Presidents' College: Modern Detective Fiction
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Good detective fiction needs brains more than it needs brawn—brainy writers, characters and readers. Sure, there are the heavies, but are they the masterminds? Look elsewhere, maybe to that unassuming figure over there. It’s clear the pandemic boosted this ever-popular genre: readers sought escape, or control, or definite answers. But are these answers always definite? What is truth or not-truth? Who (or what) is good or evil? More scholars are researching detective fiction now, revealing just how complicated, influential and brainy this genre is.
Join Pamela Bedore, our academic gumshoe, as she pairs up strange bedfellows in this 3-part course. How strange?:
- Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926) vs Edmund Wilson (Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, 1945). Detective Formulae, then Innovations.
- Edgar Allan Poe (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841) vs Louis Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye, 2006). A 21st-Century rewrite of Poe’s Gothic tale. Successful?
- Ursula K. Le Guin (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1973) vs Louise Penny (Still Life, 2005). Utopia Menaced vs Canada’s Three Pines.
Each session treats a detective novel, then an essay or short story that compliments, contradicts or complicates the picture. If a homicide happens and you’re not around to discuss it. . . hmmm. . . what then?
Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches courses in American Literature, Popular Literature, and Gender Theory. Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection and author of Dime Novels and the Roots of Detective Fiction She has published widely on popular genres, including her Great Course, Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature (2017) – available on audible or at your public library – and her most recent book, The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction (2024).