Q & A Blog Series - Dr. Kerstin-Anja Münderlein

1. What first sparked your interest in crime fiction studies?
Like most crime fiction scholars, I came to crime fiction because I’ve always liked to read the genre for fun. I started with the typical children’s crime series like The Three Investigators, the German novel series TKKG (which many German readers probably remember better as audio plays) and the Austrian novel series Die Knickerbockerbande. And then, like most scholars, I moved on to Agatha Christie and had one of my first key experiences with literature when I read And Then There Were None when I was 10. I loved it and afterwards read any of the Christies my school library and the city library had. Getting into the genre itself was really easy but when I studied literature and history, I didn’t see crime fiction being given much of a place in scholarship (mainly because we simply had no specialist in crime fiction studies at my uni at the time) and so it never occurred to me that I could actually study the genre in depth until I was nearly done with my PhD (on, as Maurizio Ascari says, a precursor of Crime Fiction – Gothic). I had taught two courses on crime fiction before because I always thought that the diversity within the genre is a fabulous vehicle to discuss discourses and social narratives besides narratology, but it took another key experience, finding the Call for Papers for the 4th Captivating Criminality Conference and attending that conference in Corsham and meeting with so many fascinating researchers, for me to decide to pursue crime fiction studies as a main focus in my research.

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2. What have you been reading, watching, or listening to recently? Do you notice any new emergent trends?
I’m afraid I’m a bit too set in my reading habits to discover the latest trends, but I’ve of course noticed the ubiquity of true crime in virtually all media. I also find that there’s an ever-increasing market for neo-Victorian and neo-Golden Age novels (and often novel series) that combine somewhat nostalgic (steampunk or Roaring Twenties) aesthetics with a form of writing back to inequality between genders but also between classes and ethnicities. I like reading both the original Victorian and Golden Age crime novels and their 21st-century reimaginations.

In research, I have found two current trends particularly fascinating. There is now an increasing scholarship on crime fiction as an object of research, so research on research. This is fantastic because it shows that the sentiment that crime fiction is not taken seriously in research is becoming more and more of a truism, and crime fiction studies is being recognized as a valuable addition to literary research. And secondly, I’ve seen increasing attention being given to the nexus of crime fiction and biofiction (fictional literature about real historical people). This is also a trend in fiction, I think, with novel series such as Her Majesty the Queen Investigates by SJ Bennett or the Jane Austen Investigates by Julia Golding, or the Miss Merkel series by David Safier, which was adapted for TV in 2023.

3. Which book(s) do you find yourself returning to most often?
Interwar Detective fiction! I particularly love Gladys Mitchell and Dorothy L. Sayers, but I still have a very soft spot for Agatha Christie and recently I’ve enjoyed Georgette Heyer a lot. Generally, I prefer the clue puzzle over hardboiled fiction, and I don’t really like anything that’s too brutal. 
If I had to name any specific books, I’d say The Saltmarsh Murders (1932), Dead Men’s Morris (1936) by Mitchell (although picking those was hard!), Murder Must Advertise (1933) and The Five Red Herrings (1931) by Sayers (again, very difficult to decide!), Why Didn’t They Ask Evans (1934) and And Then There Were None (1939) by Christie, and Footsteps in the Dark (1932) and A Blunt Instrument (1938) by Heyer. Looks like I really like the “What Fun!” school of detective fiction…

4. What is your best piece of advice for emerging scholars in the field?
The very obvious answer would probably be: join the ECR/PGR network of the International Crime Fiction Association or a similar organization to stay in touch with other academics in the field and build your network. Also, follow such organisations and journals in the field on social media to see what’s going on in the world and where it’s going on. If you can, go to conferences even if you’re not presenting – you’ll meet lots of interesting people during the coffee breaks, and it's so much easier to forge new connections when you see people face to face. And always remember that you’re not alone if you feel apprehensive or insecure or out of place – many scholars share that feeling.