The Crime Fiction Genre
This curriculum unit will use the genre of crime fiction as its base to help the students learn the many problems associated with detective work. I am interested in the witness aspect of solving a crime, but there are many other ways for the detective to solve a crime. The solution does not always depend on the cooperation of witnesses. With crime, there is always a question as to who is responsible for committing the act. Therefore, the books I have selected for this unit are those in which the solution of the crime hinges on the testimony of witnesses.
Crime fiction often falls into the category of forensic science and police procedural. Forensic science in crime fiction is where the crime scene is the focus of the plot and furnishes the solution to the crime. In police procedural, the detective uses meticulous detective work to solve the crime. This curriculum unit will focus on the police procedural category. The police procedural does not denote the story of a crime, per se, nor even the story of the solution to a crime, but is more about the story of people at work, people whose work happens to be law enforcement.8 Although the police procedural seemed to surge around 1945 with Lawrence Treat's 1945 novel V as in Victim, there were other authors who wrote in this style. This detective style is important to explain because the books that are assigned to this curriculum unit are police procedurals. Police procedurals were selected for this curriculum unit because of the meticulous work of the crime detective in today's society. When a witness withholds information, as in a case of snitching, the detective must utilize clues beyond the crime scene to put pieces of the puzzle together. The deductive skills of the detective in police procedurals are illuminated in the absence of witnesses. The extra effort this requires does not mean that the crime will not be solved, but the process is certainly more difficult. Even though detective writers make use of withholding evidence to lengthen their plots, this does not mean that they approve of it.
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