Mayer, Ruth (2020):
"The Crime Fiction Series." The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction. Eds. Allan, Janice; Gulddal, Jesper; King, Stewart; Pepper, Andrew. London: Routledge. 1-17
Article in Anthology
Abstract

The serial logic manifests itself on several levels: the microlevel of the individual narrative, the intermediate level of the story or book series, and the macro level of the genre. In the course of the genre’s maturation and professionalisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, crime fiction came to be inscribed with seriality. The traditions of the French feuilleton and the American dime novel proved especially instrumental for the evolution of modern crime narration. It has been argued that the formation of industrialised nation-states across the globe was contingent on the invention of “print capitalism” that gained traction in the nineteenth century and relied heavily on the formats of the periodical publishing market with its synchronised production and reception practices. For most of the twentieth century, serial storytelling in general and crime fiction particularly retained the reputation of being cheap and fast, and increasingly, literary and cinematic formats intersected.