Partners with "crime" : a qualitative investigation in readings of crime fiction

Abstract

This study investigates the dialectic between the reader and the text, in this case, crime fiction. The reader's active participation starts prior to the reading process. When choosing books, the reader is already engaged with the paratext, which indicates whether the book will appear or not. But what is crime fiction? There are two faces to this coin. The criminal is protagonist in noir thrillers and whydunits; the investigator leads the inquiry in whodunits, detective thrillers, procedurals and anti-conspiracy thrillers. Definitions become more uncertain with S.F. crime, Fantasy crime, historical crime, comic crime and psychic detection i.e. the hybrids, and postmodernist fiction. But why do the participants read crime fiction? And how do they do so? Do they identify with any of the characters they are reading about? Answers to these questions, by participants to the study, are put together adopting a :framework developed mainly from Umberto Eco's theories.