Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Past

The body never stays buried. If a field of cultural production as diverse, varied, and multifaceted as crime fiction could be said to have a single, over-arching principle, this might well be it. In the narratives of mystery, detection, transgression, and punishment of all sorts that constitute the broad literary field of the genre, the past is frequently a tangible presence. It may be temporarily forgotten, it may have been swept with all the energy of desperation under the carpet of the passing years, it may seem to have lost its grip and sway upon the present, but, almost inevitably, it returns. And accompanied all too often by the putridity of decay – metaphorical, actual, or both.