Justice and Revenge in Contemporary American Crime Fiction

Social commentators have noted a marked decline in moral values in contemporary American society, both in public and private life, and this come through very strongly in its crime fiction. In this study, the work of James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, and George Pelecanos is explored in terms of the agenda of social criticism lying behind it. There is a turn towards revenge and vigilante activity on the part of their detective figures that presents a very unflattering picture of American culture and how it is developing. Ellroy dubs this 'absolute justice', but it proves to be part of the problem rather than any effective solution to dealing with the problem of evil. Each of these authors is wrestling with the issues this raises, and as Stuart Sim argues, their detective figures are no longer moral exemplars but symptoms of a wider social malaise.

Stuart Sim is retired Professor of Critical Theory at Northumbria University, UK. A Fellow of the English Association, he has published widely in the fields of critical theory and the novel as social criticism. Recent works include The End of Modernity (2010), The Lyotard Dictionary (ed., 2011), and Fifty Key Thinkers in Postmodernism (2013).