Abstract
Waters and Worthington consider two commercially successful crime fiction subgenres that speak back to Golden Age plot structures and themes: domestic noir and the American cozy, suggesting that both articulate modern anxieties concerning the tensions between individuality, personal space and safety versus conformity and community. Mostly written by and for women, featuring female protagonists, the novels’ focus is on domestic space and domestic life and the issues consequent upon twenty-first-century modes of living that force women out of the home. In their analysis of cozy mysteries and domestic noirs, the authors find contrasting yet connected accounts of female responses to the pressures of modern life.
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Notes
- 1.
Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction Since 1800: Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 147–8; 221.
- 2.
Lee Horsley, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 253.
- 3.
Martin Priestman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 91.
- 4.
Gill Plain, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001; repr. 2011), p. 47.
- 5.
Stephen Knight, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980, 2010), p. 107.
- 6.
Martin Priestman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 77–78.
- 7.
Gill Plain, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001; repr. 2011), p. 63.
- 8.
Erin Kelly, The Poison Tree (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010; 2011), p. 35.
- 9.
Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction Since 1800: Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1980, 2010), p. 91.
- 10.
Sarah Moore, crime scholar, UEA.
- 11.
Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London and New York: Routledge, 1991; 2013), p. 102.
- 12.
Stephen Knight, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980), p. 2.
- 13.
Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction Since 1800: Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 147.
- 14.
Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London and New York: Routledge, 1991; 2013).
- 15.
Lee Horsley, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 254.
- 16.
Julia Crouch, The Long Fall (London: Headline, 2014), p. 7.
- 17.
Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism B etween the Wars (London and New York: Routledge, 1991; 2013), p. 91.
- 18.
Julia Crouch, The Long Fall (London: Headline, 2014), p. 374
- 19.
Julia Crouch, The Long Fall (London: Headline, 2014), p. 252.
- 20.
Julia Crouch, The Long Fall (London: Headline, 2014), p. 292.
- 21.
Domestic Suspense panel authors Julia Crouch, Sarah Hilary, and Christobel Kent at Noirwich Festival 2016 discussed how there is much more “to-ing and fro-ing” now as people divide work in and outside of the home.
- 22.
Erin Kelly, The Poison Tree (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010; 2011), p. 49.
- 23.
Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London and New York: Routledge, 1991; 2013), p. 63.
- 24.
Julia Crouch on Noirwich 2016 panel.
- 25.
Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction since 1800: Detection, Death, Diversity second edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 91.
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Waters, D., Worthington, H. (2018). Domestic Noir and the US Cozy as Responses to the Threatened Home. In: Joyce, L., Sutton, H. (eds) Domestic Noir. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69338-5_11
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