Contemporary German Crime Fiction: A Companion ed. by Thomas Kniesche (review)

For those unconvinced of an established German tradition of writing crime fiction, Contemporary German Crime Fiction: A Companion is sure to provide a persuasive case to the contrary. Arguably the most in-depth examination of the contemporary genre to date for an English-language audience, this volume supplements and extends recent studies such as Tatort Germany (2014), Einführung in den Kriminalroman (2015), and Crime Fiction in German (2016). In twelve chapters that cover a wide range of national traditions, themes, and subgenres, Contemporary German Crime Fiction skillfully accomplishes its stated aim, to provide "a more differentiated narrative to replace the myth of the missing tradition of German crime fiction" (1).

The first chapter and introduction provide the theoretical, historical, and thematic context. Thomas W. Kniesche begins by suggesting factors that have contributed to the misconception about a missing German tradition that will be corrected here. He then demonstrates the contrary with a brief history of German crime writing that reaches back to the 1600s and concludes with an overview of defining moments after 1945 that will be elucidated in this volume. The subsequent analyses in chapters 2–9 form the core of Contemporary German Crime Fiction and expand on key national traditions, themes, and subgenres that make up a rich, varied landscape. The categories largely correspond to those in comparable studies and include Swiss and Austrian crime fiction (chapters 2 and 3), the German Soziokrimi (chapter 4), regional, women's, and historical crime fiction (chapters 5–7), crime fiction dealing with the Nazi past (chapter 8), and texts that investigate "the other" (chapter 9). Each contributor discusses the respective cultural context, highlights exemplary authors and works, and convincingly demonstrates how they enrich both German-language and international crime writing.

While all of the analyses in Contemporary German Crime Fiction are equally informative, some will be more useful for readers looking for both a historical and theoretical reading and in-depth text analyses. "Modernity and Melancholia: Austrian Crime Fiction" (chapter 3) exemplifies this approach. Thomas W. Kniesche underscores unique Austrian contributions with elements such as narrative experimentation, playfulness, dark humor, irony and parody, and the use of distinctly Austrian settings such as Vienna and the provinces, and he supports these claims with analyses of leading authors, texts, and TV shows. Kniesche concludes with a close reading of novels by Wolf Haas and Paulus Hochgatterer that, for him, demonstrate contemporary Austrian crime fiction at its best. Equally insightful are Kniesche's analyses of the German Soziokrimi in chapter 4 and of historical crime fiction in chapter 7, which balance a cultural, historical, and literary-theoretical understanding of the subgenres with concrete information on writers, texts, films, and TV shows.

In contrast to Kniesche's largely chronological analyses and to Goncalo Vilas-Boas's survey of the beginnings of the Swiss crime genre in chapter 2, other contributors organize their discussions around dominant narrative modes or themes. In his analysis of regionalism and modernism in contemporary crime fiction, Jochen Vogt groups the texts, films, and TV shows by region and by the use of regions as a mere backdrop or as places of "topographical, social and historically cultural action" with their own "logic" (94). In chapter 6, Gaby Pailer looks at women's crime fiction through three narrative modes which she labels "the detective mode," "the thriller mode," and the "crime and catastrophe mode." In chapter 8 Sandra Beck considers how the delicate relationship between fiction and history informs representations of the Holocaust in recent crime writing and assesses their successes and shortcomings in dealing with this difficult period in German history. Sandra Beck's reading of "the other" in chapter 9 focuses on German-Turkish relationships in recent novels and couples a topical reading of "honor killings" and terrorism with a discussion of the potential implications of the recent shiftin narrative emphasis from the tragic to the comic mode.

The most useful contributions for scholars and educators are chapters 10 and 11. Literary scholars will appreciate Thomas Woertche's insightful...