Deconstructing Postmodern Mysteries

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Ted Gioia has devoted a site to what he calls the "postmodern mystery," complete with a list of essential works in the sub-genre, which has led Linda Richards to wonder whether the criteria for 'postmodern' -- books which, among other things, both celebrate and undermine the precepts of crime fiction -- isn't just another synonym for good writing. Personally, I think there's something to the concept, but the essentials list baffles me a bit.

From Martin Amis he includes London Fields but not Night Train. From Fredrich Dürrenmatt he includes The Pledge but none of the Inspector Barlach books, in which the games the author is playing are more apparent. There's some Umberto Eco but no Arturo Perez-Reverte. And I would have thought Graham Swift's The Light of Day rated inclusion, not to mention Julia Kristeva's Murder in Byzantium (because, well, she's Julia Kristeva, and she wrote a mystery). And the net is cast pretty wide, historically speaking, to include Robbe-Grillet and Flann O'Brien (plausible enough) along with Patricia Highsmith and Agatha Christie (not so much).

The result is a list that mixes in examples of more pure noir metafiction, such as Paul Auster, with other books which play, perhaps less self-consciously, with the conventions of the genre. Even so, it's a good list. Whether "postmodern mystery" is the right term or not, I like this sort of book, and thanks to Gioia I can add some titles to my to-be-read stack. While I think there's something more than simply genre bending or mash-up going on here, unlike Gioia I haven't put in the effort to try and quantify it. So my hat's off to him.