Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction

摘要

This is an edited collection of original essays on German-language crime fiction with clear strengths and weaknesses. The Introduction by the two editors makes the main aims of the volume very clear, first to gather chapters that will explore the 'specific ways that authors of contemporary German-language crime fiction exploit traditional formulas of literature and classic crime fiction in order to address local and global issues of the past and present' (2). This is refined later in the Introduction via the three key areas of 'regionalism defined heavily by the German cultural concept of Heimat; the country's twentieth-century past; and twenty-first-century definitions of identity' (6). Based on this goal, the volume as a whole can be regarded as a complete success. Second, however, the editors also claim that German-language crime fiction should be considered as 'an innovator of trends, even anticipating tendencies in international crime fiction' (5). Unfortunately, none of the essays collected here reveal any desire to enter that debate.