ABSTRACT
Crime fiction is an inherently political genre. This chapter explores how political messages manifest themselves both through the content and the form. It analyses the scholarly debates about whether the genre is an inherently conservative form that privileges private property and bourgeois notions of law and order or whether it is capable of radical political critique. The chapter examines some of the ways in which crime fiction responds to the contemporary political fault lines of gender, race and the environment as well as the ongoing consequences of historical injustices. Crime fiction has typically been considered a masculine, male-dominated genre, in spite of the fundamental contribution from women authors such as Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith and Sue Grafton, amongst many others. Crime fiction has also engaged with different forms of authoritarianism. The need to mask criticism of Spanish society in crime fiction disappeared following Franco’s death and the subsequent abolition of censorship.
