ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book begins by setting out the field of inquiry with an examination of genre, crime fiction, and pastiche. A discussion of theories of genre leads into a typology of the various subgenres of crime fiction that have inspired the pasticheurs through their language, structure, and outlook. This is followed by a discussion of the nature of pastiche as it has variously been figured, and its relationship to other forms of metafiction, such as parody. These considerations are then used to introduce the four pasticheurs in terms of the relationship of their texts to the crime genre. The book focuses on five areas of study: connection, closure, perception, reason, and truth. Each of these progressively clarifies the relationship between crime fiction and its pastiche, the central argument emerges of pastiche as a form of deconstruction.
