ellen.louise said:
Yes. Crime fic = detective fic. there MUST be a detective, there MUST be a murder. don't do some pissy robbery text. it doesn't count as the only crime worth writing a novel about is murder. Also, a bit of psychological stuff is good. really good. but don't get some text that's just existential and has no proper crime, no plotline driving it. There MUST BE PROGRESSION.
No, detectives are a
common feature of crime feature but are not a requisite, neither is murder. Missing persons, kidnapping, bank heists and rapes for example, still function in the world of crime fiction just as well as murder.
Also, ruling out a text that has elements of existentialism simply because it has these qualities is fool hardy - you are studying this module to see how this genre functions and every kind of crime fiction text is valid as it exposes you to the variations and thus the limits and 'rules' of the genre. What you should instead be looking at when selecting texts is whether the author has sufficiently created a cohesive text from which you can form arguments within an essay, which is not at all dependent on the cultural/philosophical trends to which the author caters.
-pari- said:
how synonmous are the two?
does crime fiction have to have a detective as, a character if not one of the main characters.
eg, what if one of my related texts revolves around the criminal and the crime - it's leans on the pyschological drama side....
...is that okay? or will that be kinda iffy to work with?
Crime fiction doesn't
have to have a detective, but it usually does in some form or another; even if the detective is the victim themselves. This is generally because it is much harder to progress a plot if the character isn't seeking out the rest of the story as it were - when I've tried to write completely introspective pieces from the criminal's point of view it is almost like trying to swim through sand and I've seen similar issues with other writers, both professional and student. Which isn't to say it is never done properly, in the HSC I studied some great crime fictions done from the perspective of the criminal and they were well worth studying - they bring parallel and perspective which you don't really get elsewhere.
i would digress that there must be a murder - it can be any crime, i'm sure...