Alexander Schindler: Multiperspektivisches Erzählen im zeitgenössischen englischsprachigen Kriminalroman (Studies in English Literary and Cultural History: ELCH, 78). Trier: WVT, 2020.

• Beatrix Hesse

Alexander Schindler’s study Multiperspektivisches Erzählen im zeitgenössischen englischsprachigen Kriminalroman analyses twenty recent novels of crime and detection that employ Multiperspektivität, i. e., multiple narrative perspective (which means that the events of the action are depicted from various points of view, either by several homodiegetic narrators or various focalizers in a heterodiegetic narrative – or a combination of both). “Recent” in this case means written within the last 20 years, and as the title also suggests, Schindler does not distinguish between crime and detective fiction or between English and American products. In an era in which major publishing companies operate internationally, this undoubtedly makes sense; on the other hand, crime fiction in particular has lately seen a strong tendency towards precise localization. In the past few decades, crime fiction has become not only one of the most popular genres of fiction but also increasingly respectable and hence an object of serious academic study. However, as Schindler points out, these studies are usually mainly historically orientated, while a detailed narratological study of recent crime fiction is still lacking – a lack that the present study seeks to remedy.