Adapting Detective Fiction: Crime, Englishness and the TV Detectives

Acknowledgements \ 1. Introduction: Adaptation and Cultural History \ 2. Sherlock Holmes and the Authenticity of Crime \ 3. Miss Marple, Criminality and Englishness \ 4. Morse, Heritage and the End of History \ 5. Jack Frost and the Condition of England Question \ 6. Cadfael, Medievalism and Modern Nationhood \ 7. DCI Barnaby and an English Aesthetics of Crime \ 8. Conclusion: Detecting the Nation \ Bibliography \ Index

Adapting Detective Fiction is an insightful and illuminating analysis of the various television adaptations of British detective fiction. It investigates the links between literary texts, television adaptations, and the socio-economic framework connecting and informing both, and in so doing it does for British detective fiction what Sean McCann's Gumshoe America did for American crime fiction. Neil McCaw produces fascinating readings of key texts and their television adaptations, but also reveals the complex web of social, cultural, economic, and political forces that lie behind the adaptations. As an investigation of the mediation between past and present that these adaptations represent, the book identifies what they say about national identity, nostalgia, and cultural values.