Crime Literature

Crime is one of the most popular Genres of Literature in modern times for both written and visual entertainment. The Genre had to begin somewhere; however the beginning point of the Modern Crime genre was at a much different point in history then the actual beginning of the genre. Evidence has proved to us that crime was written about many years ago by some Chinese writers, however, the style and plot of the writing was of much difference to the Crime genre we are currently exposed to. It wasn’t until the 19th century that Modern Crime writing sparked. It was then, that famous writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle introduced fictional characters into the genre and began writing with the guidelines of a narrative model.

The Narrative Model is the flow of the story. The story starts with an Introduction that usually explains the setting, main characters, the crime and some other various clues and misclues. The Introduction leads into the Exposition of the story where most of the movie takes place. During the exposition in some cases there may be minor climaxes. The Exposition leads to the Main (Major) Climax of the story which may be the criminal being caught. The Denouement follows the climax, the Denouement may in some cases extend the plot or include further explanation of the characters. The Resolution is the ending of the story/film and most usually all unresolved issues are resolved. This writing direction is what many great writers have used to enhance their story/film and to also hide the identity of the criminal till the end. Another factor in Crime writing is the expectation of the crime genre also known as Crime Literature elements. These include; a crime, victim(s), body, suspect(s), weapon(s), motive, al...

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...s and misclues lead to a successful guessing game of a story. In addition of matching the Narrative Model, this story also matches all the expectations of the Crime genre. The biggest expectation that is fulfilled is that the criminal’s identity is only revealed to us when intended by the Author, which is, obviously at the end of the story.

After examining these various stories and film, the reader should now able to in future, better examine the film and be able to have a better idea of the outcome. The skill of sorting clues and misclues, and sorting real suspects from irrelevant ones would be a vital one to gain from this examination. Further to the examination of the Crime genre, a wider understanding of the genre should be gained in aspects like character examination, commonalities in techniques throughout the genre and misclue identification.