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Tracing Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Forensic Detective Fiction

2001; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 3/4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3190353

1549-3377

Joy Elizabeth Palmer,

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis

played a central role in the narratives of crime fiction, in recent years we have witnessed an explosion in the popularity of the medical mystery or forensic detective novel, forms of the genre that more explicitly focus upon the ability of the forensic detective or pathologist to read and interpret the material traces of the body. The novels of writers such as Patricia Cornwell, Jeffrey Deaver, and Kathy Reichs are among those of a new generation characterized by this foregrounding not only of the anatomical or medicalized body, but also the technologies of forensic detection. Within these works, the detective becomes a scientific and technological expert, who uses the tools of detection first to construct the identity whose body bears the mark of the crime. This technologically-mediated process of discovery then shifts in focus, centering upon the need to individuate the absent criminal body by tracing fragments of evidence, often organic bodily remnants such as blood, hair fibers, or even DNA, back to their essential and accountable origins. These plots thus highlight what is the central problem of the crime novel, the problem of vision, and thus rigorously pursue a fundamental need to render the criminal visible and material under the disciplinary gaze of the forensic detective.' Perhaps the most successful and widely-acknowledged perfecter of this genre is Patricia Cornwell, a writer who has gained notoriety as one of the most significant heavy-hitters of the publishing world. With the series depicting Dr. Kay Scarpetta, forensic pathologistcum-detective, Cornwell's novels are among those narratives that point to an escalating and spiraling cultural fascination and growing anxiety over the truth-status of the anatomical, traceable, and irreducibly material body. Indeed, the new sub-genre, forensic detective fiction, has become virtually synonymous with the name