ABSTRACT
An emphasis on connectivity is one of the hallmarks of the crime fiction genre. The connective systems within the crime fiction text are diachronic in form, developing through time to link elements from earlier stages of the crime. This chapter discusses three ways of linking up the stages of the text: the hermeneutic code; time; and causality. It examines how the detective story relies on causal chains of events that may be pieced together through reason, and how both chronology and causality are disrupted in the pastiche. These examinations form the basis for an understanding of the processes through which crime fiction, and indeed all narrative, create their own coherence and impetus. The chapter then argues that the formalistic experiments of the pasticheurs imply a questioning of assumptions concealed in apparently straightforward methods of textual representation, a position that is explicitly articulated in the nouveau roman.
