Detecting Detection: International Perspectives on the Uses of a Plot

by Peter Baker (Editor), Deborah Shaller (Editor)

We indulge our fascination with detection in many ways, only some of which occur in the detective story.  In fact, modern fiction regularly uses elements of a detective narrative to tell another story altogether, to engage characters, narrators, and readers with questions of identity, with examinations of moral and ethical reasoning, with critiques of social and political injustices, and with the metaphysics of meaning itself. Detective plots cross cultural and national boundaries and occur in different ways and different genres. Taken together, they suggest important contemporary understandings of who and what we are, how and what we aspire to become.

Detecting Detection gathers writing from the UK, North and South America, Europe, and Asia to draw together instances of the detective plot in contemporary fiction. It is unique not only in addressing the theme-a recurring one in modern literature-but in tracking the interest in detectives and detection across international borders.

202 pages, Hardcover

First published June 14, 2012

About the author

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Peter Baker has been a journalist for the Washington Post and the New York Times. He covered President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, resulting in the book The Breach. As the Post's Moscow bureau chief, he wrote the book Kremlin Rising. He is married to the journalist Susan Glasser.