Mystery fiction as a genre renders moral judgments not only about detectives and criminals but also concerning the cultural structures within which these mysteries unfold.
In contrast to other volumes which examine morality in crime fiction through the lenses of personal guilt and personal justice, Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction analyzes the effect of moral imagination on the moral structures implicit in the genre.
In recent years, public awareness has attended to the relationship between social structures and justice, and this collection centers on how personal ethics and social ethics are bound together amidst the shifting moral landscapes of mystery fiction.
Contributors discuss the interplay between personal guilt and social guilt – considering morality and justice on an individual level and at a societal level – using frameworks of certainty and ambiguity. They show how individual characters in works by Agatha Christie, Gabriel García Márquez, Natsuo Kirino, F.H. Batacan, and Stephen King, among others, may view their moral standing with certainty but clash with the established mores of their culture.
Featuring essays on Japanese, Filipino, Indian, and Colombian mystery fiction, as well as American and British fiction, this volume analyzes social guilt and justice across cultures, showing how individuals grapple with the certainty, and, at times, the moral ambiguity, of their respective cultures.
Acknowledgments Introduction John J. Han, C. Clark Triplett, and Matthew Bardowell, Missouri Baptist University, USA Part I. Narrative Structure and Moral Imagination 1. A Memoir Without Conscience: Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Timothy Ruppert, Slippery Rock University, USA 2. A Not-So-Certain Morality: Adaptations in Murder on the Orient Express Annette Wren, McMurry University, USA 3. The Colorado Kid, Joyland, and Later: Genre Hybridity and the Moral Imagination in Stephen King’s Hard Case Crime Novels Alissa Burger, Culver-Stockton College, USA 4. “They’ve already killed him”: Moral Ambiguity in Chronicle of a Death Foretold Andrea Tinnemeyer, College Preparatory School, Oakland, CA, USA 5. “What’s luck got to do with it?”: Privilege, Morality, and the Victim in Tana French’s Wych Elm Deirdre Flynn, University of Limerick, Ireland 6. Beyond “Puzzles and Bugaboos”: A Family Systems Interpretation of Dorothy L. Sayers’s “Monster,” Gaudy Night Beth McFarland-Wilson, Northern Illinois University, USA Part II. World Literature and Moral Ambiguity 7. Opaque Feminine Ethics in Kirino’s Out Aya Kubota, Bunka Gakuen University, Japan, and John J. Han, Missouri Baptist University, USA 8. Moral Certainty or Ambiguity in the Clerical Detective Novels: Discovering a Middle Way in F. H. Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles C. Clark Triplett, Missouri Baptist University, USA 9. ""Life’s messy complexity”: Moral Ambiguity, Compromise, and Vigilante Justice in Kishwar Desai’s Simran Singh Trilogy Nikita Gloria Pinto, Independent Scholar, U.A.E. 10. Mystery Pierced with Social Evil: Reading Caste and Class Issues in The Quills of the Porcupine Debaditya Mukhopadhyay, Manikchak College, India Part III. Faith, Certainty, and Doubt in Mystery Fiction 11. Between Faith and Nihilism: Greene’s Moral Imagination in The Third Man John J. Han, Missouri Baptist University, USA 12. Brother Cadfael, Social Justice, and the Medieval Mystery Fiction of Ellis Peters Jane Beal, University of La Verne, USA 13. A Vocation of Truth: The Pursuit of Moral Certainty in the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers Andrew J. Spencer, Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, USA 14. “What if a war was what he was waiting for?"": Graham Greene, Patrick Hamilton, and the Writing of Crime Between the Wars Michael Hallam, University of Brighton, UK 15. The Restorative Vision of Justice in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Matthew Bardowell, Missouri Baptist University, USA About the Contributors Index
John J. Han is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Missouri Baptist University, USA, where he teaches world literature, creative writing, and mystery fiction, among others. C. Clark Triplett is Emeritus Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of Psychology at Missouri Baptist University, USA. Matthew R. Bardowell is Associate Professor of English at Missouri Baptist University, USA, where he teaches British literature, world literature, and composition.
Reviews for Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction: Essays on the Moral Imagination
""A much-needed investigation of the parameters of morality in that genre most concerned with the capacity of human behaviour for evil and justice."" --Stacy Gillis, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University, UK ""Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction is an essay collection that speaks to the scope of detective fiction as a genre, and both the contributors and the texts under discussion illustrate its international prominence. Moving from Golden Age to contemporary works, the essays address morality and the moral imagination as positioned within historical, social, and cultural contexts. The accessible treatments of authors and texts indicate not just the variety of the field but also tensions that arise when narrative structures and moral frameworks confront lived experiences. "" --Ann Martin, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
