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Who’s to Blame?

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Detecting the Social

Abstract

We extend the work done in Chapter One to establish the ‘scene of the crime’, that is, the broad social, political, and economic context of the post-1970s period that we believe is so vividly brought to life in detective fiction. Our concern is with the post-1970s epistemological shift - what is often referred to as the postmodern turn. In the world of the post-1970s detective novel, these philosophical matters are also deeply social: we are consistently shown that the frustration of not knowing for sure is linked to the problem of corruption, broadly conceived. There is always, in this fiction, a ‘bigger picture’ that is in turns obscured and revealed.

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Correspondence to Mary Evans .

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Evans, M., Moore, S., Johnstone, H. (2019). Who’s to Blame?. In: Detecting the Social . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94520-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94520-0_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94519-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94520-0

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