Monthly Archives: March 2015

Academic Conference on European Crime Fiction

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We are very pleased to let you know about an intriguing conference which is taking place shortly at the British Library on Friday 10th April.

The conference is entitled Towards a Digital Atlas of European Crime Fiction?

Here’s what the organisers have said to describe the event:

“In the last decades the astonishing speed in the global circulation of cultural works and the unprecedented opportunities to gather and analyse large amount of data through electronic resources have opened up new possibilities for researchers in all disciplines. At the same time, the spatial turn in the Humanities has prompted scholars to consider the benefits of using with maps and graphs to investigate the transnational history of cultural phenomena. However, while scholars working on quite traditional literary subjects have been quick to discuss and carry out the provocative claims made by Franco Moretti in The Atlas of the European Novel (1998), an ideal case study for such an approach, i.e. popular fiction, had been largely neglected.

The AHRC-funded project Visualising European Crime Fiction: New Digital Tools and Approaches to the Study of the Transnational Popular Culture has represented a first attempt to adopt this approach in the field of crime fiction studies, starting to collect data from different sources and exploring use of an online database and various visualisation tools. This exploratory project aimed at testing a number of strategies and possibilities in order to envision a larger, longer-term initiative to conduct extensive studies on the transnational circulation of popular fiction on a continental level. Researchers from a group of universities in the UK, France, Hungary, Sweden and Czech Republic have collaborated to create sample datasets, the prototype database and a series of visualisations.

At the symposium to be held at the British Library on April 10, 2015 the scholars involved in the project will present the work carried out so far and will talk about future perspectives, reflecting on how they might address their research questions, take advantage of the most useful technological resources as well as disseminate their results in innovative ways. The strengths and the weakness of quantitative and digital approaches, the ideas to take this challenge to a new level, and the potential of new partnerships will be discussed with a group of other scholars invited to present their own experience in the study of crime fiction.

Please register using the following link: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/towards-a-digital-atlas-of-european-crime-fiction-tickets-16199136052

Programme of the day

10:00-10:20 Coffee and registration

10:20-10:30 Welcome and Introduction: Dominique Jeannerod & Federico Pagello

10:30-12:00 Papers from the project members:

Dr. Dominique Jeannerod (Queen’s University Belfast) – “European Crime Fiction : A Big Data Story”

Dr. Federico Pagello (Queen’s University Belfast) – “Metadata, Cover Art & Data Viz: Creating an Online Archive of European Crime Fiction”

Dr. Loic Artiaga (University of Limoges) – Title tbc

12:00-12:15 Coffee Break

12:15-13:30 Papers from the project members:

Dr. Natacha Levet (University of Limoges) – Title tbc

Dr. Sandor Kalai (University of Debrecen) – “The Hungarian Translation of Crime Novels under Socialism: Analyse of Two Specialised Series”

Dr. Andrew Pepper (Queen’s University Belfast) – “Quantifying the Internationalization of Crime Fiction: Les Crimes De L’Annee (1989-2004) and the Significance of Place”

13:30-14:30 Lunch Break

14:30-15:30 Lightning Talks: Studying European Crime Fiction, Sources and Methods

Dr. Ellen Carter (University of Paris 1) – “Killing by numbers: quantitative methods in crime fiction research”

Dr. Katharina Hall (Swansea University) – Title tbc

Dr. Andrea Hynynen (University of Turku) – “Gender studies and crime fiction – pros and cons of quantitative methods”

Dr. Marcel Poučová (Masaryk University) – Title tbc

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:00 Keynote address, Ian Sansom (Author of the Mobile Library Mystery Series; Professor in English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick)

16:30-17:30 Roundtable: Towards a Digital Atlas of European Crime Fiction? (Chair: Prof. Jacques Migozzi, University of Limoges)

Deal Noir

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The Bodies From The Library team is very pleased to be supporting the Deal Noir conference which takes place next Saturday 28th March at the Landmark Centre in Deal.

This promises to be an interesting and entertaining day featuring:

  • Best-selling authors speaking on crime fiction in all its forms from dark psychological thrillers through historical fiction to light-hearted romps
  • Interactive sessions where you have chance to put your questions to the panel and join in the debate
  • The announcement of the Winner of the Deal Noir Flash Fiction Award 2015

To find out more and to book your tickets go to the Deal Noir website:

A Conference on Crime Fiction

Eclipse trivia

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in view of today’s eclipse I thought it worth mentioning the final paragraphs of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Unnatural Death (one of the recommended reads for the conference) which concludes with Lord Peter Wimsey emerging into the  June morning to witness an eclipse. This makes the date 29th June 1927 as this was the date on which a total eclipse could  be observed in London. 

For details of all the books recommended by our speakers go to The Bodies From The Library website. 

The Seven Types of Locked Room Mystery

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According to John Dickson Carr, there are no less than seven distinct types of locked room mystery. At least that is what his character Dr Fell tells the readers in chapter seventeen of his 1935 classic The Hollow Man (widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of that genre). Having mentioned this last week, I have been prevailed upon to summarise Dr Fell’s categorisations as a reminder for those who have read the book some time ago or to enable those who have yet to do so to benefit from Dr Fell’s elucidation while skipping over the relevant chapter (as Dickson Carr invites them to do) so they can get on with the plot.

1 The murder is not a murder but is, in fact, an accident. The circumstances are such that it appears there has been a murder but this is not the case. Instead there has been a fatal accident within the locked room. Hence no murderer was present or has made his escape without leaving any trace. Often the accident will involve a fall with the victim striking their head a blow on the fender. This method is becoming more difficult to carry off now with open fireplaces being replaced by central heating.

2 The murder is achieved by means of a poison gas which overcomes the victim (perhaps driving him into a frenzied paroxysm which causes damage to the furniture leading to investigators mistakenly believing a desperate fight has taken place between the victim and the murderer).

3 The murder is done by a mechanical trap planted in the room, which is set off by the victim while the murderer is safely elsewhere. The trick here is to make the method by which the trap is sprung undetectable and, if the trap is concealed, for the weapon to return to (or else remain in) its place of concealment after being triggered – such as a gun hidden in the workings of a clock which fires when the clock is being wound (a method which surely is falling out of fashion due to the inexorable rise of battery or mains electricity powered clocks).

4 It is suicide which is rigged up to look like murder, frequently with the intention of incriminating an innocent party against whom the suicide holds a grudge. The weapon might be an icicle with which the victim stabs himself.  The icicle then melts, speeded no doubt by the fading body heat of the “victim”. In the absence of a weapon in the body, murder is presumed with the supposed murderer having made his escape with the the weapon.

5 The murderer impersonates the victim after having first killed him. The murderer is later observed to enter the room disguised as the victim.  He emerges immediately afterward having slipped out of the disguise thereby giving himself the alibi of having been seen to leave the room without having had sufficient time to commit the murder. The timing of the death is critical in this category; the elapsed time between actual and supposed later time of death must be sufficiently short for the body to be in an appropriate state of rigor mortis and at the correct post-mortem temperature.

6 The murderer manages to carry out the murder from outside the room in a manner which suggests that the murderer was inside the room to carry out the killing. Bullets made of ice, or even frozen blood, have been fired in through windows and subsequently melted leaving no trace to detect the method used.

7 This is the reverse of category 5. Here, the murderer has merely stunned or otherwise rendered the victim unconscious. They leave the room and after a suitable interval, during which no-one enters or leaves the now locked room, ensure they are on hand as efforts to break down the door are made. They ensure they are first into the room and in the initial confusion after entry is gained, they killed the unconscious victim swiftly – a stiletto is a favoured method – while misdirecting the others who have crashed into the room with them. This gives the impression that the victim has been lying dead in the hitherto locked room for some time.

If any of you are currently reading a book where it turns out that one of these tricks has been used, please don’t blame me for having outlined the method here. I’m only repeating Dr Fell’s 80 year old lecture which anyone can read for themselves if they follow the suggested reading recommended by our conference speakers at:

https://thebodiesfromthelibrary.wordpress.com/suggested-reading/

 

 

 

 

No Spoiler Alert Required

Posted by markrgreen1815 on

Encouraged by the suggested reading from our conference speakers, I have started to read (or in some cases, re-read) their recommendations in order to get the most out of their talks. I’m used to being the one in the room who knows least about the subject of Golden Age Detective Fiction but I want to have more than just a clue about what they are discussing.

So far I have read: Police At The Funeral by Margery Allingham, Green For Danger by Christianna Brand, The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr and An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson.

Without giving anything of the plots away (so no spoiler alert required), I have some questions I want to put to our experts at the conference about the means used in the first death of Police At The Funeral and why one of the characters does what they do in An Expert in Murder. It’s probably me missing something vital – not for the first time – but I do want to pick the brains that are cleverer than I am when I get the chance.

I did enjoy chapter 17 of The Hollow Man in which Carr’s detective Dr Fell delivers a lecture on the seven different types of “Locked Room Mystery” and how they may be distinguished. Needless to say, I shan’t be giving away into which category The Hollow Man actually falls.

I’m currently part way through Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. This has the advantage of featuring on both B.A. Pike’s list of recommended reading for his lecture on the works of Allingham and Sayers and on Richard Reynolds’ list for his lecture on The Oxbridge Murders. So it’s killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

For details of our speakers’ recommendations go to:

https://thebodiesfromthelibrary.wordpress.com/suggested-reading/