Margaret Atwood: Crime Fiction Writer

Exploring how Margaret Atwoods fiction reimagines the figure of the detective and the nature of crime, Jackie Shead shows how the author radically reworks the crime fiction genre. Shead focuses on Surfacing, Bodily Harm, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake and selected short fiction, showing the ways in which Atwoods protagonists are confronted by their own collusion in hegemonic assumptions and thus are motivated to investigate and expose crimes of gender, class and colonialism. Shead begins with a discussion of how Atwoods treatment of crime fictions generic elements, particularly those of the whodunit, clue puzzle and spy thriller, departs from convention. Through discussion of Atwoods metafictive strategies, Shead also examines Atwoods techniques for activating her readers as investigators who are offered an educative process parallel to that experienced by some of the authors protagonists. This book also marks a significant intervention in an ongoing debate among Atwood critics that pits the authors postmodernism against her ethical and humanistic concerns.