THE ASSOCIATION BLOG

Happy ValenCrimes: Dangerous Liasons & Fatal Attractions

14/2/2022

Love can drive you crazy, right? What better way to celebrate the most romantic day of the year than to indulge in stories of love gone very, VERY wrong?

This month on the Association Blog, our team has put together a list of our top ValenCrimes reads that range from power couples of crime fiction to fatal attractions and dangerous liaisons.

Blog Series: Keeping up with the Sherlocks?

11/1/2022

Every generation needs their Sherlock Holmes, right? It is a widely known fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character, the genius detective Sherlock Holmes, is a literary and cultural phenomenon that has not only stood the test of time but continues to flourish with each of its modern adaptations, may they be brought to life in a theatre, film, television, or even video games.

ICFA's Top Christmas Crime Fiction

20/12/2021

And so it is Christmas… we would like to wish a very Merry Christmas to our wonderful delegates! Let’s hope 2022 brings more promise than 2021 (and, of course, the unspeakable 2020).

We thought we would put together a list of quality crime fiction recommendations to indulge over the festive season for those Christmas lovers (and Grinches!) What’s your favourite Christmas Crime binge?

101 Years of Agatha Christie by Ffion Davies

15/9/2021

She gave us intricate plots, red herrings, and iconic detectives in the form of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple—born on this day in 1890, Agatha Christie is credited with revolutionising the mystery genre. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) which celebrated its hundred and first birthday this year, was written after a bet with her sister Madge and inspired by the Belgium refugees in the wake of the first world war. Four years and six rejections later, the novel was published—earning her the meagre price of twenty-five pounds for her pains.

Class over Crime? The Whodunit as a Vehicle for Class Criticism in Gosford Park (2001) by Wenke Röschmann

24/8/2021

Though the plot revolves around a murder at a hunting weekend set in the British countryside, the aspect of the crime itself seems to move into the periphery of the narrative, allowing space for the actual central theme of the film: the many characters and their interclass relations. American director, Robert Altman, boldly claimed: “I don’t call it a whodunit so much as I call it a who cares whodunit” (Altman and Fellowes) when describing his film, Gosford Park (2001), which combines the genre of British heritage films with the classic whodunit narrative (Dalrymple 2). Indeed, as viewers, we might sympathize with this quote when considering the critical social undercurrent of the narrative.

Dorothy L. Sayers, on the Occasion of her 128th Birthday by Eric Sandberg

13/6/2021

To celebrate the 128th Birthday of Dorothy L. Sayers, we've asked Dr. Eric Sandberg to give us a glimpse into the life and legacy of this prolific writer and critic, and her wider impact on one of the most fruitful periods in the history of crime fiction.

The next volume in the prestigious McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series is now available for preorder. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Eric Sandberg (no. 11 in the series) looks at the life and work of the creator of sleuths Lord Peter Wimsey and Montague Egg.

Artifactuality in Mindhunter (2017) by Emily Farmer

8/6/2021

By virtue of its very nature, true crime suggests to its consumers that its content is innately true. Convincing the consumer of this “truth” is dependent on a variety of factors, one of which is its initial visual presentation to the consumer. One way of presenting the consumer with “authenticity” is to reassure them through a persuasive book jacket. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s 1995 Mindhunter: Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (updated in 2017 in anticipation of Netflix’s 2017 series Mindhunter) is one striking example of this artifice at work.

Kantian Ethics and the ‘Nice Guy’ in Promising Young Woman (2020) by Ffion Davies

24/5/2021

Promising Young Woman (2020) is a brutal, uncomfortable, and profoundly upsetting narrative which masterfully displays the ubiquity of rape culture in contemporary Western society. A rape-revenge without a single rape scene (which is quite a feat in itself), the film reflects some of the ugliest aspects of internalised misogyny—so horrifying precisely for their insidious nature and often causing the most significant damage while masquerading as allyship. Frankly, I could write a book on the nuances of gender politics in this film, but for this brief blog post, I will focus on Fennell’s portrayal and subsequent critique of the well-worn concept of the nice guy.

On Re-Watching The Wire by Eric Sandberg

7/5/2021

The first season of David Simon’s ground-breaking, landmark police drama The Wire aired on HBO in the summer of 2002. I first saw it on a DVD box set – that short-lived technological victim of streaming services – a few years later when I was working on my PhD (on Virginia Woolf) in Edinburgh. I had more time than money, and a box set rental from Vogue Video on Clerk Street (long may it be remembered) cost a lot less, and lasted a lot longer than a night in the pub.

Conrad’s The Secret Agent: A Tale of Modern State Terrorism by Nadia Terki

10/4/2018

While Conrad has been referred to in the very aftermath of 9/11 to draw attention to the parallels with Russian Anarchism that his writings (especially The Secret Agent (1907)) reflect, there is still a lack of thorough examination of the way Conrad’s novel reflects those links. General statements in articles or newspapers usually state the existence and the validity of this connection, but do not provide corresponding and necessary analysis of the novel and the way it can be read in light of the post-Cold War and 9/11 periods. Yet, the very fact that there are passing references to the relation between The Secret Agent and contemporary terrorism works as a relevant and necessary foundation for the analysis that concerns Conrad’s narratives and the pre-9/11 period.