Borders and Subversions of Criminal Narrative

Genres such as the whodunit novel, film noir, police procedural and gangster stories are, as John G. Cawelti (1976) points out, formulaic, that is, they start from certain plot patterns, archetypical characters and recurring themes as a matrix for the production of an extensive corpus of narratives. Authors like Todorov (1966) will consider, therefore, the repetition of the model as a rule of thumb to the works, stating that "The whodunit par excellence is not the one which transgresses the rules of the genre, but the one which conforms to them." (p. 138). However, from the whodunit of the golden age of detective fiction to the multifaceted contemporary crime narrative, the multiplication of forms and contents explored by this type of work is clear. Such changes would not be possible without those who, disagreeing with Todorov, transgressed the norms of the genre precisely to renew it, as Raymond Chandler himself does - which becomes clear when one reads his "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950). Thus, we seek, for this issue, articles interested in exploring the boundaries of the genre and the many subversions that tension the cemented formulas in a direction towards a renovation of the criminal narrative. The idea of border, here, applies as much to its sense of the limitations (of structure, themes, media, etc.) of what is identified as part of a genre as to its geographical sense, thinking about the ways in which the displacement towards the margins of this production ends up also subverting its formulas, expectations, and conventions.