The Corpse as Narrative Object in Hardboiled Detective Fiction

This book examines how the representation of objects, specifically dead bodies, functions as the motivating force of hardboiled detective fiction narratives. Conducting a semi-interactive autopsy into the body in and of the genre, the author deploys several theoretical frames including narratology, body-as-text theory, object theory, reader-response theory, formalism, and genre theory to demonstrate the significance of objects, symbols, and things in narrative. While primarily focusing on the works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the book references lesser-known accomplices. Chapters outline the experience of reading and writing objects as a narrative compulsion, facilitated and exemplified by the figure of a private eye as they endeavor to plausibly recreate and solve the crime, reanimating the inanimate thing on the floor through storytelling and reclaiming their own integrity and agency by asserting authority over conflicting versions of the facts.