Sign of the Crimes

Abstract

Most detective fiction organizes itself around the incidence of one or more murders and the subsequent process of identifying the perpetrator of the crime. The investigation of murder also involves both law and medicine. It is reasonable therefore to expect the incorporation of medico-legal discourses within the literary discourse of detective fiction. This genre became recognizable as such during the latter part of the nineteenth century, while the development of modern clinical and latter part of the nineteenth century, while the development of modern clinical and forensic medicines from the late eighteenth century onwards corresponds to its emergence at this particular time. Following the early work of Foucault in asserting the catalytic interaction of contemporary discourses, one may argue that detective fiction, forensic medicine, and modern clinical practice draw in their own ways on related semiotic systems based on the interpretation of clues and depending upon principles of close observation.

Isn’t all research private-eye work, Doctor? Isn’t an inquiry into the possible relationship between virus infections and cancer a detective process?…Isn’t every judgment made on a basis of information received in its essence a form of assessment?

Eric Ambler, Doctor Frigo