Silenced Life Stories
Silenced Life Stories

Summary/Abstract: The present paper highlights the way in which, in order to answer the need for a different kind of rendering the characters life-stories, namely by reconstructing them from bits and pieces left after they had been silenced by fatal circumstances, contemporary detective fiction authors often opt for disclosing the secrets of the human bodies after their demise due to the use of cutting-edge technology and highly specialized professionals as it appears in forensic crime thrillers which combine fiction with facts and scientific elements. This kind of hybrid writing, currently embodying the contradictions of modern life and the preference for intercultural texts, generates a narrative that breaks down the traditional life-story telling into apparently unrelated pieces of a mystery puzzle that eventually develop the entire picture of a late existence. The reliable knowledge is provided to the reader by fictional forensic scientists who become carriers of non-fictional information that can help to bring a subject to life in a virtual way, beyond the sheer data, thus demonstrating how human remains reveal both secrets and truths in a fascinating, make-believe way as foregrounded in the present selection of texts authored by highly acclaimed writers.

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