ABSTRACT
Crime fiction critics have generally disregarded trauma theory despite the useful perspective it offers; Sarah Trott’s War Noir, Mary Ann Gillies’s “Trauma and Contemporary Crime Fiction” and this author’s Sara Paretsky stand out as exceptions. Crime fiction necessarily engages key debates over the meaning and interpretation of traumatic experience, and over who has the right to interpret or assign meaning to evidence. Detective fiction deals with the personal and social trauma caused by murder. Both Rothberg and Edkins implicitly affirm the inexpressibility of the traumatic event and recommend forms that do not undermine the revelatory power of the experience. When Rothberg proposes a multidirectional approach to trauma, he recognises the full range of referentiality available to trauma literature. The cumulative impact of the micro-aggressions and coercive force of chronic trauma precipitated by sexism and racism is a potent mix of shame, guilt and rage.
