ABSTRACT
This chapter considers reinventions of Victorian criminality in the early twentieth century, in particular the ways in which texts continued to demonstrate the fin de sicle fascination of popular fiction with purity and contamination, but also the ways in which this treatment began to change. The letter outlines the story of a teenage couple who had parked the car in a secluded area and was, while doing other things, listening to the radio. Crime narratives take many forms in The Lodger: the stories told by the detective Joe Chandler; the detective fiction and newspaper reports which Mr. Bunting reads; and the three episodes set outside the claustrophobic confines of the Bunting house the Black Museum at Scotland Yard, the coroner's court where Mrs. Bunting attends an inquest into two of the murders, and the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's. The concerns outlined are those of The Lodger in its treatment of crime narratives.
