ABSTRACT
The representation of the police officer in crime fiction is often divided: Within the officer’s character are forces pulling in different directions. This chapter argues that revealing examples of police officers in crime fiction are those where this tension is opened up, rather than closed off, and where the general health of a society is brought into question. The police officer or detective is a typical hero of this kind, for the police officer as a character offers access to emblematic conflicts in late-modern, globalised, capitalist society. The police officer becomes a pivotal character in crime fiction during the post-World War II period. The combination of realism and melodrama described by Williams has become popular among producers of police narratives as a means of seeking to comprehend the tumultuous social conflicts of the new millennium, be they connected to war, migration, digital interconnection, the material connections of globalisation or terrorism.
