Jay Schneider, the
splatter film subgenre emphasises “displays of gore, extreme violence, and
transgressive, opened-up bodies” (138). This would certainly describe
many novels in Nesbø’s series, and although The Snowman is not the
most explicit and graphic example, some scenes nevertheless evidence the
graphic murders symptomatic of the genre (54; 114–15; 218; 452; 473).
The comparatively few instances of splatter filmic modes in The Snowman
are still remarkable and make the novel stand out from more ordinary
detective modes. However, the novel operates more within the general
filmic modes of horror film than with the splatter subgenre, and thus the
final analytical section here will discuss the filmic modes of The Snowman
as they are situated within the framework of horror film aesthetics.
250 N. SALMOSE
The Snowman and Horror Film Aesthetics

To identify filmic modes in literature related to the genre of horror film, I
will briefly discuss the cinematic aesthetics of the horror film. Noël Carroll
has defined some key cinematic elements in horror films that will be
useful here: unreliable, ambiguous point of view shots, visual interferences
in the frame, off-screen sound, unassigned camera movement, oscilla-
tion between objective and subjective camera and ambiguities of natural
or supernatural representations (152–55). Conclusively, these strategies
operate to confuse and unsettle the viewer in different ways. The ambi-
guity of natural and supernatural can also be assigned to the cinematic
serial killer genre, where the fear created by psychopaths is attributed
to their alleged supernatural abilities. Matt Hills discusses how the serial
killer supernaturally vanishes at the end of Halloween, and how this rein-
forces “the sense that [he] could be anywhere” which transforms the
“[f]earful emotion directed at” the killer into “objectless anxiety; how can
he have disappeared?” (27). The serial killer in The Snowman possesses all
these traits of the cinematic serial killer; he vanishes, transports himself
with an unrealistic speed, is never seen during his complicated murders,
he never leaves any traces.
Raymond Lefevre’s seminal text on horror film, “From Voyeurism to
Infinity,” explains that the major effect of the classic voyeuristic horror
film Peeping Tom “revolves around a singular concept: the eye” (87); this
involves both character eye and camera-eye. The notion of the camera-
eye as a semiotic filmic mode in literature refers to the imitation of a film
camera moving and mediating information in cinema. Christian Quendler
demonstrates how the blended space between filmic form and literary
form is dominated by the concept of the camera-eye in literature (205).
The emotional strength of the camera-eye technique in literary fiction is
equivalent to the often-mentioned emphatic identification in film: “We
are seeing everything from the inside as if it were and are surrounded
by characters in the film. They do not tell us what they feel, for we see
what they see and see it as they see it” (Balázs 48). Hence, the notion of
the camera-eye in fiction deals with the classic division between mimesis
and diegesis and essential narratological concepts such as narrative mood,
voice and focalisation.4
The most ambitious analysis of the cinematic camera-eye in literature
can be found in Spiegel’s ground-breaking study Fiction and the Camera
Eye: Visual Consciousness in Film and the Modern Novel. Although his
work focuses on modernist narration in the first half of the twentieth
century, his method is applicable to my analysis. Schwanecke (270) uses

Spiegel’s work as a precedent of one of several conceptual problems within
the cinematographic form discourse: its emphasis on the visual and issues
of narrative perception. Nevertheless, perception and the visual is part
of cinema as a medium, and one of Spiegel’s major achievements is the
way he pronounces the classic difference between seeing and telling. In
an earlier article, Spiegel names the form of literary narration concen-
trating on seeing as the reified form (“Flaubert to Joyce” 229). The
reified form is “a way of transcribing the narrative not as a story that
is told, but as an action that is portrayed and presented” (229). Overall,
what Spiegel’s theory of the reified and cinematic form establishes is an
example of how literature can effectively use the cinematic notion of the
camera-eye to create a stylistic effect on readers that simulates that of
the cinema. Notions of camera-eye narration have, as Quendler argues,
“played a key role in revising conceptions of focalization” (203).
The following close readings of two scenes in The Snowman show
how the novel negotiates a cinematic horror effect through the partic-
ular use of reified, mimetic, camera-eye techniques. The novel’s first
two paragraphs demonstrate how the narrative accommodates both what
Spiegel would brand as the reified form and a non-cinematic diegetic style
(“Flaubert to Joyce” 229). The novel opens with “It was the day the
snow came” (3) and the first paragraph is a complete rendering of objec-
tive and atmospheric descriptions of “large flakes,” “colorless sky” and
“snow-ploughs … in action” (3). In the snowy landscape, Sara Kvines-
land (the serial killer’s mother) steers her Toyota “between the detached
houses in Kolloveien,” while “the November snow was lying like a down
duvet over the rolling countryside” (3). This is a series of disparate but
still connected images, which create a sense of cinematic coherence and
temporality (cf. the transitional hook above). The recurring use of internal
focalisation is established through Sara’s view of her son’s “disgruntled
face” in the rear-view mirror (3). Using a viewing device—a mirror in
this case—is a common way of focalising events in The Snowman, which
is in concordance with the horror film’s use of movement in material
surfaces, such as mirrors, for suspense and shock effects. Significantly, Sara
hears “a groan from the back seat” before she observes her son; the use
of off-screen sound is a recurring stylistic strategy that in a filmic way
suggests a space outside the framing of the scene. This is done to expand
the spatio-temporal dimension and to create events outside characters’
(and readers’) field of vision. The ramification of these diegetic off-screen
252 N. SALMOSE
sounds is elevated tension similar to the cinematic horror experience of

sensing without seeing.
Two events in this opening scene, though, interrupt the cinematic
identification. The first is the use of a simile, comparing the falling
snowflakes to “an armada from outer space” (3). Although breaking
the illusion of cinema, the specificity of this simile implicitly alludes to
science-fiction films through the reference to “outer space.” The word
“armada” connotes science-fiction battle films like Star Wars.5 This refer-
ence may alter the way readers engage with the narrative in a cinematic
way. The second disturbance of the cinematic identification occurs when
the narrator explains that Sara “was thinking that the houses looked
different in daylight” (3). This internalisation of Sara’s mind is what
Spiegel would attribute to an intrusion on the objective description of
characters and objects in his reified theory (“Flaubert to Joyce” 229).
The Snowman does not employ a purely cinematic narration but oscillates
between an authorial, even omniscient narrator’s voice, and a cinematic
focalised mood. This fluctuation of voice and mood can be connected to
the blended form of traditional crime narrative and cinematic narrative.
The second scene, the protracted murder of Sylvia Ottersen in
Chapter 8, “Swan Neck,” contains both a consistent emphasis on her
personal experience—some aspects of the scene are focalised through
her—and an absence of authorial commentary. This suggests an external
focalisation with instances of internal focalisation. In horror film, this
would signify a variation between subjective and objective shots. In liter-
ature, it is more complex since subjectivity can be mediated through
both the narrator and the focaliser. The narration here therefore strikes
a balance between Spiegel’s notion of mediation through a character
and an interiorised experience that occasionally becomes self-reflexive and
emotional in a way that a camera only registering sense data would not
(Fiction 40). The effect is a distinct mimetic and directed focalisation
where the subjective position of Sylvia equals the position of the camera-
eye (and microphone). This, to me, seems to use the best of both medial
worlds: the interiorised experience of the victim that literary prose can
so confidently communicate (unlike film) and the mediation of images
and sounds through a fixed, but movable, focalisation that is habitually
cinematic.
Chapter 8 begins: “Sylvia ran into the forest. Night was on the way.
Usually she hated the way November evenings drew in so early, but today
she thought the night couldn’t come soon enough” (91). These simple
sentences that open the chapter create in their brevity two clear and
separated images that nevertheless transition into each other like a film
cut. Their respective ephemerality suggests their photographic quality (as
snaps or flashes) and signals a film tempo that prepares us for the horror
sequence that follows. The lack of detail is intriguing; although this reduc-
tion is not trying to capture the whole resolution and randomness of a
photographic image in the sense of Spiegel’s concept of the adventitious,6
the lack of detail accounts for the immediacy of vision so much connected
with cinema. The absence of detail also invites readers to be involved in
the visual creation of this image, drawing from their own previous cine-
matic experiences. This utilises the imaginative aspect of reading and the
sensorial effect of cinema simultaneously. The third sentence breaks the
cinematic illusion by referring to Sylvia’s thoughts while she is running,
but simultaneously assists our identification with her. Although this goes
against Spiegel’s notion of interior monologues as non-cinematic in their
rendering of subjective emotions (Fiction 40), the free indirect discourse
used here negates the total emphasis on interior broodings and retains a
sense of the cinematic objective style. Access to Sylvia’s interior world also
explains to readers more precisely how the images are mediated through
Sylvia: “everything was distorted and disfigured by the blackness. And by
her own panic” (91).
Later Sylvia stops “to listen” (91), which launches the excessive use
of auditive discourse so prominent in horror cinema. In the darkness
of the forest, and in her panicky state of mind, sound triumphs vision
in describing setting and action. The reference to her motion (“she
stopped”) also underscores how the subject is invariably framed and
anatomised. In these instances, the camera is positioned at a distance from
the subject. Hence, there is a variable focalisation from (1) an external,
and less specific perspective, and (2) Sylvia’s perspective. The use of words
describing motion makes us aware of the change of focalisation, just as
in a film. When Sylvia has stopped, her “heaving, rasping breathlessness
rent the tranquility” (91), and these internalised sounds suddenly make
us aware that we have yet again changed camera perspective. The use of
interiorised sound, such as Sylvia’s pulse later, is another popular horror
film device in scenes of great intensity.
Although a great deal of sense data is registered through the auditory
sense, the few visual representations that are rendered become even more
dramatic: “She swept away the branches overhanging the stream, and
from the corner of her eye she saw something” (Nesbø 93). The branches
here echo Carroll’s description of the visual interferences in the screen
254 N. SALMOSE
mentioned above (154). Cinematically prepared readers would construct

this sentence as three separate clips: a close-up of Sylvia as she sweeps
away the branches, another of something moving quickly, and a close-up
again of Sylvia’s reaction and head movement. The “something” recalls
how Spiegel defines the random in literary imagery as “the moment sepa-
rated from a continuum of past and future moments that alone confers
shape and significance upon it” (Fiction 87).
The mid-section of Chapter 8 is quite analeptic: as if evaluating her
life, Sylvia remembers her time at the fitness centre, her first meeting with
her husband and her children. Remembrance of this kind is common in
a literary narrative, since it is both psychologically motivated by the idea
that a fictive character would re-evaluate her life when experiencing fear of
death, and narratively motivated by giving the reader the causes leading
up to her death. This narrative technique, however, is not particularly
cinematic. Nonetheless, other analepses function more as a retardation of
the inevitable slashing scene—a common feature in horror film to increase
suspense and tension before the anticipated final breath. For example,
when Sylvia recollects her earlier meeting with the serial killer, this is not
part of an interior brooding, but turns out to be a recap of what has
led up to the current scene, providing us with new information. More
significantly, this creates a montage that increases the suspense, since
it interrupts the current dramatic scene with an equally dramatic one.
During this analepsis, we find a perfect cinematic image, descriptive but
not interpreted by a narrator: “The first thing she had noticed was the
strange apparatus, a thin metal loop attached to a handle” (93).
While Sylvia is stuck in the swan neck (a fox trap) and her movements
are limited, the emphasis changes from her movements to those of the
serial killer. In the dark, Sylvia hears cracks and twigs breaking, and later
“quiet footsteps in the snow” (95), but vision is notably limited, which
increases the fear in Sylvia and the reader. Wholly dependent on deci-
phering these sounds, the stark reality of the murderer is revealed to Sylvia
through a sardonic voice: “Is this what you are looking for?” (96). The
effect of the sudden human voice, which we know belongs to the serial
killer, is shocking and resembles a strategy we identify from numerous
horror films. The serial killer is further described in a way that empha-
sises Sylvia’s perspective rather than an external, omniscient one: “But
in front of her sat a figure; crouched down. It ” (96). Note the focus
on the materiality and composure of the figure; as a silhouette in the
dark, this is what Sylvia can deduct from what she (and the camera-eye)
sees. Therefore, she refers to the killer as it (also an intertextual refer-

ence to Stephen King’s novel with the same name). After unsuccessfully
throwing her hatchet towards the figure, the chapter ends with the killer’s
voice: “Shall we begin?” (98). The following chapter commences in a
different mood and setting with Oleg’s enthusiastic voice, “Was that great
or what?” (99); Harry and Oleg are in a crowded kebab shop discussing
the concert they have just attended. The transition is brilliant, alternating
the loneliness and fear of Sylvia with the bustling Oslo city centre. This
leaves readers desperate to learn of Sylvia’s fate, but still pleased by a
temporary dramatic pause. The use of a cinematic montage here creates
the illusion of simultaneity—murder and the everyday.
Beyond The Snowman

Robert C. Solomon states that horror “is an extremely unpleasant and
even traumatizing emotional experience which renders the subject/victim
helpless and violates his or her most rudimentary expectations about the
world” (253). In the case of Sylvia Ottersen, and how her murder is medi-
ated through a set of diegetic filmic codes representing aesthetic horror
cinema, this is definitely true. The filmic modes Nesbø offers us as readers
effectively link us to the experience of the victim in a more immediate and
immersive way than in non-cinematic fiction, mainly through the use of
the camera-eye and off-screen sound, but also through effective montage
and cinematic handling of space and time. “Blending theory,” writes
Quendler in concordance with cinematic aesthetics in literature, “thereby
becomes not only a powerful theoretical framework that accounts for
the reader’s and viewer’s activities in processing filmic and literary narra-
tives, it also provides an analytical framework to gauge the heuristics
and examine the assumptions of central tenets and concepts in narrative
theories of literature and film” (222).
The first aspect Quendler underscores, that of the reader’s activities
during the reading process, has not been explicitly addressed here since
it is outside the scope of this chapter. However, any close reading of a
text implies a reader and a readership, and the effects of mainly the filmic
modes of thriller and horror expose an affective component added to the
intermedial analysis. It would be interesting to study empirically some of
the particular emotional consequences of horror cinema aesthetics, such
as objectless states of anxiety and prolonged affective modes (Hills 25),
and how they transfer to the medium of literature. A simulation of filmic
256 N. SALMOSE
modes does not automatically signify that the emotional impact is the
same as in cinematic reception. On the contrary, the media specificities
involved in cinema and literature would, it seems, make a one-to-one
transfer impossible. It is one thing to examine the transmediations of
narrative, and another to investigate the mobility of emotions, aesthetics
and reception. However, as Quendler suggests, an analysis of filmic modes
in literature yields a new take on narratological concepts such as narrative
voice, mood and focalisation.
Forshaw and Bergman suggest that the success of Nordic Noir can
partly be attributed to the genre’s intermedial and blending qualities.
Bergman ascribes the confirmed unputdownable character of the reading
experience of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to its thriller-like attributes
in the latter half of the novel; she concludes that one of the expla-
nations for the remarkable achievement of Larsson’s novel is how the
generic playfulness attracts new and different readerships (131). In this
chapter, I have exposed the cinematic qualities in The Snowman through
an analysis of its filmic modes. This analysis is a step towards a theoretical
understanding of both the novel’s commercial success and the reception
of The Snowman largely within a cinematic framework. However, cine-
matic discourse is not limited to reader responses but also evident in the
very process of writing the novel. Don Bartlett, the English translator
of Nesbø’s Harry Hole books, who has worked more closely with these
texts than most (as translators do), testifies to how Nesbø thinks cinemat-
ically when he writes: “Nesbø sees a scene, there’s a pause, and then he
flicks to the next scene. You can just see that he thinks as a cinemagoer”
(qtd. in Siegel). In an interview with reference to the first publication
of Snømannen, Nesbø willingly confesses that he prefers watching crime
movies or TV series to reading crime novels; hence, it seems natural that
his influences come from film and TV rather than literature (Kalmteg). In
this fashion, Nesbø represents a modern author writing for contemporary
readers, incorporating the multimedial landscape that is the reality and
the preference of the twenty-first century. The Snowman displays exten-
sive mobility, crossing borders of genre, media and focalisation as well as
the natural and supernatural in an almost frantic manner. This is perhaps
a quintessential feature of post-postmodern popular culture in general,
but this mobility across borders can also explain some of the tremendous
success of Nordic Noir literature in general and the Harry Hole series in
particular.
Notes
1. Many critics and reviewers of Nesbø’s Harry Hole novels have associated
their experience of the novels with that of cinema: “This book achieves
that elusive balance between cinematic, action-packed thrills and methodical
police procedural” (Abby); “adrenaline-fuelled action sequences” (Wilson);
“Paced with cinematic expertise” (Rao); “textured, humane, evocative,
moody, cinematic” (“The Redeemer [Harry Hole Series #6]”); “a narrative
inspired by the cinema of Tarantino, the cultural legacy of the mob movie”
(“Jo Nesbø Book Launch”).
2. Two other instances of cinema representation are “Wile E. Coyote” (133)
and Mission Impossible (358).
3. The influence of The Shining on The Snowman is impressive. It does not
seem a coincidence that the initial scene that triggers the serial killer in
his childhood is dated to 1980, the year The Shining was screened for the
first time. Several aspects of the cinematic style in the novel have borrowed
directly from the scenes or horror strategies of Kubrick’s film.
4. Gérard Genette’s seminal division of point of view into narrative voice
and mood confirms the importance of differentiating between who speaks
(voice) and who sees (mood) (161–62). Using this terminology, focalisation
is entirely a mimetic matter of who sees and not who narrates, although
these two can be combined. Quendler writes that “mimetic approaches
invoke the camera as a pointing device in filmic narratives” (204).
5. Although armada is not explicitly referred to in Star Wars, the term is often
used in science fiction in its modern usage as describing a large military
force, an armada of space battleships, for example. This is also evident in
computer and board games titles such as Space Armada and Star Wars
Armada.
6. The adventitious refers to the chance and randomness involved in photo-
graphic images. Spiegel calls it “the moment separated from a continuum
of past and future moments that alone confers shape and significance upon
it” (Fiction 87). This idea can be fruitfully incorporated with the earlier
characteristics of lack of authorial guidance, action that is autonomous and
independent and the convergence of what is being seen (which grants the
reader a larger amount of interpretative freedom).
References
Abby. “Re-Read Book Review: The Snowman by Jo Nesbø.” CRIME BY THE
BOOK: A Girl Investigates Crime Fiction from Around the World, by the Book,
12 Oct. 2017, http://crimebythebook.com/blog/2017/10/11/review-the-
snowman-by-jo-nesbo. Accessed 10 June 2018.
258 N. SALMOSE
Balázs, Béla. Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art. Translated
by Edith Bone, Dover, 1970.
Bergman, Kerstin. Swedish Crime Fiction: The Making of Nordic Noir. Mimesis
International, 2014.
Bordwell, David. “The Hook: Scene Transitions in Classical Cinema.” http://
www.davidbordwell.net/essays/hook.php. Accessed 25 Jan. 2018.
Bruhn, Jørgen. “Intermedialitet: Framtidens humanistiska grunddisciplin?”
Tidsskrift för litteraturvetenskap, vol. 38, no. 1, 2008, pp. 21–39.
Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge,
1990.
Cato, Carl. “Jo Nesbø Fortsätter Plåga Harry Hole.” Hallands Nyheter,
20 June 2013, http://www.hn.se/n%C3%B6je/b%C3%B6cker/jo-nesb%C3%
B8-forts%C3%A4tter-pl%C3%A5ga-harry-hole-1.3128326. Accessed 10 June
2018.
Cohen, Keith. Film and Fiction: The Dynamics of Exchange. Yale UP, 1979.
Coppola, Francis Ford, director. The Conversation. Paramount Pictures, 1974.
Forshaw, Barry. Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime
Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E.
Lewin, Cornell UP, 1983.
Hills, Matt. The Pleasures of Horror. Continuum, 2005.
“Jo Nesbø Book Launch at Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.” Norwegian
Arts, http://norwegianarts.org.uk/event/jo-nesbo-edinburgh-book-launch/.
Accessed 24 Jan. 2018.
Kalmteg, Lina. “Nesbø Omfamnar Klichéerna.” Svenska dagbladet, no. 16,
June 2008, https://www.svd.se/nesb-omfamnar-klicheerna. Accessed 25 Jan.
2018.
Kubrick, Stanley, director. The Shining. Warner Bros, 1980.
Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Män Som Hatar Kvinnor].
MacLehose Press, 2008.
Lefevre, Raymond. “From Voyeurism to Infinity.” Horror Film Reader, edited by
Alain Silver and James Ursini, translated by Alain Silver, Limelight Editions,
pp. 87–93.
Luhr, William. Raymond Chandler and Film. Florida State UP, 1991.
Nesbø, Jo. The Snowman [Snømannen]. Translated by Don Bartlett, Vintage,
2010.
Quendler, Christian. “The Conceptual Integration of Intermediality: Literary
and Cinematic Camera-Eye Narratives.” Blending and the Study of Narrative:
Approaches and Applications, edited by Ralf Schneider and Marcus Hartner,
De Gruyter, 2012, pp. 199–228.
Rajewsky, Irina O. Intermedialität. Francke, 2002.
Rao, Mythili G. “Jo Nesbø’s ‘The Devil’s Star’.” Words without Borders, April
2010.
“The Redeemer (Harry Hole Series #6).” Barnes & Noble, https://www.bar
nesandnoble.com/w/redeemer-jo-nesbo/1101087885#/. Accessed 24 Jan.
2018.
Ryan, Marie-Laure, editor. “Introduction.” Narrative across Media: The
Languages of Storytelling. U of Nebraska P, 2004, pp. 1–40.
Schneider, Steven Jay. “Towards an Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror.” The Horror
Film, edited by Stephen Prince, Rutgers UP, 2004, pp. 131–49.
Schwanecke, Christine. “Filmic Modes in Literature.” Handbook of Intermedi-
ality: Literature – Image – Sound – Music, edited by Gabriele Rippl, De
Gruyter, 2015, pp. 268–86.
Siegel, Lee. “‘Pure Evil’, Jo Nesbø and the Rise of Scandinavian Crime Fiction.”
The New Yorker, 12 May 2014.
Simpson, Philip L. Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary
American Film and Fiction. Southern Illinois UP, 2000.
Solomon, Robert C. “Real Horror.” Dark Thoughts: Philosophical Reflections
on Cinematic Horror, edited by Steven Jay Schneider and Daniel Shaw,
Scarecrow Press, 2003, pp. 227–59.
Spiegel, Alan. Fiction and the Camera Eye: Visual Consciousness in Film and the
Modern Novel. UP of Virginia, 1976.
———. “Flaubert to Joyce: Evolution of a Cinematographic Form.” NOVEL: A
Forum on Fiction, vol. 6, no. 3, 1973, pp. 229–43.
Wilson, Laura. “Crime Novels Roundup.” The Guardian, 20 March 2010,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/20/crime-novels-rou
ndup-laura-wilson. Accessed 24 Jan. 2018.
CHAPTER 14
Affective Estrangement and Ecological

Destruction in TV Crime Series Fortitude
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen and Helen Mäntymäki
Introduction
The steadily growing international popularity of Nordic Noir over the
past decades has generated an explosion of TV crime series of the type,
either localised versions of Nordic originals or stories applying the Nordic
mode. Simultaneously, so-called speculative fiction is booming and is now
one of the most popular TV genres (see Telotte). Sociocritical concerns
are central in both, but while contemporary crime fiction mostly studies
societal problems through realistic narratives, speculative fiction invests in
imagining alternative worlds and futures in commenting on contemporary
phenomena.
Fortitude (2015–2017), a British-produced speculative TV crime series
discussed in this chapter, draws on the bleak materiality of Nordic Noir
and the uncanniness of speculative fiction in featuring a hybrid cautionary
narrative in which generic mobility allows for new expressions of soci-
etal and ecological critique through affective depictions of violence. The
series expresses this critique via a discussion that visualises violence from
perspectives that render mobile conceptions of knowledge, ethics, reality
A.-K. Koistinen · H. Mäntymäki (B)

University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

262 A.-K. KOISTINEN AND H. MÄNTYMÄKI
and, eventually, genre. Although the initial setting, with its multiethnic,
-national and -lingual group of people and an outsider detective stranded
on a secluded arctic island reminds us of the classical crime story (see
Horsley 37), the bleakness, graphic violence, and psychologically ambiva-
lent police and other detectives pull the series towards contemporary
Nordic Noir (see Forshaw; Arvas and Nestingen 2). At the same time,
the series reaches beyond the conventions of the Nordic Noir tradition
through its introduction of the speculative such as science fiction dystopia
and uncanny horror.
In the first season of Fortitude, the small community surviving on the
fictional eponymous island outside the coast of Norway is confronted with
a series of disasters which prove to be related to ecology: people are being
murdered in an extremely brutal way by having their rib cages torn open,
and the cause is eventually traced back to global warming and melting
permafrost. Infected by the parasite larvae of poisonous wasps released
from under the ice, both human and nonhuman animals turn violent
beyond their species-typical behaviour. In this way, the series introduces
questions of biological and ecological niche, species, “naturalness” and
the interdependency of all life forms when an ecological disaster threatens.
Whereas the first season draws upon violent imagery and specula-
tive elements familiar from, for example, science fiction and horror to
discuss species boundaries, in the second season, violence and uncanny
elements that emerge as contradictory, estranging and fearsome in their
instability (Freud 74–76), are used to negotiate the ethics of science and
justification of violence. The boundary between human and nonhuman
animals is elaborated through victims of wasp poisoning and the objects of
ritual killings. Questions of ecological balance, species and environmental
disaster are pursued further through the introduction of blood-red aurora
borealis, meat-eating reindeer, a threatening trickster demon and murder
which all point towards a pending ecocatastrophe. Viewers are invited
into a cycle of fear and abomination, recognition and unintelligibility.
Introducing features of speculative fiction to a story tradition strongly
based on realism, Fortitude creates a hybrid narrative that incorporates
the affective and sociocritical potentials of both contemporary Nordic
Noir and speculative fiction. By mobilising the boundaries between these
generic features, the series also mobilises viewer affect. The affective
landscape created by the hybridity is multiform and unforetold, charac-
terised by fear, revulsion and ambiguous pleasure. The way in which this
multiformity generates emotional responses can, following Sara Ahmed
14 AFFECTIVE ESTRANGEMENT AND ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION … 263
(Encounters; Politics ), be termed an affective economy within which new

social objects and meanings are produced. These objects and meanings
represent the space for socioecological criticism in the series.
The aim of our chapter is to examine the affective expressions of
graphic violence and their associations with ecological destruction in the
framework of generic mobility through two emerging discourses: firstly, a
negotiation between the human and the nonhuman animal, and secondly,
a discussion about the ethics of violence. We argue that the amalgama-
tion of disturbing graphic violence and ecological destruction serves as
an entrance into social and ecological critique with a strong cautionary
element.
The Rise of Ecological TV Crime Dramas

Over the past few years, the sociocritical gaze of the Nordic Noir
type of TV crime series such as Fortitude has increasingly targeted
ecological issues. For example, Swedish-Danish Bron/ Broen (The Bridge,
2011–2018) in its second season and Finnish Tellus (2014) address ques-
tions of ecoterrorism; Swedish-French Midnattssol/Jour Polaire (Midnight
Sun, 2016) and Swedish Jordskott (2015–2017) highlight difference and
displacement in relation to normative humanity; Finnish Pintaa syvem-
mältä (Deeper Than a Scratch, 2015) and Karppi (2018) as well as
Danish Bedraeg (Follow the Money, 2016) discuss power, greed and
economic gain in the energy business.
Fortitude differs from conventional crime dramas and ecological
thrillers because of the weight it places on the question “What if?” (see
Attebery 4) through its inclusion of speculative elements into the realistic
framework of the crime narrative. In speculative fiction, including such
TV series as The 100 (2014–), The Expanse (2015–), and Terra Nova
(2011), the ecology theme has already for some time played a vital role in
discussing socioethical questions through narratives of alternative worlds
and apocalyptic visions. In the storyworld of Fortitude, the ecological
processes of melting glacier and thawing permafrost are reality and can
release unforeseen threats such as the focal point of the narrative, the
parasite wasps. Global warming is a fact, but what happens if a poten-
tially fatal parasite that has been stored in the permafrost for 30,000 years
is released and begins to act out its natural life cycle in human and animal
populations, causing them to resort to unnatural behaviour? Through
the realistic and the speculative, the affective and sociocritical aspects are
bound together.
Kerstin Bergman identifies generic hybridity as one of the standard

features of contemporary crime novels which draw both on different
subgenres of crime fiction itself as well as other popular genres (136),
and Barry Forshaw argues that Nordic Noir actually invests in hybridity
more than other crime genres (4). This is equally true of TV crime series:
in addition to the environmental themes, the above series recycle, for
example, features of autobiography, documentary, thriller, romance and
fantasy.
Moreover, Nordic crime TV series display an emerging trend of
combining crime with speculative elements. Norwegian Okkupert (Occu-
pied, 2015–2017) takes a step towards speculativeness through its integra-
tion of characteristics of the crime thriller and futuristic dystopia; in the
series, Russia occupies Norway for refusing to continue producing and
selling oil. The aforementioned Jordskott also discusses human relations
with nonhuman “forest people,” and Norwegian Beforeigners (2019–)
combines its crime narrative with time travel.
In Fortitude, ecology and violence merge into a speculative crime
narrative that makes use of characteristics of science fiction and uncanny
horror; this narrative is critical of human attempts to master and mould
nature. Instead of quoting the traditional anthropocentric and dualistic
view of nature as a malleable and passive resource for humans to accom-
modate (see Braidotti, Posthuman 13–16; Plumwood 72–73), the series
presents nature as a powerful and potentially dangerous subject. Fortitude
warns of the exploitation of nature and ecological time bombs through
generic blurring and the depiction of affectively engaging violence,
suggesting that the prolonged abuse of nature will turn back to bite us in
the end.1
Sticky Images: Affect, Violence

and Genre in Fortitude
Fortitude introduces the potential horrors of global warming to the
audience through a combination of graphic violence, mystery, scientific
exploration and uncanny elements which provoke affective sensations
transcending the “pleasurable thrills” of traditional crime stories. Crime
fiction and speculative fiction play with affects in different ways because
of different generic starting points. The aspiration towards realism and
the promise of a resolution steer the affective experience of viewers of
crime fiction towards a soothing denouement, despite the presence of
graphic violence or tormenting psychological plots. In contrast, specula-

tive genres embody more narrative variety regarding plot, structure and
style, but, most importantly, instead of insisting on mimesis, they essen-
tially render mobile what is real and what can be imagined. Fortitude’s
overall setting of the secluded community of scientists where strange
things start to happen plays with the generic conventions of both classical
crime stories and science fiction. While scientific exploration is often used
to tackle the uncanny elements in the narrative, a speculative approach
to science and forensic procedures is also central in Fortitude. In fact,
features of science fiction and crime are often combined in crime proce-
dural narratives dealing with uncanny crimes, one example being The
X -Files (Telotte 19).
Simply put, Fortitude uses science-fictional elements in creating “spec-
ulativeness”—or “estrangement.” Darko Suvin coined the now well-
known term cognitive estrangement when theorising science fiction. For
Suvin, estrangement refers to the elements of difference in science fiction
that alienate the readers or viewers from their empirical reality, whereas
cognition refers to the aspects of recognition that prompt the audiences
to understand the narrative’s alien landscape (e.g. 7–8). In this sense,
what is essential for science fiction is described as intellectual estrange-
ment from the reader’s/viewer’s lived reality which allows for imagining,
for example, various ecological crises. We nevertheless argue that because
of the audiovisual scenes of violence and the speculative imagery of
nonhuman others and ecocatastrophe, the estrangement presented in
Fortitude could be approached as affective estrangement that estranges
and engages viewers on levels other than the cognitive. Scholars such as
Brian Attebery have emphasised the tendency of science fiction to invite
“sensations of strangeness” or “a sense of wonder” through depictions of
science (4–5). Sherryl Vint further argues that audiovisual science fiction,
especially serial television, engages us not only by cognitive estrangement
but also by an affective sense of wonder caused by visual spectacles. She
locates the pleasure of the genre in the oscillation between these two.
Moreover, Vint posits that the overwhelming “mixed feeling of awe and
terror” evoked by audiovisual spectacles can inspire engagement with
societal concerns, such as ecological issues.2 It could be argued that sensa-
tions of strangeness are central for all speculative fiction. By the “affective
estrangement” evoked by Fortitude we refer not only to speculative
fiction’s capacity for both (cognitive) estrangement and sense of wonder,
but also to the “emotional pull” of violent imagery in crime fiction,
which is appealing precisely because the fictional framework distances the

violence from our everyday reality (cf. Prince 28–29).
The affects evoked by Fortitude are nevertheless not only produced
though generic means, but the affective images and discourses also
relate to the affective economy outside of fiction (see also Koistinen and
Mäntymäki). For Ahmed, affects/emotions are products of sociocultural
processes, where certain emotions are assigned to certain objects (Poli-
tics 7–8). She calls objects with affective value “sticky” because of their
strong capacity to attract emotions (Politics 4, 11–12). When theorising
the circulation of emotion and affect in society, Ahmed does not draw
a clear line between these concepts; instead, she emphasises the interre-
latedness of bodily sensations and emotions in producing social reality
(Encounters 39; Politics 4–6). How emotions circulate and “stick” to
certain objects is a cultural process.
In what follows, we will first discuss the affective economy of the
ecological crisis in Fortitude and how, in this economy, boundaries
between the human and nonhuman become the focal point through
which the crisis is negotiated. In this negotiation, non-normative acts
expressed through violence play a central role in promoting the affec-
tive. We draw on Katariina Kyrölä’s idea of the construction of viewer
affect not as something that the images on the screen produce, but as
a process in which the images invite viewers to engage in affective rela-
tionships comprising the viewer, the images and the context that frames
the viewer experience (1–6). Secondly, we focus on how violence and
affect work in concert in discussing the justification of violence, and how
generic hybridity contributes to affective estrangement in the context of
ecology. The setting and starting points in Fortitude may be that of a
conventional crime narrative but with a strong element of estrangement
that contributes to its affective tone.
Negotiation Between the Human

and the Nonhuman: Human
Beings and Other Predators
In the first season of Fortitude, violence is introduced at the very begin-
ning of the first episode through images of a man being ripped into pieces
by a polar bear. This opening scene launches the ecological theme as
negotiated through the volatile relationship between predator and prey—
or, more broadly, between human and nonhuman—through a violent
encounter inviting strong viewer affects. The narrative then jumps to

three months later, presenting the milieu of a small, cold and quiet arctic
town with its residents busy with everyday activities, including a group of
scientists devoted to research. However, the audience is soon again intro-
duced to graphic violence, when the cruelly violated body of Professor
Stoddart is found. The parallel between humans and the big predator,
the polar bear, becomes evident when Stoddart’s body is savaged as if by
a predatory animal. It is first speculated that Stoddart had been killed by a
bear, and only later it is found out that the “predator” had been a human
being. When the murderer and the cause of the extreme violence are
revealed, the parallel between humans and polar bears becomes explicit:
the two mammals are both victims of each other and the tiny messengers
of climate change, the wasps that make no distinction between humans
and polar bears. Later in the series, one of the scientists explicitly classifies
humans and polar bears under “apex predators” (episode 9).
Stoddart’s death is followed by a string of murders, and the mystery of
these deaths unfolds through various intertwined narrative threads. The
parallel between human and nonhuman animal is further developed in
the second season, when a polar bear infected by wasp poison trespasses
human territory. By crossing the boundary between bear and human terri-
tory, it becomes a fearful object, sticky with affect. In the human world,
fearful animal objects are killed, and when the bear is shot, the series once
again aligns human violence with animal violence. The ecology theme
is thus introduced to viewers by mobilising affective images of violence
together with affects evoked by culturally circulated discourses related to
nature, science and the boundaries between the human and nonhuman.
The polar bear plays an important role in constituting the affective on
different levels: it represents the violence of nature that also becomes
representative of violence in humans; moreover, the bear emerges as a
symbol and victim of climate change and the destruction of the Arctic.
Thus, the image of the bear is sticky with affects, concepts and ideas
familiar from the media coverage on issues related to climate change.
In addition, extreme violence by a human being is affectively charged,
but, unlike the “natural” violence of the bear, human violence is auto-
matically labelled abnormal and uncanny; it is “inhuman savagery,” as
one of the characters notes (episode 6). In the series, violent individ-
uals are frequently referred to as animals, and a person taken over by
“animalistic” violence is regarded as a fearsome and monstrous other;
the very word “monster” is painted on the wall of the first murderer’s
house, suggesting radical difference in relation to the norm of humanity

(see Braidotti, Nomadic e.g. 242). Fortitude thus questions the distinc-
tion between human and other animals through the human who turns
predator in simulating the parasite wasps through murder. Being part
of the affective economy of the ecocatastrophe centred on the wasps,
the murderer is invested with affective stickiness drawing on the ques-
tioning of human violence as opposed to nonhuman violence. One way
that Fortitude negotiates the ecological theme in the first season is there-
fore the complex and constructed hierarchy between humans and nature:
how nature is potentially dangerous and how humans pose a danger not
only to nature, but, as humans cannot be removed from nature, also to
themselves. Indeed, the parasitic wasps are unleashed because of human
greed when two men find a body of a mammoth uncovered from the
permafrost, and—in the hopes of selling the carcass—store it in a ware-
house near a residential area. Thus, Fortitude offers climate change and
human actions that have led to it as the first reason for the unleashing
of the parasites. The series therefore also questions the division between
nature and culture, presenting the melting permafrost as a “naturalcul-
tural” (see, e.g., Haraway, Species 15–16) phenomenon, shaped by both
“nature” and “culture.”
By rendering mobile the fundamental anthropocentric assumption of
humanity as the privileged species through violence and generic mobility,
Fortitude reminds the viewer of the potential of the What if? question.
Through the emergence of the parasitic wasps, the series utilises features
of speculative fiction, evoking not only the affective thrills of the crime
mystery, but also a strong sense of affective estrangement. The parasite
wasp capable of transforming humans into animalistic nonhumans is a
sticky object that attracts viewer affects in relation to the cultural ideas of
purity, contamination and species boundaries. The wasp represents nature
as dangerous, uncontrollable and nonhuman. However, since its emer-
gence is essentially caused by human activity, Fortitude again highlights
the destructive potential of human agency. The violent deaths further
illustrate generic mobility as they make use of not only uncanny horror
and speculative fiction but body horror as well: the body torn by the polar
bear and the other maimed bodies posit the human body as an affective
spectacle of violence as typical in body genres, namely body horror (see
Clover 189; Williams 4).
Crossing the boundaries of what is culturally accepted and naturally

ordained highlights the question of how the distinction between human
and animal or human and nature, respectively, is constructed. In the
series, the blurring of human and nonhuman animal is concretely indi-
cated through the zombie-kind of behaviour of the wasp-infected people
in order to mark their uncanniness as both human beings and preda-
tors. Zombies, in their uncanniness, are both dead and alive (see Bennett
and Royle 39), weird creatures between culture and the unknowable,
which in Fortitude points towards the deep mystery of life and human
efforts to control its different forms. The zombie is thus an ironic critique
of anthropocentrism and a dramatic metaphor of the Anthropocene3 : it
rises as an apocalyptic reminder of an ecological-historical-cultural period
during which an environmental change caused by humans begins to
appear evident as a fact equally threatening to all life forms. Simulta-
neously, these zombies attach the wasps to very real concerns outside
of fiction, as the melting permafrost has already raised concerns of new
viruses that might be released from under the ice.
The first season further blurs the boundaries between human and
nonhuman animals when the human boy Liam, who is discovered to have
murdered Stoddart under the influence of the parasite poison, is associ-
ated with a pig in the local science centre. Liam suffers from frostbites
from walking barefoot in the snow, and the scientists of Fortitude decide
to test experimental treatments to save his life. When Liam’s mother visits
her son at the hospital, she instead finds a giant pig hooked on a machine,
screeching. The pig, obviously being used as a lab rat, becomes associ-
ated with Liam, which creates a sticky connection between these two lab
experiments. Later, in the second season, the same association is attached
to Elena, an inhabitant of Fortitude infected by wasp poison, who is kept
in a coma for scientific experiments. Moreover, the fact that Liam is a
child adds to the uncanniness and “unnaturalness” of the killing done by
him, as the innocence of a child is connected to a horrible, violent act.
The affectiveness evoked by Fortitude thus relies not only on the sticky,
violent imagery, but also on the affective estrangement invited by its
generic mobility. For viewers, the affectivity of the violence presented
is also an effect of the cultural associations connected to images and
discourses evoked by this very violence. The polar bear, parasite wasps
and the pig all articulate affective discourses of humans’ and their relations
with nature and nonhuman animals.
The End Justifies the Means: Affect

and the Justification of Violence
In the second season, ethical questions asked during the first season are
expanded and linked with affective economies related to ecology and
indigenous populations, the ethics of science and, eventually, gender.
When the wasp-infected people with the insect genome turn into
zombies, the boundary between the human and nonhuman is negoti-
ated, as often takes place in speculative narratives with zombie characters.
Further, the murderer proves to be a representative of the indigenous
population of the island who, relying on local shamanistic folklore,
murders in order to restore ecological order and finally resorts to an act
of ultimate violence against himself in an act of emasculation. At first
glance, Fortitude would seem to perpetuate stereotypes related to the
savagery of indigenous people, juxtaposing them to the island’s science-
oriented, “civilised” community. Yet, as the second series continues, the
violence inherent in the scientific (and anthropocentric) world-view is also
highlighted.
The season begins with an analepsis to the 1940s in the Soviet part
of the island and the violent consequences of exposure to wasp poison:
a zombie-like survivor, unstoppable with bullets, with a bloodstained
predator’s mouth and blood running from his infected eyes, is caught
crushing a baby to death by a local Shaman. The zombie “demon”
walks away to the cold and the Shaman buries the baby in the snow
(episode 1). In combining a number of popular fiction clichés, this scene
both invites affective responses through violence against the vulnerable,
newborn baby and evokes anxiety over the prospect of similar kinds of
events in the future. When the narrative returns to the present, the
audience is presented with violent acts drawing on corresponding char-
acteristics of uncanny horror as both people and nonhuman animals seem
to be killed randomly, in cruel and imaginative ways. Later, it is revealed
that the murderer is a Shaman of the contemporary generation who does,
in fact, choose his victims randomly in constructing a “tupilaq,” a collec-
tion of body parts from human and nonhuman animals with the help of
which the new incarnation of the demon can be destroyed. The demon
is a survivor of wasp poisoning whose reappearance coincides with the
reappearance of wasps. While scientific evidence points towards the conse-
quences of the melting permafrost, the Shaman’s reading of the crisis
draws on the traditional knowledge of the indigenous population of the
island that connects the emergence of the evil demon with visible signs in
nature.
Moreover, the analepsis that reveals an earlier, classified occurrence of
parasite wasps as a result of Soviet mining and military operations, is a
reference to the ruthless exploitation of northern areas by superpowers
as part of their power politics. Thus, in addition to indications of global
warming, the analepsis renders the parasite wasp sticky as part of global
power politics based on violence, fear and othering (see also Ahmed,
Politics ) that ruthlessly ignores environmental issues. The analepsis also
functions as an introduction to a discussion about the justification of
violence in the context of environmental change: the wasp gathers stick-
iness because of its scientifically exploitable potential and the violence
contained in the research process. The question of the ethics of science
and justification of violence emerges, for example, through the work
of scientist Dr. Khatri, who conducts research on the regenerative and
genome-changing capacities of the wasp poison and uses mice and human
survivors as test objects. This highlights the vulnerable kinship of humans
and animals and connects the series to discussions of the ethics of science
typically present in science fiction narratives (see, e.g., Koistinen; Telotte
20, 100–06). The violence inflicted on mice injected with wasp poison
and the painful operations on the human woman, Elena, held in a coma,
cut and observed in a plastic cube (episode 4), are associated with the
same discourse of power, subordination, greed and economic gain that
the series presents as the cause of the environmental crisis. This clinical
violence against animals and humans, particularly women, for the benefit
of mankind [sic] and multinational pharmaceutical companies echoes a
capitalist ethics of gain; it is simultaneously an expression of the parallel
between women and nature as objectified others in natural sciences as
discussed by Val Plumwood and Rosi Braidotti (Posthuman).
We argue that linking disturbing violence, the inflicted bodies and
ethics in this very conflicting manner evokes affective estrangement and
invites viewers to ponder upon questions related to the ethics of the
violence inherent in human–nonhuman relations. Is violence against
sentient animal others and human women justifiable if this violence
can promote the creation of human beings with great physical strength
and superhuman regenerative capacities? How does economic gain relate
to its precondition, the pain caused to nonhuman(ised female) others?
Worth considering are also the posthumanist arguments about the inter-
relatedness and inherent value of all life forms (cf. Morton; Braidotti,
Posthuman) highlighted in these questions.
In the second season of Fortitude, speculative features do not only
emerge through scientific discourse, as the series explores an alternative
interpretation of environmental change and the justification of violence
through the murders committed by Shaman Vladek, a representative of
the indigenous population of the island. The new, flamboyantly brutal
murders, in their fetishisation of the beliefs and customs of the indigenous
population, simultaneously link with the graphic violence of contempo-
rary crime narratives. The murderer, Vladek, firmly believes that human
and animal sacrifices can stop the new reincarnation of the “demon” and
thereby restore balance in nature. Similar to the human and nonhuman
victims in the plastic cubes in Dr. Khatri’s laboratory, Vladek’s victims are
incorporated in the overall discourse of the ecological crisis through the
violence imposed on them.
Regarding estrangement and viewer affect, the murders committed
by Vladek invite a great variety of emotions from amusement to horror
and nausea. In discussing formula stories, crime fiction scholar John G.
Cawelti emphasises the emotional intensity of horror. In Fortitude, horror
emerges in several guises: a scene with a severed head rolling down a
snowy hill turns humorous, reminding viewers of horror comedies that
play on estrangement through sensations of pleasurable suspended disbe-
lief (Cawelti 48), while scenes of flamboyant violence can arouse horror
through the abject (see Kristeva). However, Vladek’s chase after the
demon is mostly embedded in representations of graphic violence that
draw on abject shock, nausea and anticipation. When he finally manages
to capture the demon, the confrontation culminates in a strange violence-
embedded dialogue between the Shaman and the demon who proves
to be the controversial Sheriff Dan, a wasp poisoning survivor, guardian
of law and order, and a violent murderer. Sheriff Dan’s metamorphosed
body is invested with affective stickiness not only because of the obvious
connection to climate change through the wasp, but also because his char-
acter mobilises affective estrangement with his uncanny amalgamation of
the human and nonhuman.
Moreover, Shaman Vladek’s defeat becomes at least as affectively
engaging because it combines the questions of environmental destruc-
tion and the ethics of violence with the imagery of graphic violence that
reminds viewers of body horror films (see Clover). Led to believe by
Sheriff Dan that his efforts to restore balance in nature can be successful
only if he gives up his maleness, Vladek cuts off his genitals (episode 9).
Vladek’s violated body is thus rendered sticky and becomes an arena of
conflicting ideologies, power—and also gender. The penis is regarded as
the definitive cue for maleness (Bordo 23–24), and no longer having one
leads to a dramatic change in social situations (see Turner 106). Because
of its strong symbolic value, the loss of penis means giving up authority
and power defined as naturalised possessions of men. The actual scene
of self-castration is sticky with affect because the violent imagery incor-
porates the narrative theme of environmental destruction that vigorously
echoes loss of power.
The pressing crime fiction convention of capturing and punishing the
murderer is not realised in a simple way in the second season of Fortitude.
On the one hand, the murderer is found out and stripped of power. At
the same time, the question of his fate and the justification of his violence
remain to stir the audience’s minds. How the series treats the violence in
the laboratory and Vladek’s murderous acts highlights—but does not give
definite answers to—the ethical question of whether and to what extent
the end justifies the means; the series thus leaves viewers confused. Nor
does it unambiguously posit either scientific or indigenous knowledge as
more ethical than the other. Because of conflicting aspirations based on
different values, cultural discourses highlighted from different perspec-
tives, volatile social relations and generic mobility, the end of the series
does not offer a pleasurable closure but, rather, invites affective estrange-
ment. The crime narrative is pulled towards speculativeness and draws
strongly on the uncanny in its discussion of the roles of violence in society.
Fortitude therefore stirs the audiences’ emotions beyond the sensations
of a conventional, realistic crime story, thereby offering room for other,
affectively known alternatives.
Concluding Thoughts
Fortitude plays with contrasts and generic mobility as it moves from
clean research laboratories where experimental dissections take place to
murder scenes where the fleshy, messy and violent materiality of death
becomes concrete. While the murders and forensics ground the series
firmly in the tradition of crime fiction, through its speculative science
and uncanny violence the series also plays with the speculative as it
combines the features of science fiction, uncanny horror and body horror.
All this creates a hybrid narrative that evokes viewer affects through
different generic conventions and genre expectations. This generic blur-
ring reminds us of the hybridity present in visual and literary genres. At
the same time, the series also moves between the boundaries of the human
and nonhuman, and, while doing so, questions the violence based on, and
the construction of, this very distinction. By representing human violence
in terms of a paradox, as something natural and innate in human beings
as “apex predators,” while simultaneously deeming it unnatural, animal-
istic and nonhuman, Fortitude promotes affective estrangement. Who is
the violent “animal”? The nonhuman or the human animal? Therefore,
Fortitude seems to beg the fundamental question of violence, the natural
and ethics: What is the difference between the violence of a polar bear
and that of a human animal?
Affective economies are culture- and time-specific, and the ways in
which certain objects become sticky can be seen as indicators of the
values, fears and anxieties of the particular place and period. When
discussing the cautionary aspects of early crime stories, John Scaggs (15–
16) refers to the disruption of time that is one of the typical markers
of Gothic stories: when the past uncannily comes to haunt the present
in the form of secrets and ghosts, the intellectual and social tensions of
different periods are highlighted. Our interpretation is that through its
affective treatment of the What if? question, Fortitude embeds strong
cautionary tendencies in its representation of ecological destruction. The
series makes global of the local: when viewers become aware of the effects
of thawing permafrost on the small fictional island, they are simulta-
neously reminded of the effects of climate change in different parts of
the “real” world. Fortitude specifically invites associations to affective
economies outside of fiction by the image of the polar bear and the para-
sitic wasp. Both the bear and the parasite wasp gather stickiness as the
epicentre of fears related to global warming. The wasps also strongly tie
in with the speculative What if? question which is pursued and devel-
oped throughout the series and beyond. This question begins to haunt
the viewers, wrapping them in an affective straightjacket of anxiety. It
has been argued that affective or emotional engagement with stories may
inspire action for combating climate change (see Weik von Mossner). In
a time when rationally motivated knowledge about the climate change
and other environmental threats can become overwhelming, “speaking”
through affective and speculative fiction about the Anthropocene may,
indeed, be more efficient in promoting consciousness about the pending
dangers threatening the planet Earth.
Notes
1. In her recent dissertation, Kaisa Kortekallio studies “mutant narratives” in
contemporary ecological science fiction. Building on posthuman and cogni-
tive theories, she pays attention to how various hybridities in the narratives
contribute to “embodied estrangement” and integrates the stories into the
experiential situation of the present ecological crisis.
2. Literary science fiction narratives starting from Frankenstein have evoked
affective estrangement through a sense of awe and terror and often uncanny
horror (for more on affect and science fiction, see also Hellstrand et al.;
Koistinen Human Question, article four).
3. The Anthropocene is a widely debated concept. Originally connected to
human impacts detectable in geology, it is now used in many fields of
research when referring to and describing the all-encompassing effects of
human activity on the planet Earth (see, e.g., Haraway Staying ).
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CHAPTER 15
Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance as Crime

Trauma Fiction
Introduction
For the last thirty years, literary trauma studies has focused on the
relationship between trauma and the representation of violence, abuse,
and physical and psychological torture in literature. The fascination with
trauma travels across generic borders, and trauma and its effects are
often depicted in crime narratives. This chapter addresses trauma’s generic
border-crossing movement in Hurting Distance (2007), a narrative of
sexual trauma and emotional abuse by the British author of psychological
crime fiction, Sophie Hannah. Crime novels that deal with trauma can be
seen as crime trauma fiction, and Hannah’s novel offers an example of
such a blend because it mixes features of both genres in terms of what
Martina Allen calls “generic blending” (3): not as a new hybrid genre
that would depend on an essentialist model of genres, but in the sense
of a “blended space, or world” in which structural and other features
associated with different genres merge (13).1 Hannah’s crime thriller will
serve as a case for my discussion of the representation of trauma in crime
fiction and reveal how this genre may constitute an important locus for
M. Rodi-Risberg (B)
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

280 M. RODI-RISBERG
exploring and witnessing trauma and mobilising engagement in readers.

In other words, crime fiction may encourage active and social involvement
in readers through affective representations of trauma.2
The representation of trauma in crime novels has received only scant
critical attention in trauma scholarship, which has mostly focused on high-
brow rather than popular or genre fiction.3 Moreover, studies on trauma
fiction have often concentrated on what is claimed to be the unnarrata-
bility of trauma and highlighted innovative postmodernist strategies used
to convey it in order to transmit rather than represent the phenomenon
to readers. These studies often draw on Cathy Caruth’s understanding
of trauma as an epistemological crisis which means that it needs to “be
spoken in a language that is always somehow literary: a language that
defies, even as it claims, our understanding” (5). According to Alan
Gibbs, fiction on trauma from the 1990s onward “may be identified as
perpetuating what soon became increasingly conventional methods of
representing trauma,” resulting in what he dubs “the trauma genre,”
which emphasises “emotional affect rather than political action” (34, 2,
20). This leads to questions including how trauma and its effects are, or
can be, represented in crime fiction. What does it mean if crime fiction
is viewed as a form of trauma fiction? How can trauma, which in more
highbrow forms is represented in terms of aporia and defying closure,
be portrayed in crime fiction where readers can often be certain of a
pleasurable resolution and restoration of order at the end? How can
trauma be represented in a popular culture product without it being
jeopardised? How can crime fiction offer what Dominick LaCapra has
termed “empathic unsettlement,” the process of texts to convey a feel
for traumatic experiences via working through and putting readers in an
empathic mode that involves critical distance (LaCapra 78), rather than
only sensational affect?
The aim of this chapter is to show that the contemporary crime novel
can be an important locus for representing trauma in terms of a creative
response that challenges the prevalent postmodernistic aesthetics of aporia
in more highbrow trauma fiction. Informed by Gibbs’s identification of
a greater number of alternatives to the trauma genre formula, including
the comeback of realism which may even be more effective in “jolting
the reader than over-familiar postmodernist effects” (36), this chapter
proposes that an aporetic aesthetics is not the only way of representing
trauma to affect readers. While integrating narrative techniques of the
trauma fiction genre, in its simultaneous focus on narratability, healing
15 SOPHIE HANNAH’S HURTING DISTANCE … 281
and resolution, Hurting Distance challenges the understanding of trauma

as an aporia of representation. Drawing on Lucy Bond’s and Stef Craps’s
argument that trauma studies can highlight suffering, both individual and
communal, and help us understand “situations of exploitation and abuse,
bring them to a wider public consciousness, and act as an incentive for
… sustained and systematic critique of societal conditions” (140–41),
the principal argument is that crime trauma fiction such as Hannah’s
novel represents traumatic experience as politically significant by mobil-
ising affect through the themes of rape and emotional abuse as social
critique. Thus, rather than a question of “emotional affect” or “polit-
ical action” (Gibbs 20), crime trauma fiction offers both emotional affect
through representations of traumatic experience and social commentary
that creates political awareness in readers.
Crime Fiction and Trauma Fiction:

Generic Blending in Hurting Distance
If detective fiction,4 as Laura Marcus notes, has traditionally had a compli-
cated part to play in relation to literature (245), then crime fiction in
general may have a perhaps equally or even more problematic role in rela-
tion to trauma fiction. For instance, detective fiction has been essential to
such narrative theories as poststructuralist and psychoanalytic ones; it has
been used to guarantee as well as challenge the divide between literary
thresholds; and it has also marked the difference between highbrow and
lowbrow fiction and the line between modernist and postmodernist texts
(Marcus 245–46). Yet, because of its dual narrative structure, where the
story of a crime is reconstructed in the story of its investigation (Todorov
159–60), its employment of pleasurable excitement as well as “its power
to give aesthetic shape to the most brute of matter,” detective fiction
has been considered representative of the very nature of literary narra-
tive (Marcus 245). Additionally, detective fiction “reassures through its
rationalism” (249); in contrast, because trauma is said to cause an epis-
temological crisis and resist narrativisation, trauma fiction often depicts
the limits of narrative through innovative avant-garde representations that
foreground a fragmented, postmodern aesthetics of non-narratability and
aporia to avoid desensitising readers.
Even if crime fiction is often seen as a popular and lower form of liter-
ature in contrast to trauma fiction, some parallels can be drawn between
crime stories and trauma narratives. The most obvious is perhaps that also
282 M. RODI-RISBERG
trauma fiction has the “power to give aesthetic shape to the most brute
of matter.” What is more, although crime narratives have been traced
to mythical and biblical stories, as well as such classical texts as Oedipus
Rex (Scaggs 7–10), Marcus traces the emergence of detective fiction to
the modern era, early and mid-nineteenth century (248), which coincides
with the genealogy of trauma as a feature of modernity.5 Crime fiction
also resonates with trauma fiction through its Gothic legacy (Scaggs 69)
in that trauma novels such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), viewed by
many trauma scholars as the prototypical trauma narrative (Luckhurst 90),
often draw on the Gothic to express traumatic effects, bringing to light
the dark side of modernity. Beloved powerfully integrates the aesthetics of
the trauma fiction genre, that is, non-linear narrative, the spectral repre-
sentation of trauma, and the notion of its transgenerational transmission
(Andermahr 15). In trauma fiction, spectrality suggests the intrusion of
the traumatic past into the present, an intrusion that Caruth has formu-
lated as a haunting: “trauma is not locatable in the simple violent or
original event in an individual’s past, but rather in the way that its very
unassimilated nature—the way it was precisely not known in the first
instance—returns to haunt the survivor later on” (4). Moreover, the post-
modernist aesthetics of trauma fiction can be aligned with postmodernist
“anti-detective” fiction which challenges the genre’s pursuit of knowl-
edge (Marcus 246). Nevertheless, as Marcus indicates, detective fiction’s
form is not inevitably connected to this category of the epistemological
quest of modernist literature (246). Consequently, neither crime fiction
in general nor trauma fiction are stable classifications, but must rather be
understood in terms of the mobility across generic and formal borders.
The mobility across generic and formal borders of crime and trauma
fiction in Sophie Hannah’s novel can be seen as a blending of elements
from each. Informed by Charles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, Martina
Allen proposes that as “genres evoke worlds with the help of complexes
of schemata, genre worlds are themselves already blended spaces and can
in turn serve as input spaces for worlds that combine schemata from
different genres” (13). Fauconnier and Turner’s concept “input spaces”
describes the worlds constructed in relation to genre labels, including
plot structure, setting, stock characters, expected actions and end results
as well as mood and moral perspectives (Allen 12). Through what they
refer to as “cross-space mapping,” shared elements in the input spaces are
identified and contained in a specific generic space; from this space the
significant aspects from the input space are extended into a blended space,
which means that input spaces are neither unchangeable nor pure (Allen
12). Input spaces can be seen as mental input spaces that readers construct
in relation to genres. Through such aspects as plots and characters a novel
may, for instance, evoke (the world of) crime (fiction). In Hannah’s novel,
elements from the input spaces of crime and trauma fiction are projected
onto the blended space of the novel as crime trauma fiction.
Hurting Distance, Hannah’s second novel in the DS Charlie Zailer and
DC Simon Waterhouse series, adopts the conventions of the crime thriller
with its dark atmosphere, representation of violence and concern with
processes of the mind. However, the novel is also a trauma narrative in its
preoccupation with the consequences of a traumatic past. Further, as in
the crime thriller, the story is grounded in the characters: Naomi Jenkins,
a successful businesswoman and sundial designer, who was raped three
years earlier by a stranger at a stag night live rape party; her married lover
Robert Haworth; and his wife Juliet. In contrast to the police procedural,
the detective takes a back seat to the main character; Naomi’s first-person
narration is addressed at Robert/the reader and alternates with the third-
person narration of Detective Sergeant Zailer, who is in charge of the
case, or someone from her team. The novel also highlights the characters’
emotional lives and the motives of the criminal (whydunit in addition
to whodunit). In this narrative, however, the line between victim and
perpetrator is blurred. Moreover, as often with crime thrillers, the story is
political and subversive in that it challenges societal attitudes about rape,
the categorisation of victim, and victim-blaming.
The novel also conforms to the well-known trajectory of trauma
fiction. Scholars have in the last decades tried to delineate the specific
narrative strategies employed to represent trauma, and what Gibbs refers
to as the “trauma genre” is informed and defined by what he labels
“trauma genre criticism” (31). “Trauma is an inherently emotive expe-
rience,” affect is “intrinsic both to the traumatic experience itself and
the witnessing thereof” (Rodi-Risberg and Höglund 114), and trauma
genre criticism is invested in the idea that trauma should be transmitted
rather than represented. Thus, it clearly defines the narrative techniques
used, including the disruption of linear time and repetition to repli-
cate traumatic memory and evoke affect in readers. For instance, Anne
Whitehead stresses that “the impact of trauma can only adequately be
represented by mimicking its forms and symptoms, so that temporality
and chronology collapse, and narratives are characterised by repetition
and indirection” (3). Laurie Vickroy similarly suggests that trauma fiction
284 M. RODI-RISBERG
can communicate trauma because it simulates “the rhythms, processes,

and uncertainties of trauma within the consciousness and structures of
these works” (xiv) and creates the already mentioned “empathic unset-
tlement” in readers. Hurting Distance corresponds to the tradition of
trauma fiction because a present painful event reminds the protagonist of
old hurts. That is, Robert’s disappearance brings the trauma of Naomi’s
rape to the surface after a period of latency; the novel then examines the
various phases of her coming to terms with it.
The book begins with a worried and confused Naomi as she realises her
lover will not show up for their weekly date. Three days after the disap-
pearance, however, Naomi goes to his house although she had promised
never to do so and suffers a panic attack as a result of something she sees
in his lounge window; she falls down in the grass “paralysed and breath-
less” for how long she does not know (14). What “sent [her] body into
this state of emergency” was that she saw “something terrible through
the window, something so unimaginably terrifying,” but she is unable
to “say what it was” (14). According to Juliet, Robert ended the affair,
but Naomi does not believe her and fears Juliet has done something
terrible to him after he had told Juliet about their affair saying he will
leave her. Repetition is deployed in Hurting Distance on the plot level
through the flashbacks that Naomi suffers from and that also disrupt
narrative chronology. Naomi suffers from flashbacks to what she saw
because what she saw is connected to the trauma of the rape: “Another
bright flash,” she “fight[s] off vivid memory flashes—like movie stills—
from what happened to [her] before” (199). Naomi’s mind repeats the
trauma she is unable to face or understand, and the flashbacks can be
seen as unconscious efforts to confront her fears and master the affect
of the initial experience. Two-thirds into the novel, she faces these fears
in a nightmare: she sees both a man (the rapist), cutting off her clothes,
and the theatre where she was raped, and realises that this house is what
she saw in a miniature form in Robert’s living room, a pottery ornament
made by Juliet.
Naomi is hounded by what she cannot initially confront, which means
that there is a feature of haunting in the flashbacks she experiences. In
terms of generic blending, this haunting aligns the novel with both crime
and trauma fiction via the Gothic: the novel includes haunted houses,
sexually violated women confined therein, and characters pursued and
unsettled by their past secrets. Like the Gothic novels which modern
crime thrillers also originate from (see Scaggs 15–16), Hurting Distance
portrays the return of the repressed in terms of the past crime of rape that
haunts the present. The crime paradigm influenced nineteenth-century
fiction by Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë whose work centred
on arcana and their revelation (Marcus 246), and allusions to Brontë
abound in Hannah’s novel: Hannah’s use of intertextuality here suggests
the dangers of women’s entrapment within oppressive power structures
of society. In Gothic and crime novels alike, hiding past secrets protects
the characters in the present (Scaggs 16). In fact, in contemporary crime
thrillers in general, the haunting return from the past endangers the
present lives of the protagonists who therefore strive to conceal their past
at all cost (Scaggs 66–67), which is similar to trauma fiction where the
main characters must keep the trauma at bay to move on with their lives.
“Concealment” was all that mattered to Naomi after the rape because she
thought she would be able to handle “a private trauma better than … the
shame of people knowing” (Hannah 125, 126). Thus, Hannah’s novel
draws on Gothic conventions to consider contemporary issues, including
dominant discourses of victim-blaming.
As noted above, in addition to evoking the world-constructs of the
crime thriller, Hurting Distance also incorporates elements of trauma
fiction. In contrast, what Gibbs has dubbed trauma genre criticism has
often ignored most of the popular and mainstream representations of
trauma that have appeared since the 1980s and 1990s, including those
in crime fiction. The idea that trauma is representable only through
innovative avant-garde narrative devices marginalises other literary modes
and genres. For example, Vickroy’s study on trauma fiction omits texts
which do not emphasise formal experimentation, testimonial effects and
the representation of defence mechanisms and symptoms characteristic
of traumatic memory (xi); it also distinguishes between “sensational-
ized” and “more authentic” representations of trauma (229, n. 6). Sonya
Andermahr notes that trauma fiction has partly been constructed as
diametrically opposed to mainstream and popular cultural forms which
means that “literary experimentation is valued as a means of resisting the
supposed domestication and hence numbing of traumatic effects”; never-
theless, trauma fictions of various kinds use trauma to create different
responses in readers, even “pleasure” (15, 27). Additionally, arguing
that trauma texts should mimic traumatic experiences is, as Gibbs notes,
debatable simply because the affect that a trauma text transmits to
readers differs according to contextual factors as well as reader “dispo-
sition” (28). The implication is that one cannot take sensitive readers
286 M. RODI-RISBERG
for granted (Rodi-Risberg 114). The problem here is also that when
these narrative strategies become over-familiar—hence no longer innova-
tive or shocking—they lose the political impetus of the earlier texts such
as Beloved (Gibbs 77). Furthermore, if the trauma paradigm is based on
the assumption that, in Andermahr’s words, “formal radicalism and diffi-
culty equates to political radicalism,” then such genres as middlebrow
fiction, including crime novels that represent trauma, may be relegated
to a marginalised position by critics and disparaged simply on account of
the explicitness of their narrative pleasure in relation to an aesthetics of
trauma that foregrounds aporia and incomprehensibility (19). As a result,
the “political radicalism” of these works may be overlooked by scholars
and critics.
If, as Gibbs argues, realist depictions of trauma may be more effective
in affecting readers than the by now overused postmodernist aesthetics
(36), then such crime narratives as Hannah’s thriller Hurting Distance
with its psychological realism may constitute an important blended space
for representing trauma and offering a more profound dimension of social
critique. In addition, if affect to a great extent can no longer be mobilised
through the narrative conventions of the trauma genre which may have
lost their capacity to shock readers, a socially conscious crime novel may
provide a space for encouraging reader engagement and for politicising
social questions.
Crime Trauma Fiction and the Affective

Politics of Speakability
Part of today’s crime fiction that represents trauma, including Hannah’s
novel, is middlebrow in that it aspires to the avant-garde by employing
some of the tropes of highbrow trauma fiction, but presents these
more accessibly. Recently, mainstream and popular or genre fiction
have also been recognised as significant loci for representing trauma
(see Andermahr; Luckhurst). Providing readings of works including
Stephen King’s Gothic novels, Roger Luckhurst proposes that reading
popular fiction is a kind of “surrogate public history” in its attunement
to contemporary concerns (98). Referring to the deluge of mainstream
fiction emerging towards the end of the twentieth century that focused
on trauma, he observes a significant concurrence of narrative techniques,
tropes and formal and generic conventions between the innovative
fiction of Morrison and King’s popular Gothic. These techniques include
“narrative anachrony as a symptom of buried trauma; belated revelation

that regressively rewrites the significance of motifs; discordance that is
reintegrated to find different levels of concordant narrative coherence”
(105). Further, according to Luckhurst, the great outpouring of low-,
middle-, and highbrow fiction devoted to trauma, in turn, demonstrates
that “if trauma is a crisis in representation, then this generates narrative
possibility just as much as impossibility” (83). Informed by Luckhurst,
Andermahr insists on seeing middlebrow trauma fiction as an important
space for representing trauma, especially women’s traumas, as “a liminal
category” that is situated between highbrow and commercial fiction
(19). As such, it “draws on the resources of literary fiction and shares
some of its audience, while at the same time its close relation to the
mass media means that it is particularly well attuned to the Zeitgeist
of contemporary issues and cultural anxieties” (19). Consequently, as
opposed to the aporetic novels of the trauma genre as outlined by trauma
genre criticism, middlebrow texts, including those that use some crime
fiction conventions, “encourage, not alienation, but shared listening, and
a witnessing of suffering and pain” (19).
Crime fiction’s mobility across the literary and generic borders of
trauma fiction not only encourages the shared witnessing of trauma
through reader engagement, but may, like Hannah’s crime trauma fiction
novel, also offer a space for social critique through affective depictions
of traumatic experiences. Hurting Distance does this by depicting sexual
violence as a politically significant issue, stressing the importance of
speaking about gendered violence in public, and offering a comment
on how violence against women is typically discussed and represented
in society.6 In Hannah’s novel, although it has been three years since
the rape, Naomi has not told anyone she has experienced sexual trauma:
despite this, the novel’s prologue consists of her anonymously bearing
witness to it on a website for individuals who have been raped, and being
aware of how her post does not conform to the expected behaviour of
the “rape victim”:
I will never tell anybody my so-called story, which means there will be no
justice, no punishment for those who deserve it. Sometimes that thought
is pretty hard to take. Still, it’s a small price to pay for not having to spend
the rest of my life being thought of as a victim. Sorry, a survivor.… On the
‘What Is Rape?’ page of your site, you list a number of definitions, the last
of which is any ‘sexually intimidating behaviour’. You go on to say, ‘No
288 M. RODI-RISBERG
physical contact needs to have taken place—sometimes an inappropriate

look or comment is enough to make a woman feel violated.’ When I read
that, I wanted to hit whoever wrote it.
I know you’ll disapprove of this letter and me and everything I’ve said,
but I’m sending it anyway. I think it’s important to point out that not all
rape victims have the same mindset, vocabulary and attitudes. (1–2)
Naomi’s reaction does not correspond to predicted behaviour according

to therapeutic discourses which stress telling, or to trauma discourse in the
media informed by the self-help industry where the victim is transformed
into a survivor (see Rothe 4).
Both Naomi’s refusal to relate the attack rather than it being unspeak-
able and unremembered and the novel’s emphasis on a variety of reactions
to trauma challenge the poststructuralist aesthetic theory of aporia in that
the novel underscores speakability and plurality. The novel’s failure to
meet the generic expectations of the trauma fiction genre, in turn, reveals
the political aspect of generic blending; as Allen points out, “a text’s
failure to adhere to our generic expectations leads to the foregrounding
of these expectations, which renders them accessible to rational critique”
(15). Thus, Hannah’s novel correlates with the work of an increasing
number of trauma scholars in the 2000s who critique the notion of
trauma as unnarratable and something that always produces dissociation
or amnesia (see Pederson; Balaev). This has resulted in new ways of
reading trauma: for example, drawing on Richard McNally’s work, Joshua
Pederson discredits the notion of an inherent belatedness in trauma,
non-narratability, and that traumatic memory differs from other kinds of
memory. Pederson particularly emphasises the distinction between being
unable to recall an event and refusing to recount it (337). In contrast
to earlier trauma genre criticism, he shows that trauma critics should
attend to the text itself rather than aporias and look for proof of height-
ened detail in addition to seeking descriptions of trauma in which time,
ontology or physicality are warped (338–40).
Additionally, as also research demonstrates, Naomi’s behaviour is not
unusual as most women who have experienced sexual violence do not
tell anyone (Healicon 61). In staying silent, they avoid being cate-
gorised as victims while retaining an extent of “agency and control,”
although they “may feel fraudulent or anticipate both exposure and even-
tual confrontation with the trauma that will supposedly catch up with
[them]” (Healicon 113). This is what happens in Hannah’s novel; Naomi
has chosen silence to avoid being categorised as a disempowered victim

and to cope with her personal trauma. She is, nevertheless, forced to face
her past when she fears something has happened to Robert. The novel
is feminist in depicting rape from the perspective of the woman who has
experienced it; thus, the novel follows in the footsteps of earlier feminist
crime fiction which, as Maureen Reddy notes, connects the crime to wider
social problems that are related to the oppression of women (see Reddy
201). By foregrounding rape as a serious topic of exploration, the novel
also criticises what Healicon refers to as rape culture’s normalisation and
trivialisation of sexual violence (2–3). Charley Baker even contends that
Hannah’s novel clearly shows “the lack of social change regarding rape”
since the late 1960s and 1970s (68).
The novel stresses the importance of speech in trauma: in the process
of reporting Robert’s disappearance to the police and feeling they do not
take his disappearance seriously, Naomi also reports her own rape, casting
Robert in the role of the perpetrator/rapist in an effort to convince the
police to look for him. Naomi’s reporting the assault stresses speakability:
“the word [rape] I’ve avoided for three years. It gets easier with each repe-
tition” (Hannah 68). Naomi’s statement to the police about her affective
experience of trauma is written with a profusion of details which also
stresses narratability rather than aporia. Pederson indicates that writers
often describe trauma “with excessive detail and vibrant intensity” because
“we may need more words—not fewer—to accurately represent its effects
in text”: therefore, “readers looking for representations of trauma may
turn not to textual absence but to textual overflow” and, because the
memory of trauma frequently involves several bodily senses, “victims may
record not only visual cues, but aural, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory
as well” (339). Most of the elements of traumatic memory are apparent
in Naomi’s statement; she possesses an acute memory of the experience
rather than dissociation or amnesia. Her memory includes visual, tactual
and auditory cues: the rapist forced her with him with the help of a knife,
which “had a hard, black handle about three inches long and a blade that
was about five inches long,” and the car he kidnapped her in “was black,”
probably “a hatchback” (Hannah 77); when they arrived at the chalet
where the party was held, she “could tell from the feel of the ground
beneath [her] feet” that they entered a building, and she “saw that [they]
were in a small theatre” (79); she also observed “it was getting darker
outside” as he cut her clothes off, and then she “heard the sound of lots
of people’s footsteps” before she was raped orally, vaginally and anally
290 M. RODI-RISBERG
(79, 80). Consequently, Naomi’s traumatic memory is described with a

copiousness of words and as involving several senses.
Various conventions of the crime fiction genre also influence the
portrayal of trauma in Hannah’s novel: like in the majority of crime novels
which are structured by hauntings where a past secret and its discovery
explains apparently unexplainable incidents and occurrences in the present
time (Scaggs 16), Hurting Distance integrates the narrative device of
a delayed disclosure of a hitherto undivulged past secret. As in trauma
fiction, the representation of trauma also influences the narrative trajec-
tory, as the depicted trauma disrupts chronological time, and “belated
revelation … regressively rewrites the significance of motifs” (Luckhurst
105). After Naomi has delivered her statement to the police, Simon
finds Robert unconscious but alive in his home, while Charlie is away
on holiday in Scotland where she has an affair with the owner of the
holiday resort, Graham Angilley. The narrative then goes back in time to
where Robert and Naomi met one year earlier at a service station which
Naomi thinks is a coincidence. Robert’s role in Naomi’s trauma ultimately
becomes clear, however: through the above-mentioned website a simi-
larity between Naomi’s story and those of other rape survivors emerges,
and Charlie and Simon finally track down a serial rapist who exploits
successful single career women and organises live rape parties; Graham
Angilley, Robert’s brother with whom Charlie had an affair. Moreover,
Robert himself knew about Naomi’s rape and was also an accomplice.
Hannah’s novel not only highlights that trauma is speakable but also
that silence is dangerous. Rape is as much a psychological crime as a phys-
ical one: shame and silence can be as detrimental as the rape experience
itself, making the woman vulnerable for retraumatisation. Naomi learns
that Juliet, too, had been raped by Robert’s brother, and that Robert
made the raped women love him to get within what he called hurting
distance for the purpose of destroying them later. Naomi believes Robert
told Juliet, before she bludgeoned him, that he knew all along that she
had experienced sexual violence, and then raped her himself. His plan
did not work with Sandy Freeguard, a woman Graham raped and whom
Robert began dating afterwards. Unlike Naomi and Juliet, who were too
ashamed to report the rape to the police or tell anyone, Sandy “didn’t
shrink into herself and make it her life’s work to hide her sordid little
secret,” but “told the police, joined support groups” (Hannah 338). She
did not “feel ashamed,” nor did she “try to conceal anything” (339).
Motivated by thoughts of revenge, Naomi thinks about killing Robert in
the hospital and is, thereby, forced to confront and understand Juliet’s
suffering. Here it is possible to talk about LaCapra’s “empathic unset-
tlement.” Naomi first believed that Juliet tried to kill Robert because he
was going to leave Juliet for her and that it was out of character for Juliet
whom Robert had described as weak and dependent on him; however,
she comes to understand that Juliet, like she herself, is resilient. Hannah’s
novel matches feminist crime fiction where the female villain, as Reddy
indicates, “is never a seductress in search of power and money” but “a
woman trying to end or avenge her own victimization,” as in Juliet’s
case, or she is “a patriarchal enforcer” (198), as illustrated by Graham’s
wife Steph, who enables the live rapes.
Towards the novel’s end, there is a narrative effort to create on a plot
level what Luckhurst refers to as “concordant narrative coherence” in
trauma fiction (105). Through Robert’s death, the novel moves towards
resolution, but there is no straightforward happy ending. Robert’s death
is temporally sequenced: a connection is made between his birthday on 9
August and his death as expressed in the dateline on a sundial that Naomi
designs for Inspector Proust. “Each date has a twin … at some other time
of the year,” Proust explains to Charlie (Hannah 362). For 9 August, the
twin is 4 May when Robert dies. Naomi believes Robert’s death means
it will be over, but the novel suggests she has not completely recovered
from the trauma; on Thursdays, she continues to visit the motel where
they had their weekly rendezvous.
My reading of Hurting Distance proposes that it is possible to read
the mobilisation of affect in the context of a fictional trauma as sociopolit-
ical. The novel’s emotionally distressing features render readers secondary
witnesses to the trauma resulting from the rape and emotional abuse. The
events force readers to acknowledge Hannah’s social critique on victim-
blaming because overlooking it is both depolitical and unethical. The
scenes of violence and trauma encourage readers to identify with Naomi
and to consider injustice, perhaps even to work actively to solve social
issues. At the very least, novels such as Hannah’s can open up a space
for discussing social problems. What Andermahr proposes about women’s
middlebrow trauma fiction is true also of Hannah’s novel; one “cannot
assume from the form they take that such texts produce a ‘numbing’
effect, which represents an unethical response to trauma, any more than
we can in the case of more literary texts,” but “all trauma fictions invoke
trauma to produce readerly responses of various kinds” (27). Hurting
Distance engages readers, who through imagination can experience the
292 M. RODI-RISBERG
trauma represented; in this way, the novel may spur engagement and
active witnessing.
Conclusion
Hannah’s novel employs similar narrative techniques for representing
traumatic experience as the trauma genre, including bringing it to the
surface after a period of latency, focusing on the effects on the protago-
nist’s present life and her efforts to come to terms with it. Nevertheless,
the reader can also rely on a certain degree of pleasurable resolution at
the end as often in the crime fiction genre. Crime fiction has to do with
experiencing dangerous situations by proxy, but the reader can often be
certain of the restoration of (social) order. This makes it a safe way of
being exposed to trauma for readers (Dodd 5), while the narrative stays
faithful to the tradition of the crime genre. Trauma may push the crime
stories’ generic boundaries, but does not completely alter the generic
form which is not stable to begin with. Hurting Distance demonstrates
how crime narratives can be rendered mobile across genres and that
representations of trauma need not be compromised by the format or
conventions of crime fiction. Crime trauma narratives such as Hurting
Distance may even offer a form of “empathic unsettlement” rather than
mere sensational affect if they do not represent trauma as mere entertain-
ment, but mobilise affect through themes and depictions of violence as
well as through generic blending, that is, combine elements from trauma
fiction with the conventions of the crime novel. “While a culture of senti-
mentality is indeed suspect insofar as feeling is made to function as a
substitute for political action,” Bond and Craps indicate, “empathy with
the pain of others can also serve as a motivation for working towards
genuine change”; they further mention the #Metoo movement against
sexual harassment and assault of women “which wed mourning to mili-
tancy” as an illustrative example of “how trauma and meaningful activism
are not necessarily in contradistinction to each other” (141). Contem-
porary crime narratives such as Hurting Distance can be viewed as an
important locus not only for representing trauma, but also for offering
a productive and blended space for acknowledging suffering through
the ethical witnessing and politically engaged reading of uncomfortable
scenes of violence. Consequently, crime fiction’s capacity for dealing with
complex social and political issues combines with its appeal to a wide
readership.
Notes
1. For a critique of hybridity in genre studies, see Allen.
2. The notion of “affect” in this chapter refers to the affective nature of
traumatic experience.
3. To date, only few scholarly texts have been written on crime fiction as
trauma fiction. One exception is Leanne Dodd in “The Crime Novel as
Trauma Fiction” where she explores crime fiction as a “subset of trauma
literature” (1).
4. In this chapter, detective fiction is viewed as a subcategory of crime fiction.
While Hannah’s story differs from prototypical detective fiction narratives
(e.g. the whodunit or the police procedural), it has a crime and detection
plot, and it is part of a series featuring police detectives.
5. For example, in literature dealing with industrial urban society, such as the
work of Walter Benjamin, Paris was seen as a city of unexpected traumatic
experiences and shocks (see Luckhurst 20).
6. Andermahr’s study is one of the few that actually deals with trauma in
women’s middlebrow fiction, including Louise Doughty’s crime thriller
Whatever You Love (2010).
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native Approach to Generic Experimentation.” Trespassing Journal: An
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pdf. Accessed 30 Apr. 2018.
Andermahr, Sonya. “‘Compulsively Readable and Deeply Moving’: Women’s
Middlebrow Trauma Fiction.” Trauma Narratives and Herstory, edited
by Sonya Andermahr and Silvia Pellicer-Ortín, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013,
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Index
A personal, 29, 186, 187, 193, 195,

abuse, 25, 47, 50, 55, 120, 122, 159, 198
192, 228, 264, 279, 281 Aguiar, Marian
emotional, 31, 279, 281, 291 Mobilities, Literature, Culture, 5
sexual, 230 Ahmed, Sara, 262, 266, 271
Adey, Peter, 5, 16, 20–23, 33, 34, Aidt, Naja Marie, 116, 117, 120, 121,
46–48, 63 124, 127, 128
aesthetic blending, 244 “Women in Copenhagen”, 116,
affect, 2, 4, 9, 16, 18, 19, 24, 30–32, 119, 121
34, 45, 59, 208, 227, 229, 230, alienation, 48, 119, 155, 162, 176,
234, 238, 262, 264, 266–268, 287
272–275, 280, 281, 283–286, analepsis, 254, 270, 271
291–293
Anderson, Jean, 18, 48–50, 55–56, 59
sticky object, 268. See also audience
Anglo-American crime fiction, 16
and reader
Africa, 15, 16, 53, 82, 83, 85 Anglo- and Eurocentric scholarship,
16
Morocco, 2, 79–82, 84–86, 88–93,
221 anti-detectives, 55, 57
South Africa, 16, 45–47, 49–51, Appadurai, Arjun, 19, 220
55, 59 Arabic police novel, the, 80, 81
agency, 12, 24, 27, 28, 88, 116, Arctic, the, 215, 233, 267
124–127, 161, 163, 186, 197, Argentina, 2, 26, 64–67, 69–75
232, 268, 288 Buenos Aires, 64–67, 69, 71, 72,
detective, 3, 28 74, 75
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 295
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Crime Files, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53413-4
296 INDEX
audience, 9, 15, 19, 29, 32, 110, 118, Croatian, 104

148, 179, 208, 213, 219, 243, Irish, 99, 102, 104
264, 265, 267, 270, 273, 287 Mexican, 104–106, 108–110
US, 106
Bordertown/Sorjonen, 8, 30, 206, 213,
B 214, 216
Barker, Chris, 15, 35 Bron/Broen, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 21,
birthright, 136, 139, 141, 142, 145, 29–31, 46, 83, 89–90, 206,
149 211–213, 215, 219, 220, 263
Bissell, David and Gillian Fuller, 22 Öresund Bridge, 8, 89, 211, 212,
blending 219
aesthetic, 244
generic, 279, 284, 288, 292
C
of media, 245 capitalism
body horror, 268, 272, 273 consumer society, 15
border(s) global(ised), 26, 27, 29, 80, 83, 84,
control, 108, 191 92, 93, 97–99, 102, 107, 110
crossing(s), 1, 8, 28, 30, 46, 63, neoliberal, 14, 15, 24, 25, 80, 87,
70, 85, 137, 145, 153–156, 92, 192
162, 205, 217, 218, 226, 232, Caruth, Cathy, 160, 161, 280, 282
234, 239 charity, 136, 137, 139, 140
culture, 29, 103 Child, Lee, 17
epistemological, 154, 155 city, 6, 29, 53, 56, 64, 65, 82–85,
generic. See genre and mobility, 101, 109, 119, 123, 125, 143,
generic 159, 169–173, 175–178, 181,
Irish, 103 182, 193, 212, 216, 293
Moroccan-Spanish, 85 civil liberties, 190
movement across, 5, 155, 206 Clarsen, Georgine, 20, 74
national, 2, 3, 7–9, 25, 29, 64, 87, class, 13, 14, 116, 123, 124, 128,
192, 193, 226, 230–232, 239 135, 139, 141, 145, 148, 149,
physical, 63, 155 155, 164, 234
poetics, 154, 164, 165 climate change, 185, 267, 268, 272,
politics, 209 274
stories, 210 collaboration
symbolic, 154, 156, 158–161, 163 cross-cultural, 90, 234, 239
temporal, 154, 161–163 cross-gender, 239
territorial, 29, 154 Colombia, 2, 16, 45–47, 52–55, 58,
textual, 164 59, 72
topographical, 154, 158, 159 Bogotá, 47, 52–54
transborder, 12, 13, 209, 217 civil war, 47, 52, 54
US-Mexico, 4, 23, 111 colonialism, 48, 56, 85, 86
borderlands neocolonialism, 48, 54, 92
INDEX 297
postcolonialism, 12 democracy, 46, 47, 49, 53, 58, 164

commodification denationalisation
of cultural difference, 13, 34 of scholarship, 5, 14
of female sexuality, 123, 124 Denmark, 2, 8, 83, 90, 206, 211,
of the female body, 58 214, 216, 220
Conrad, Joseph, 138, 149 Aarhus, 216
The Secret Agent , 28, 137, 143, 147 Copenhagen, 7, 119–120, 211–212
corruption, 17, 26, 47, 51, 53, 55, deterritorialisation, 17, 19, 91–93,
59, 67, 90, 107, 109, 110, 117, 209
193, 228 Dickens, Charles, 147, 285
Cresswell, Tim, 21, 22, 135, 136, Bleak House, 28, 137
144, 149 Dicte, 30, 206, 216–217, 220
On the Move: Mobility in the Modern diegesis, 247, 250
Western World, 2, 7, 26 digital data, 7, 29, 186, 197, 198
crime digital distribution platforms, 30, 205,
globalisation of, 10, 14 206, 209
crime fiction market, 29 digital forms of communication, 187
internationalisation of, 10 digital networks, 192
crime fiction scholarship, 1, 4–6, digital self, the, 186
9–11, 14 digital surveillance, 29, 186–189
crime location(s), 2, 10 disability, 28, 170, 171, 181
crime narratives. See genre discrimination. See gender
as commodities, 14 disguise, 137, 142–145, 149, 150
dystopian, 186 for detective purposes, 143
feminist, 12, 137, 289, 291 gender. See gender
Golden Age, 4, 6, 32, 154, 165, Dittmer, Jason, 3, 18
181 Divall, Colin, 22
hard-boiled, 7, 12, 45, 154, 245 Dodds, Klaus, 3, 207
historical, 3, 28, 70, 164 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 138, 142–144
police novel, the, 26, 87, 180–182 “A Scandal in Bohemia”, 28, 137,
police procedural, 283 143
drug trafficking, 16, 48, 51, 105
postcolonial, 12, 14, 16
dystopia, 27, 29, 52, 60, 188, 193,
crime organisations, 25, 53, 60
198, 199, 262, 264
Croatia, 99, 108
Drohnenland, 29, 185–195,
197–199
D
data E
acquisition, 188 Eastern Bloc, the, 27, 116, 117, 122
crime, 189, 191, 196–198 ecology, 262–264, 266, 267, 270
manipulating, 186, 196, 197 emotion, 9, 18, 27, 31, 45, 105, 208,
decolonisation, 9, 86, 100, 103 248, 250, 252, 253, 255, 256,
298 INDEX
262, 266, 272–274, 280, 281, G

283, 291 Gamboa, Santiago, 26, 48, 52, 54,
Erdmann, Eva, 13, 207, 226, 233 59, 60
estrangement, 175, 265, 272 Night Prayers , 26, 46–47, 59
affective, 265, 266, 268, 269, Gaspar de Alba, Alicia, 98, 105, 109
271–275 Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders ,
cognitive, 265 4, 27, 97, 98, 104
ethnicity, 116, 128, 226, 234, 237, gender
239, 243 discrimination, 28, 170
Europe disguise. See disguise
Eastern, 66, 70, 75, 124, 214 expectations, 136
post-national, 29, 185 patriarchal control, 175
European Union, the, 8, 72, 85, 108, politics, 150, 228, 229
185, 186, 191–194, 196, 200, roles, 136
212, 213, 215 género negro, 69, 75
Schengen Accord, the, 215 genre. See blending and trauma fiction
exploitation, 25, 27, 48, 49, 57, 73, horror, 18, 245, 249, 250, 262,
86, 90, 98, 109, 110, 116–119, 268
123, 124, 127, 217, 264, 271, hybridisation, 2, 15, 18, 24, 29, 30
281 mobility, 2, 6, 15, 16, 30, 31, 63,
of females, 119–122 80, 225, 230, 243, 282
sexual, 48, 57, 108, 120, 124, 128. serial killer, 247, 249, 250
See also human trafficking splatter, 30, 249
televisual, 30, 205, 206, 208
thriller, 18, 45, 186, 247, 249, 264,
F 279
femicide, 4, 27, 98, 99, 105, 108–110 tradition, 9, 30, 186, 198, 228,
filmic mode, 243–250, 255, 256 230, 292
Finland geocriticism, 206
Enontekiö, 232 geo-cultural, 46
Helsinki, 214 geography, 4, 8, 17, 18, 20, 102,
Lappeenranta, 213, 214 207, 212, 215, 218
flâneur, 64, 171, 172, 176, 178 critical, 19
focalisation, 244, 248, 250–253, 256, geopolitics, 3, 8, 18, 23, 26, 28, 30,
257 205–207, 210, 212, 218
Forshaw, Barry, 126, 206, 247, 256, Germany, 2, 100, 187, 199, 227
262, 264 gialli/giallo, 169, 176, 177, 181
Fortitude, 31, 261–266, 268–270, Global, 1–5, 7–10, 12, 14–20, 23–26,
272–274 29–31, 34, 46–48, 50, 58, 60,
Foucault, Michel, 20, 106, 188 63, 80, 90–93, 99, 186, 187,
France, 32, 104, 155, 157, 158, 191–193, 207–209, 212, 214,
226–228, 233, 235 226, 230, 239, 271, 274
INDEX 299
North, the, 3, 21, 32, 34 Hedberg, Andreas, 13, 15

South, the, 3, 16, 22, 27, 59, Highmore, Ben, 63, 64, 171, 178
115–117, 120, 125 Hillenbrand, Tom, 29, 185–193, 195,
global digital networks, 192 196, 198
globalisation Drohnenland, 29, 185–190, 193,
consumer culture, 9, 192 195
of crime, 10, 13–15, 93, 193 historical crime fiction, 27, 70, 149,
of crime genre, 10, 14, 15, 31, 80 181
of crime market, 14, 15 Holmes, Sherlock, 33, 138, 142–145
globalised, 3, 4, 15, 18, 26, 27, 92, hook, 248, 249, 251
97, 98, 109, 209 cinematic transition, 248
globalised world, 13, 14, 17, 18, 191 horror
global marketplace, the, 15, 20, 93 body, 268, 272, 273
global media, 192 camera-eye, 249–251, 255
global turn, the, 10 sound effects, 249
global warming, 31, 262–264, 271, Horsley, Lee, 4, 32–34, 262
274 hrig , 26, 84, 87–89, 91–93
Golden Age detective fiction, 4, 6, 28, human rights, 8, 47, 68, 81
32, 154, 165, 181 human trafficking. See exploitation and
Gregoriou, Christiana, 115, 116, 124, trafficking
127, 128 hybridity, 103, 239
Crime Fiction Migration: Crossing generic, 10, 15, 24, 30, 262, 264,
Languages, Cultures and 266, 274, 293
Media, 6, 8, 32
guilt
as motivator for female mobility,
I
137–142, 149
Iceland, 206, 215, 219, 220
Gulddal, Jesper, 6
financial crisis, 214
immigration
H (il)legal, 8, 26, 32, 70, 80, 81,
Hamdouchi, Abdelilah, 26, 80–84, 83–88, 90, 92, 93
86, 87, 89–93 Jewish, 64, 75
Whitefly, 26, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87, novel, the, 26, 80, 81, 83, 87, 93
90–93 immobility, 22, 53, 54, 159, 161
Hannah, Sophie, 31, 279, 281–283, forced, 22, 126, 161
285–293 indigenous, 34, 51, 80, 209, 227,
Hurting Distance, 31, 279, 281, 230, 231, 234, 236, 238, 270,
283–287, 290–292 272, 273
hard-boiled detective fiction, 7, 12, inequality, 26, 27, 49, 98, 111, 124
45, 154, 165, 181, 245 gender, 128
Harris, C.S., 138, 145 social, 16, 25, 116, 119
Sebastian St. Cyr series , 28, 137 intermediality
300 INDEX
blending of media, 245 M

heteromediality, 245 maquiladora, 26, 98, 108–111
theory of, 245, 246 marriage, 28, 67, 136, 137, 146–149
Ireland, 100 Massey, Doreen
Northern, 26, 99, 102, 103, 106, Space, Place, and Gender, 19, 22,
108, 111 137, 171
Republic of, 26, 97, 102–104, 106, Matzke, Christine and Susanne
108 Mühleisen, 14, 32, 82, 86, 225
Italy, 2, 70, 123, 170, 174–176, 181, media, 6, 8, 15, 25, 81, 82, 115, 117,
182, 227 120, 169, 180, 188, 193, 199,
Bologna, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176 219, 243–246, 249, 256, 267,
287, 288
blending of, 245
J medial mobility
Johnson, Matt, 116, 117, 122–125, filmic mode, 243–250, 255, 256
127, 128 genre mixing, 243, 244
Deadly Game, 116, 122–124 transmedia storytelling, 243
Mediterranean, the, 32, 79, 85, 89,
101
K Merriman, Peter
King, Laurie R. Mobility, Space and Culture, 20, 21,
Keeping Watch, 28, 153 23
Touchstone, 28, 153 Mexico, 2, 26, 71, 97, 99, 104–106,
King, Stewart, 14, 74, 172 108, 109, 111, 213
Krimer, María Inéz Juárez, 4, 98–100, 106, 108, 109
Sangre fashion, 64, 67, 69, 70, 72, Meyer, Deon, 26, 45, 48–51, 57, 59,
73 60
Sangre kosher, 64, 66–70 Devil’s Peak, 26, 45–49, 51, 52, 54,
Siliconas express , 64, 67, 70–72 55, 57
migration, 8, 18–20, 24, 29, 46, 65,
70, 72, 80, 81, 108, 115
L Miller, Vivien and Helen Oakley, 15
Larsson, Stieg, 58, 59, 243, 244, 247, mimesis, 250, 265
256 Mitchell, William, 172
The Millennium trilogy, 58, 243 mobilities research, 2, 4–6, 19–24, 35,
liminality, 28, 85, 103, 106, 156, 214 149
Lucarelli, Carlo mobility. See blending
Almost Blue, 28, 29, 170, 180, 181 across borders, 3, 9, 13, 15, 24, 26,
Il sogno di volare, 170 82, 115–117, 165, 256
Lupo mannaro, 170, 179 as analytical lens, 2, 5
Un giorno dopo l’altro, 170 of capital, 9, 24
Lyon, David, 187, 195, 196 of citizens, 17, 186, 188, 193, 194
INDEX 301
concept of, 2 physical, 7, 20, 21, 135, 178, 194

contemporary, 1–3, 6, 9, 16, 19, politics of, 128, 195
20, 24–27, 31, 46–48, 60, 63, power, 2, 8, 20, 22, 25, 27, 58,
117, 121, 136, 186, 225, 232, 126
243, 256 representations of, 2, 5, 136
of crime, 3, 4, 11, 15, 16, 24, 29, as signifier of privilege, 25, 27, 116,
60, 80, 86, 91, 119, 282 118, 124, 128
of criminal networks, 25, 46, 48, social, 21, 25, 28, 32, 135, 136,
53, 117 138–140, 146, 234
cultural, 12, 46, 119, 188, 239 spatial, 12, 47
cultural constructedness of, 2 studies, 5, 6, 20, 23, 46
curtailment of, 7, 17, 24, 27, 137, temporal, 26, 63–65, 68, 69, 74
192–194 transnational, 9, 24, 25, 31, 53, 63,
dangerous, 16, 23, 268 80, 115, 225
of data, 186, 189 turn, 20, 23, 33, 35
detective, 7, 11, 17, 28, 64, 149, urban, 28, 169, 175
165, 170, 171, 178, 226, 235 virtual, 20, 181, 185, 186
differential, 22 vs. movement, 2, 20–22, 135
ethnic, 13, 30, 225, 226, 234, 236, mobility, generic, 24, 31, 261, 263,
243 268, 269, 273
female, 64, 116, 124, 126–128, modernity, 7, 20–22, 33, 35, 155,
148, 149 208, 282
freedom of, 7, 21, 25, 29, 124, Morocco
171, 187, 192–195, 232 police novel, the, 80–82, 84
geographical, 2, 17, 64, 225, 226, Strait of Gibraltar, the, 82
232, 235, 239 Tangier, 82, 85, 90
global, 2, 20, 23–25, 63, 187, 226 years of lead, 81, 84
of goods, 2, 15, 64, 93, 102, 172 Mosley, Walter, 12
movement, 2, 6, 7, 11, 16, 18, 20,
historicisation of, 27
27, 64, 70, 71, 74, 98, 117, 118,
human, 3, 7–9, 16, 20, 21, 24,
128, 135–137, 139, 140, 143,
27–29, 64, 65, 70–72, 74, 80,
149, 155, 162, 171, 185, 188,
116, 225
194, 195, 206, 248, 250, 251,
illicit, 7, 23, 53
254, 279, 292
of information, 2, 20, 139, 140,
freedom of, 155, 171, 187, 232.
187
See also mobility
involuntary, 24
multimediality, 243, 256
limitation of women’s, 137, 139,
171
linguistic, 27, 119 N
medial, 243, 244 narrative
as object of study, 2, 5, 19–24 focalisation, 244, 250–253, 256
paradigm, 4, 5, 9, 20, 21, 23 mood, 244, 250, 252, 256, 257
302 INDEX
voice, 244, 250, 252, 256, 257 O

nation state, the, 5, 16, 30, 46, 63, Ófærð/Trapped, 30, 206, 214, 215,
86, 192 219
neo-colonialism, 48, 54, 92 Oswin, Natalie, 22
neoliberalism, 15, 46, 47, 158
Nesbø, Jo, 207, 220, 243, 244, 248, P
249, 253, 255–257 Palermo Protocol, the, 117, 122
Harry Hole series, the, 30, 256, Palumbo-Liu, David, 19, 31
257 Pearson, Nels and Marc Singer, 14,
The Snowman, 30, 244, 248, 249 237
Netflix, 205, 209, 213 Pepper, Andrew, 12, 47, 101, 103
Television 3.0, 206, 209, 220 Globalization and the State in
Contemporary Crime Fiction,
Neville, Stuart, 117, 118, 126–128
14, 15, 80, 92, 93, 97, 192,
Stolen Souls , 116, 124–127
193
Nilsson, Louise Perry, Anne, 137, 138
Crime Fiction as World Literature, William Monk series, the, 28, 137
13–15, 32, 191 Platten, David, 4, 18
9/11, 29, 164, 169, 180, 218 policing
Nobel , 30, 206, 217 future of, 29, 187, 189
Nordic crime fiction, 207, 212, 217 predictive policing, 189–191
Nordic Noir transnational teams, 80, 90, 92
postcolonial
Bordertown/Sorjonen, 8, 30, 206,
crime novel, 16, 26, 45, 46, 48, 59,
213, 214, 216
232
Bron/Broen, 7–9, 12, 13, 15, 21,
literary detective novel, 26, 45, 47
29–31, 46, 83, 89–90, 206,
nation, 59
211–213, 215, 219, 220, 263
postcolonial postmortem, the, 86
Dicte, 30, 206, 216–217, 220 studies, 5, 12, 20
Nobel , 30, 206, 217 postmodernist, 47, 48, 60, 280, 281
Nordientalism/Norientalism, 209 aesthetics, 280–282, 286
Ófærð/Trapped, 30, 206, 214, 215, power, 2, 8, 9, 11, 19, 20, 22, 25,
219 27, 34, 47, 51, 57–59, 88, 101,
Scandinoir, 30 124, 126, 139, 160, 164, 172,
Norway 187–189, 191, 192, 199, 212,
Alta, 232, 233 213, 219, 263, 271, 273, 281,
282, 285, 291
Hammerfest, 233
pre-crime, 189–191, 199
Karasjok, 232 privacy, 136, 180, 186–188, 194, 198
Kautokeino, 233, 234 privilege
Oslo, 218, 234, 244 gender, 116, 124, 136
novela negra, 68, 69, 72, 74, 75 male, 121, 140, 148
INDEX 303
to move, 25, 118 Schwanecke, Christine, 244–248, 251

property industry, 26 science fiction, 31, 180, 199, 252,
Irish, 110 257, 262, 264, 265, 271, 273,
275
Seago, Karen, 18
Q secret service, 57, 186, 194, 196, 197
Quinn, Anthony J., 107 security, 52, 187, 190, 198, 199
Border Angels , 27, 97–99, 102, insecurity, 190
104, 107, 108, 110 sense of, 187
serial killer fiction, 247, 249, 250
setting(s), 2, 8–15, 17–19, 28, 30, 33,
R
34, 46, 54, 65, 69, 72, 73, 101,
race, 12, 14, 49, 116, 121
116, 125, 136, 148, 154, 164,
racism, 217, 229
165, 177, 185, 191, 199, 225,
Rajewsky, Irina O., 246
226, 230, 231, 233, 234, 239,
rape, 100, 123, 126, 281, 283–285,
253, 255, 262, 265, 266, 282
287, 289–291
sexism, 174
reader. See affect
Sheller, Mimi, 4, 27, 33
affective engagement with, 29, 280
“From Spatial Turn to Mobilities
engagement, 286, 287
Turn”, 20, 35
reactions, 18, 150
“The New Mobilities Paradigm”,
refugee, 8, 22, 26, 92, 155
20, 21
resistance, 21, 26, 29, 116, 191
shell shock, 154, 157, 160, 166
figure of, 186
social mobility. See mobility
Ruskin, John, 138, 139, 141, 143,
social order, 3, 4, 7, 16, 27, 46, 51,
144, 146, 149, 150
165, 187, 188, 292
Russia, 75, 125, 213, 214, 230, 232,
264 South Africa, 2, 16, 45–47, 49–51,
St. Petersburg, 214 55, 59
apartheid, 47, 50, 51
Cape Town, 47
S space
Salazar, Noel B., 2, 23, 25 liminal. See liminality
Sami, 30, 226–239 public space, 7, 171
Sápmi, 230–236 spatiality, 11, 19, 20, 100–101, 162
Scandinavia, 16, 27, 119, 120, 207, Spain, 70, 79, 82, 84–91, 104
208, 212, 215, 216, 218, 226, spatial turn, the, 12, 19, 35, 100, 101
227, 229, 235, 237 speculative fiction, 185, 261–265,
Schimanski, Johan, 154, 164 268, 274
Schmid, David, 11, 12, 101, 170 Spiegel, Alan, 248, 250–254, 257
Globalization and the State in splatter genre, 30, 249
Contemporary Crime Fiction, state, the, 14, 16, 30, 46–48, 53, 69,
14, 80, 92, 93, 97, 192, 193 70, 81, 92, 93, 156, 162, 186,
304 INDEX
187, 190, 192, 206, 207, 218, transportation, 6, 9, 35

234 television, 2, 8, 11, 12, 30, 32, 46,
oppression, 58, 59, 227, 228, 236 82, 83, 90, 117, 205–209, 216,
stereotypes, 18, 27, 116, 121, 122, 219, 220, 232, 265
125, 127, 239, 270 2.0, 209
Stougaard-Nielsen, Jakob, 16, 187, 3.0, 206, 209, 220
208, 209, 217 temporality, 11, 162, 251, 283
supernatural, 250, 256 terrorism, 164, 199
superstition, 238 thriller, 18, 26, 31, 45–47, 186, 199,
surveillance 217, 218, 247, 249, 255, 263,
border security, 23, 187 264, 279, 283–286, 293
consumerism, 188 Tokyo, 47, 54
control, 169, 180, 187, 188, 194, trafficking
195 child, 116, 122, 123, 128
of data, 186, 187, 194, 196, 197 drug, 16, 24–26, 46, 48, 51, 71,
digital, 3, 29, 186, 187 88, 102, 105, 213
facial recognition, 194 female sex, 27, 58, 115–122,
identity chip, 194 124–128
modern-day, 188 human, 2, 13, 24, 25, 27, 46, 58,
panopticum, 188 70, 85, 87, 98, 99, 107, 108,
of people, 187, 195 110, 115–118, 122–125, 127,
studies, 24, 187 128, 213
Sweden labour, 67, 109
Kiruna, 232–234 transhumance
Malmö, 7, 21, 89, 211, 212 Sami culture, 231
Öresund, 7, 83 transnational
Stockholm, 207, 226 crime, 14, 27, 45, 49, 53, 54, 57,
Ystad, 7, 10 59, 60, 116, 226
digital distribution platforms, 30,
205, 206, 209
T drug trade, 46
Tally, Robert Jr., 10, 11 literary phenomenon, 46
technology movement, 128
advances in, 29, 187, 191–194, organised crime, 25, 49
198, 199 policing, 80, 92, 192
communication, 7, 9, 20, 35, 101, sex trafficking, 27, 115–118, 120,
172 124, 125, 127, 128
in detection, 7 subjectivity, 46
digital, 7, 28, 199 transnationalism, 3, 4, 9, 24, 31, 33,
information, 20 52, 60, 225
mobile technologies, 7, 28, 196, transnational turn, the, 5, 9
197 trauma
INDEX 305
narrative, 31, 126–127, 279–283, USA, the

285–287, 290–292 expansion, 17, 104
representation of, 28, 31, 118, 127, government, 4
279–282, 285, 287, 289, 290, the US-Mexico border, 4, 23, 111
292
sexual, 31, 116, 279, 287
studies, 31, 161, 279–281 V
war, 28, 153, 157, 162, 163 Vickroy, Laurie, 118, 126, 127, 283,
trauma fiction, 31, 279–288, 290–293 285
travel victim
of crime narratives, 3, 29, 30, 205, -blaming, 31, 283, 285, 291
226, 264, 279 female, 116, 119, 122, 125, 127
physical, 20, 21, 195 rape. See rape
virtual, 20, 21, 185 stereotypes, 27, 116, 121, 122,
Troubles, the, 103, 107, 111 125, 127
Truc, Olivier, 226–228 victimhood, 27, 115, 116, 126
Le Détroit du Loup, 30, 227, 229, victimisation, 119, 125
233 Victorian
Forty Days without Shadow, 227, London, 135, 136, 139
228, 231, 233, 239 mystery, 135–137, 142, 143, 145,
La Montagne rouge, 30, 227, 229, 147–150
233, 238 women, 28, 136, 142–144,
146–149
Vietnam War, the, 154
U veteran, 160
Ukraine, 126 violence
human trafficking, 125. See also ethics of, 262, 263, 271, 272
Eastern Bloc, the representation of, 272, 279, 283
uncanny, 170, 176, 181, 265, 267, sexual, 31, 287–290
272, 273 subjective, 98, 107, 110
horror, 31, 262, 264, 268, 270, systemic, 98, 99, 107–110
273, 275
United Nations, the, 9, 25, 86, 117
urban W
crime fiction, 170, 171 Waade, Anne Marit, 10, 208, 212,
environment, 9, 10, 12, 29, 169, 216
171, 173, 175, 177, 181, 182 Walters, William, 22, 23
mobilities, 2, 170 war
space, 45, 170, 176, 177 post-, 9, 100, 153, 155, 157,
Urry, John, 4, 162 159–161
Mobilities , 7, 22 pre-, 158, 159
“The New Mobilities Paradigm”, trauma, 157, 162, 163
20–22 veterans, 153–155, 160, 161, 165
306 INDEX
war noir, 28, 154 World War I, 153–155, 157, 159,

welfare state, the 164–166
Nordic, 16, 58, 206, 208, 214, World War II, 9, 100, 215, 229
228, 229
West, the, 21, 33, 70, 115, 125, 213
world, globalised. See globalised Z
world literature, 14, 80, 230 Žižek, Slavoj, 13, 87, 92, 98, 110

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CRIME FILES

More information about this series at

Cover credit: Nirut Sangkeaw/EyeEm/Getty Images

Special thanks go to Eric Sandberg, who worked on the volume in its

“This rich, illuminating and ambitious volume brilliantly demonstrates an

“This is an innovative and imaginative collection of fifteen distinct essays

1 From Mobile Crimes to Crimes of Mobility 1

Part I Crime on the Move: Transnational Crime and

2 Transnational Crime in Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak

3 Temporal, (Trans)National and Human Mobility

4 Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s Whitefly: Transnational

5 Systemic Violence in the Borderlands: Anthony J.

6 Transnational Female Sex Trafficking in Naja Marie

Part II Historicising Mobility and Agency

7 The Socially Mobile Female in Victorian

8 Liminal Spaces in Laurie R. King’s Touchstone

9 Urban Mobility and Technology in Carlo Lucarelli’s

10 Crime and Detection in a Virtually Mobile World:

Part III Genre Borderlands: Generic Mobility and

11 Criminal/Liminal/Seminal: Nordic Border Crossings

12 Across National, Cultural and Ethnic Borders: The

13 Splatter Horror Crime: Crossing Medial Borders in Jo

14 Affective Estrangement and Ecological Destruction

15 Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance as Crime Trauma

Charlotte Beyer is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the Univer-

Andrea Hynynen has a Ph.D. in French literature from Åbo Akademi

From Mobile Crimes to Crimes of Mobility

Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki,

During its two-hundred-year-long history, the crime genre has proved

© The Author(s) 2020 1

and communicate specific geopolitical anxieties. The contributors offer

changes in its generic conventions, but also the dislocation of Anglo-

new mass communication technologies link people and distant phys-

to the open spaces and many crossings of a multitude of borders that

With the focus on border crossings and permeable national borders,

The Globalisation and Remapping

by spatially oriented critics, is socially produced and social relations are

compared to the international reach and success of Anglo-American narra-

meaning is dependent upon the context in which it occurs and who

in teaching us who “we” are in comparison with those seen as different

onwards and through the contributions of Massey, Michel Foucault,

As noted earlier, the new paradigm distinguished between movement

is their ‘mobility’” are now increasingly policed through borders (188).

Part I: Crime on the Move: Transnational Crime and Global

that globalised capitalism is played out in the Irish writer Anthony J.

Part II: Historicising Mobility and Agency

Part II begins with analyses of mobility in historical crime fiction.

The narrative features a female inspector, who is discriminated against

Part III: Genre Borderlands: Generic Mobility and Hybridisation

examining transnational and diasporic spaces of production and consump-

Aino-Kaisa Koistinen and Helen Mäntymäki analyse the interplay

in past decades or even centuries. In this context, it is worth noting

The commodification of difference transcends the boundaries of popular

Gregoriou, Christiana. Crime Fiction Migration: Crossing Languages, Cultures

Palumbo-Liu, David. The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global

Crime on the Move: Transnational Crime

Transnational Crime in Deon Meyer’s Devil’s

© The Author(s) 2020 45

In this way, the novels echo a notable expansion in contemporary crime

Álvaro Uribe’s accession to the presidency, a term he held from 2002

Criminal Pasts, Present Plots

It is this simple plot element that results in a cross-country chase and

“Sí. Those arse holes in the dresses. Conchas !”