Crime fiction: creating order out of chaos - or disrupting order

I wouldn’t usually use the word “hegemonic” in conversation but I feel the need to up the ante on my crime fiction spree (which has come to a temporary end). I have been mulling over the genre after finishing The Phantom and wandering around the Internet looking at theories.

David Schmid, writing about the ways in which space (usually city space) is used in crime fiction, has developed some interesting questions: His essay is worth reading. We come to know some cities intimately through crime fiction. Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh. Shane Maloney’s inner-city Melbourne. Peter Temple’s depiction of the same space. Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles. James Ellroy’s LA. Sarah Paretsky’s Chicago. The fictional town of Santa Teresa, (aka Santa Barbara) California created by Sue Grafton. And Jo Nesbo’s Oslo. In The Phantom, I felt that I needed to Google images of that city and of a new development in that city on the waterfront called Tjuvholmen which gets a brief mention in the novel (what propelled me to Google the latter is that he described it as resembling a nipple on the waterfront).

“is the genre characterized primarily by closure, the neat tying up of loose ends, or by open-endedness and ambiguity? Is crime fiction best described as being characterized by individualized approaches to both the causes and solutions to crime, or does it imagine and put into play more collective, structural analyses of these issues? Finally, does crime fiction have the potential to produce radical, counter-hegemonic critiques of the ways in which power is mobilized in capitalist, racist, and patriarchal social formations, or is it instead an essentially conservative, bourgeois genre that supports the status quo?”

Most of the detective fiction I read is set in urban inner city landscapes – I think this is true of most contemporary detective fiction (the honourable exception is Temple’s wonderful book about country life The Broken Shore). The Harry Hole character has so thoroughly possessed Oslo that I find it impossible to imagine without him. I’m sure that if I visited, I would be searching for the Plata where drugs are sold (not for the drugs), the Salvation Army hostel, Hotel Leon and looking for the large ski ramp which features prominently in The Snowman. The very new opera house that merges into the harbour would be another place to visit. He’s no foodie, Nesbo, so cafes and restaurants would not be part of my walking tour. And I’d want to get behind the immediate city up into the area that overlooks the harbour, where wealthy people live. Speaking at the Adelaide Writers Festival, Nesbo said he wanted to create a “Gotham City version of Oslo – a little bit darker, a little bit larger”. He said that Oslo used to be a kind of “innocent village” but drugs, which are the central theme of The Phantom, have always been bad. It is a changed city in the last fifteen years with the advent of human trafficking and increasingly obvious drug problems.

Now to go back to Schmid’s original questions, I think the appeal of Nesbo’s novels is that there is limited closure; the criminal is usually brought to some kind of justice but the underlying issues in the novels; police corruption, drug usage in the community, homelessness, continue largely unabated. The individual efforts of Hole and his diminishing band of friends make a small dent but the status quo continues. There is an ongoing critique of society (not dissimilar to the work of Stieg Larsson) but little changes; power is entrenched. We are given a picture of a society which on the surface looks orderly and managed but one where crime flourishes in bubbles underneath. As readers, I think the appeal is in the failure of the individual to do more than bring another individual to some kind of rough justice. We recognize this failure as being authentic but commend the doggedness of the individual (in this case Hole) for persisting. It is his defining quality. As he says at one stage “I am a policeman.” (In this case the sentence is ironic; he is no longer works in this role and has returned reluctantly to Oslo.) The hero’s journey is flawed and likely to end with a degree of ambiguity. Some loose ends.


At the Adelaide Writers Festival, Nesbo said that his writing relates strongly to the American tradition of crime writing – which came in part from the history of pioneers, the Western and the archetype of the outsider. Often the protagonists have been cast out of an organisation or marginalised within it but they refuse to bow down, they are heroic to us for that reason, despite the their anarchic tendencies. Harry is emblematic of this tradition; he is still a believer in the system but ambivalent about the way in which it was operating. Nesbo said that he is working within the tradition of James Ellroy: something is rotten in the state of Norway, despite the truth of its stereotype (“as a happy socialist democracy”). He went on to say one more interesting thing. He said that money, as a motivation for crime, was almost unbelievable in Norway. Before the advent of the oil industry, Norway was very poor – so crime novels focused on money as a motivator. Contemporary novels focus more heavily on the quirks of human nature. He gave Ibsen’s interest in secrets in families and concealed emotions as an example of what he is interested in exploring, using crime as a vehicle.


Writing about the genre of crime fiction, Regis Behe quotes William Edwards, an associate professor of sociology at the University of San Francisco. Edwards uses crime novels in his classes. Behe also quotes Sarah Weinman, a crime fiction writer who says: So perhaps the crime fiction that we are happiest with is that which gives us enough of a resolution to feel safe within a general context of authentic and credible disorder. The state has been preserved – but to what extent is it worth preserving? I think this is where the Hole character has got to in his thinking – which might explain the very interesting treatment he receives in this novel.

"Heroes are symbols of how a nation wishes others to see it. The hero represents triumph and affirms the goodness in the nation… But crime novels seem to more easily tap into the current angst. In a post-9/11 world, the crime novel reminds us of our vulnerabilities in an uncertain world… In the post-9/11 world, Edwards says, the crime novel simultaneously reminds us of our shortcomings while positioning "heroes" as defenders, "the nation's counterbalance force."

Behe also quotes Sarah Weinman, a crime fiction writer who says:

“the genre's appeal stems from the primal urge to "create order out of chaos, to find a resolution in the face of violent situations. This doesn't mean that crime novels have to follow conventional patterns -- and many of the best in recent years certainly do not -- but whatever conflicts are presented are, for the most part, resolved”.

So perhaps the crime fiction that we are happiest with is that which gives us enough of a resolution to feel safe within a general context of authentic and credible disorder. The state has been preserved – but to what extent is it worth preserving? I think this is where the Hole character has got to in his thinking – which might explain the very interesting treatment he receives in this novel.