What Is Left of the Genius? Sherlockian Legacy in Contemporary Crime Fiction Cover Image

Co zostało z geniuszu? Dziedzictwo Sherlocka Holmesa we współczesnych kryminałach
What Is Left of the Genius? Sherlockian Legacy in Contemporary Crime Fiction

Author(s): Jacek Mydla
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Akademia Techniczno-Humanistyczna w Bielsku-Białej

Summary/Abstract: Arthur Conan Doyle famously popularised science in his series of detective stories by placing its three constitutive elements (scientific knowledge, the collection of evidence, and art of making inferences), in his protagonist Sherlock Holmes. The legacy is present in contemporary crime fiction, but the competencies have been distributed among a group of individuals involved in the investigation. This distribution has affected and changed the position of the detective vis-à-vis scientific expertise. Science, chiefly in the form of different branches of forensics, is as indispensable as the detective, and authors have been working out different ways of making the two work together. As an example of this cooperation, the paper examines Mark Billingham’s 2015 novel Time of Death.

  • Issue Year: 1/2021
  • Issue No: 36
  • Page Range: 137-150
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: English