ABSTRACT
Every historian publishing in peer-reviewed publications with low circulation but high prestige secretly envies the astonishing success of crime fiction that explores historical events, such as The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown or The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova—books read by millions around the globe. If feminist scholars want to move from sheer envy to useful critical appropriation of the methods and theories used by these authors to reach out to wider audiences, what can they do? This is the question I shall reflect on in this chapter. These methods of reaching out can, in my opinion, be appropriated in critically useful ways. Moreover, I also consider it pertinent to study the methods of these top-selling crime fiction writers as a way of counteracting the reluctance of some feminist scholars to engage with history out of “fear” of the positivist epistemological legacy of history writing. I will present a different entrance point to history—through the reading/writing of crime fiction (see also Petö, Chapter 10, this volume).
