What do you think?
Rate this book
Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science
This is the first book about the relationship between the development of forensic science in the nineteenth century and the new literary genre of detective fiction in Britain and America--from Poe, Dickens and Hawthorne through Twain and Conan Doyle to Hammett, Chandler and Christie. Ronald R. Thomas is especially concerned with the authority the literary detective manages to secure through the "devices"--fingerprinting, photography, lie detectors--and the way in which those devices relate to broader questions of cultural authority at decisive moments in the history of the genre.
- GenresHistoryCrimeNonfiction
364 pages, Paperback
First published January 22, 2000
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 9, 2007
Though phrenology is an outmoded science, Ronald R. Thomas’ Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science offers something of a modern equivalency. The work offers an anatomical representation of criminal (and criminal-pursuing) identity, using forensic evidence detailed in crime stories to resolve personal-identity questions which, in turn, are really questions of national identity. The inclusion of real-life criminal mugshots, photos of detecting devices, as well as artistic representations of criminal types, gives the text a feeling of a Rogues’ Gallery-meets-detective-shop catalog, and we barely know where to begin.
One of Thomas’ principal goals is to demonstrate how the marginalization of detective stories reflects the “culture of knowledge and power that produced them” (8). The detective novel becomes as important as biography or history. While D.A. Miller’s The Novel and the Police (1989) explains the surveillance role of Victorian detectives and the regulating social devices of the police, Thomas expands Miller’s study and shows that nineteenth-century literature both reinforces and resists discipline via detectives’ self-made devices. These devices are both literal and literary.
Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science is presented in three parallel parts, each with a “device” as its focal image. In Part I, we learn of Poe’s metaphorical telegraph (“The Tell-tale Heart”), a “secret writing” that decodes otherwise indecipherable criminal bodies (43). Part II captivates us with the image of Sherlock Holmes peering through a magnifying glass and becoming a human camera who “captures” villains through his gaze (119). Part III offers fingerprints as a mechanism that literally writes a villain into his crime—“treating the body itself as a mechanical pen” (207). In each of these sections, we move from the nineteenth- to the twentieth-century, from Britain to America, the chronology repeating in each section via the introduction of each new device. Ultimately, Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a tale of the tangled relationship between criminology and politics, becomes the “culmination of the rise of detective fiction and forensic science” in the nineteenth-century (276). An update as to which twentieth-century tale Thomas finds equally powerful would be a fascinating point of comparison.
Really, the symbiotic relationship between science and crime fiction is enough of a focus. Perhaps, Thomas takes on too much: a sub-thesis of arguing the legitimacy of crime fiction as “real” literature often arises, as does an attempt to expound the necessity that British and American stories require different techniques to derive their own national identities. Gender and ethnic roles in crime stories are also discussed. Yet, Thomas’ unending goals offer a greater possibility for future studies on the topic by offering us topics without offering complete solutions. We are encouraged to become detectives ourselves.
While so many critics continue to debate whether or not detective fiction is “real” literature, Thomas adds a compromising spin, suggesting that man “traditionally classic novels” like Tess of the D’Urbervilles “turn themselves into detective stories in the end…in the way they dramatize the gradual entertainment of individual characters by the unrelenting power of professional discourses and juridical institutions” (288). While others have tried to pigeon-hole crime fiction, Thomas’ open-minded and intertextual analyses broaden the literary field, as opposed to limiting it to a few select members. Thomas’ interdisciplinary study of forensics and detective fiction offers both literal and symbolic readings of human character that, in turn, represent sundry literary, social, political, psychological, and scientific possibilities.
One of Thomas’ principal goals is to demonstrate how the marginalization of detective stories reflects the “culture of knowledge and power that produced them” (8). The detective novel becomes as important as biography or history. While D.A. Miller’s The Novel and the Police (1989) explains the surveillance role of Victorian detectives and the regulating social devices of the police, Thomas expands Miller’s study and shows that nineteenth-century literature both reinforces and resists discipline via detectives’ self-made devices. These devices are both literal and literary.
Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science is presented in three parallel parts, each with a “device” as its focal image. In Part I, we learn of Poe’s metaphorical telegraph (“The Tell-tale Heart”), a “secret writing” that decodes otherwise indecipherable criminal bodies (43). Part II captivates us with the image of Sherlock Holmes peering through a magnifying glass and becoming a human camera who “captures” villains through his gaze (119). Part III offers fingerprints as a mechanism that literally writes a villain into his crime—“treating the body itself as a mechanical pen” (207). In each of these sections, we move from the nineteenth- to the twentieth-century, from Britain to America, the chronology repeating in each section via the introduction of each new device. Ultimately, Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a tale of the tangled relationship between criminology and politics, becomes the “culmination of the rise of detective fiction and forensic science” in the nineteenth-century (276). An update as to which twentieth-century tale Thomas finds equally powerful would be a fascinating point of comparison.
Really, the symbiotic relationship between science and crime fiction is enough of a focus. Perhaps, Thomas takes on too much: a sub-thesis of arguing the legitimacy of crime fiction as “real” literature often arises, as does an attempt to expound the necessity that British and American stories require different techniques to derive their own national identities. Gender and ethnic roles in crime stories are also discussed. Yet, Thomas’ unending goals offer a greater possibility for future studies on the topic by offering us topics without offering complete solutions. We are encouraged to become detectives ourselves.
While so many critics continue to debate whether or not detective fiction is “real” literature, Thomas adds a compromising spin, suggesting that man “traditionally classic novels” like Tess of the D’Urbervilles “turn themselves into detective stories in the end…in the way they dramatize the gradual entertainment of individual characters by the unrelenting power of professional discourses and juridical institutions” (288). While others have tried to pigeon-hole crime fiction, Thomas’ open-minded and intertextual analyses broaden the literary field, as opposed to limiting it to a few select members. Thomas’ interdisciplinary study of forensics and detective fiction offers both literal and symbolic readings of human character that, in turn, represent sundry literary, social, political, psychological, and scientific possibilities.
Displaying 1 of 1 review