Matthias Dickert

The Canadian crime novel in the tension between ethics, integrity, morality and social criticism Matthias Dickert

Scientific Study from the year 2021 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, language: English, abstract: Matters of ethics and morality have always had a fixed place in crime writing since solving cases like murders is embedded between decision making processes which are bound between good and bad. To focus and reflect ethic and moral decisions and to place them within the policeforce itself is, however, uncommon in crime writing since the policeforces represent the status quo of the state. Corrupt policemen or 'bad cops' are (still) the exception and to set good and bad policemen against each other is still some sort of taboo in this genre since good and bad are normally set between criminals and the police. Both analysed novels hereby "How the Light Gets In" (2013) by Louise Penny and "A Deadly Divide" (2019) by Ausma Zehanat Khan, however, are concerned with this topic and show that contemporary Canadian crime writers do include these matters into their work.
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