SECOND ANNUAL BOOK PRIZE
The ICFA prize is a prestigious award given to the book judged to have contributed most to the scholarly discussion of crime fiction during the year preceding the annual June conference of Captivating Criminality. The prize includes a stipend, promotion on the IFCA website and at the annual conference, and an announcement and review in the journal Crime Fiction Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press.
Though the corona virus/COVID-19 crisis derailed all normal plans and resulted in the cancellation of the seventh annual conference Captivating Criminality 7: Memory, History and Revaluation, the three judges on three continents proceeded with the review of new titles for the Second Annual Prize.
The following books were generously provided to the judges of the Second Annual International Crime Fiction Association Book Prize for non-fiction books on crime fiction published in 2019, listed in alpha order by author/editor. The range and creativity of the volumes attests to the deep interest in crime fiction scholarship.
Aramburu, Diana. Resisting Invisibility: Detecting the Female Body in Spanish Crime Fiction. University of Toronto Press.
Baker, Deborah E. and Theresa Starkey, eds. Detecting the South in Fiction, Film andTelevision. Louisiana State University Press.
Gregoriou, Christina, and David Platten, Gigliola Sulis, Retold, Resold, Transformed: CrimeFiction in the Global Era. Mimesis International.
Gulddal, Jesper, Stewart King and Alistair Rolls, eds. Criminal Moves: Modes of Mobility inCrime Fiction. Liverpool University Press.
Helligren, Per. Swedish Marxist Noir. McFarland.
King, Stewart. Murder in the Multinational State: Crime Fiction from Spain. Routledge.
McKendry, Anne. Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview. McFarland.
Martin, Andy. With Child. Polity.
Phillips, Bill, ed. Family Relationships in Contemporary Crime Fiction: La Famiglia Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Rolls, Alistair, John West-Sooby and Marie’Laure Vuaille-Barcan, Translating National Allegories: The Case of Crime Fiction. Routledge.
Van Dover, J.K. The Detective and the Artist. Painters, Poets and Writers in Crime Fiction,1840s-1970s. McFarland.
Watson, Kate, and Katharine Cox. Tattoos in Crime and Detective Narratives: Marking andRemarking. Manchester University Press.
Worthington, Helen. Key Concepts in Crime Fiction.
The IFCA Book Prize recognizes ingenuity, innovation, and scholarship in the academic study of crime fiction and crime writing in its widest sense. In response to these criteria, the judges first made a short list, followed by a determination of the winner. The short list included the following works:
1. Baker, Deborah E. and Theresa Starkey, eds. Detecting the South in Fiction, Film and Television. Louisiana State University Press.
This continues the trend of crime fiction studies looking at regions and peripheries. This volume explores the idea of the rural and some more non-traditional sites for crime fiction. The focus on the South of the US also opens up spaces for some really useful explorations of slavery and race. There are also some excellent discussions about gender and queerness. Overall this is an impressive collection with authors from different backgrounds.
2. Gulddal, Jesper, Stewart King and Alistair Rolls, eds. Criminal Moves: Modes of Mobility in Crime Fiction. Liverpool University Press.
Challenges the notion of fixed generic limitations in crime fiction, to a genre that moves across boundaries. Some really interesting discussions about reading and mobility, and new readings of some classic text.
3. Watson, Kate, and Katharine Cox. Tattoos in Crime and Detective Narratives: Marking and Remarking. Manchester University Press.
An original topic with a good mix of canonical texts and authors and others. The inclusion of children’s literature in a crime fiction studies collection is important. There is a wonderful selection of different types of texts explored and the coverage feels comprehensive and as if it opens up and expands on a very fertile field of study. The historical contextualization, (beginning with Ascari’s Foreword) is exemplary and the cultural connotations of skin and tattooing is explored in depth.
Tattoos in Crime and Detective Narratives: Marking and Remarking, by Kate Watson and Katherine Cox, published by Manchester University Press, was chosen as the winner of the Second Annual International Crime Fiction Association Book Prize.
Congratulations to all the authors and editors of these outstanding volumes of crime fiction scholarship.
The First Annual Book Prize
The ICFA prize is a prestigious award given to the book judged to have contributed most to the scholarly discussion of crime fiction during the year preceding the annual June conference of Captivating Criminality, now in its sixth year. The prize includes a stipend, promotion on the IFCA website and at the annual conference, and an announcement and review in the journal Crime Fiction Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press.
Books published in 2018 were judged by a team of readers based on three continents. Judges received books from Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Pivot, Pegasus Books, Routledge, Legenda: Modern Humanities Research Association Press, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and we thank these presses for their generosity and their support of crime fiction scholarship.
All books reviewed were worthy entries in the contest. Books were judged in relation to the contribution they make to current debates in the field, as well in terms of their ability to reach both scholarly audiences and a wider readership.
The prize recognizes ingenuity, innovation, and scholarship in the academic study of crime fiction and crime writing in its widest sense. In response to these criteria, the judges first made a short list, followed by a determination of the winner. The short list included the following works:
1. Close, Glen S. Female Corpses in Crime Fiction. A Transatlantic Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
This book re-visits a pressing and timely subject. Elizabeth Bronfen began the conversation in her important book: Over Her Dead Body: Death Femininity and the Aesthetic in 1992 and the subject of dead women has been continued from here. This book focusses the debate on crime fiction in a transatlantic context, encountering the emotive, sensitive and ever-present subject of female corpses. The first line of the introduction reads: ‘This is a book about male fantasies of killing women and ogling their dead, naked bodies’. This provocative statement leads to a sensitive and open discussion of how crime fiction employs the figure of the dead woman.
2. Dechêne, Antoine. Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge. Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale. Palgrave Macmillan.
Dechêne’s monograph offers the first sustained examination of the traditions, patterns, and implications of what he metacognitive (otherwise known as metaphysical) detective fiction since Merivale and Sweeney’s landmark Detecting Texts. It is extremely well-written, carefully reasoned, refreshingly international in scope, and makes a vital contribution to the scholarship of detective fiction.
3. Evans, Mary, Sarah Moore, and Hazel Johnstone, Detecting the Social. Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan.
This timely text uses detective fiction published after 1970 (necessarily concentrating on Europe/UK in order to avoid becoming unwieldy) to explain and reflect upon the social world and the changes within it during the past fifty years. The authors use very pertinent, perceptive and well-chosen examples to consider both recent detective fiction and its roots in earlier aspects if the genre, including authors such as Agatha Christie.
The book considers questions of modernity, globalisation, gender and gender relations, neo-liberalism, blame and authority, using those to discuss how texts such as Larsson’s The Millennium Trilogy, introduce ‘different’ villains and criminals, thus demanding a different kind of detective. A very stimulating read and a worthy winner.
4. Joyce, Laura and Henry Sutton, eds. Domestic Noir. The New Face of 21st Century Crime Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan.
With a preface by Julia Crouch, fourteen essays by fourteen authors and an afterword by Megan Abbott, Domestic Noir focuses on the female experience, whether as victim or perpetrator. After an Introduction by Laura Joyce, general categories include The Origins of Domestic Noir, The Influences of Gillian Flynn´s Gone Girl, Gendered, Sexual, and Intimate Violence in Domestic Noir, Home as a Site of Violence, and Geographies of Domestic Noir. Highly recommended.
Detecting the Social by Mary Evans, Sarah Moore, and Hazel Johnstone, published by Palgrave Macmillan, was chosen as the winner of the First Annual International Crime Fiction Association Book Prize. Congratulations to all the authors on their outstanding scholarship.
The ICFA prize is a prestigious award given to the book judged to have contributed most to the scholarly discussion of crime fiction during the year preceding the annual June conference of Captivating Criminality, now in its sixth year. The prize includes a stipend, promotion on the IFCA website and at the annual conference, and an announcement and review in the journal Crime Fiction Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press.
Books published in 2018 were judged by a team of readers based on three continents. Judges received books from Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Pivot, Pegasus Books, Routledge, Legenda: Modern Humanities Research Association Press, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and we thank these presses for their generosity and their support of crime fiction scholarship.
All books reviewed were worthy entries in the contest. Books were judged in relation to the contribution they make to current debates in the field, as well in terms of their ability to reach both scholarly audiences and a wider readership.
The prize recognizes ingenuity, innovation, and scholarship in the academic study of crime fiction and crime writing in its widest sense. In response to these criteria, the judges first made a short list, followed by a determination of the winner. The short list included the following works:
1. Close, Glen S. Female Corpses in Crime Fiction. A Transatlantic Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
This book re-visits a pressing and timely subject. Elizabeth Bronfen began the conversation in her important book: Over Her Dead Body: Death Femininity and the Aesthetic in 1992 and the subject of dead women has been continued from here. This book focusses the debate on crime fiction in a transatlantic context, encountering the emotive, sensitive and ever-present subject of female corpses. The first line of the introduction reads: ‘This is a book about male fantasies of killing women and ogling their dead, naked bodies’. This provocative statement leads to a sensitive and open discussion of how crime fiction employs the figure of the dead woman.
2. Dechêne, Antoine. Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge. Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale. Palgrave Macmillan.
Dechêne’s monograph offers the first sustained examination of the traditions, patterns, and implications of what he metacognitive (otherwise known as metaphysical) detective fiction since Merivale and Sweeney’s landmark Detecting Texts. It is extremely well-written, carefully reasoned, refreshingly international in scope, and makes a vital contribution to the scholarship of detective fiction.
3. Evans, Mary, Sarah Moore, and Hazel Johnstone, Detecting the Social. Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan.
This timely text uses detective fiction published after 1970 (necessarily concentrating on Europe/UK in order to avoid becoming unwieldy) to explain and reflect upon the social world and the changes within it during the past fifty years. The authors use very pertinent, perceptive and well-chosen examples to consider both recent detective fiction and its roots in earlier aspects if the genre, including authors such as Agatha Christie.
The book considers questions of modernity, globalisation, gender and gender relations, neo-liberalism, blame and authority, using those to discuss how texts such as Larsson’s The Millennium Trilogy, introduce ‘different’ villains and criminals, thus demanding a different kind of detective. A very stimulating read and a worthy winner.
4. Joyce, Laura and Henry Sutton, eds. Domestic Noir. The New Face of 21st Century Crime Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan.
With a preface by Julia Crouch, fourteen essays by fourteen authors and an afterword by Megan Abbott, Domestic Noir focuses on the female experience, whether as victim or perpetrator. After an Introduction by Laura Joyce, general categories include The Origins of Domestic Noir, The Influences of Gillian Flynn´s Gone Girl, Gendered, Sexual, and Intimate Violence in Domestic Noir, Home as a Site of Violence, and Geographies of Domestic Noir. Highly recommended.
Detecting the Social by Mary Evans, Sarah Moore, and Hazel Johnstone, published by Palgrave Macmillan, was chosen as the winner of the First Annual International Crime Fiction Association Book Prize. Congratulations to all the authors on their outstanding scholarship.
