Contemporary American detective fiction both echoes and breaks with the 1930s-1950s golden age by taking over the codes and myths of hard-boiled and classic English detective fiction and exposing them to our contemporary world. The 1930s city, in which the detective used to investigate methodically towards the key to the mystery, contrasts with the contemporary urban sphere - here New York and more specifically Brooklyn - within which the initial enigma lingers without proper closure. Traditional investigation methods are no longer in use, leaving room to uncertainty and doubt; the story is no longer about a hero's triumph against Evil in an urban setting, but about the efforts of a detective lost in his own fragmentation. Thus, focalisation is not on the outcome of the investigation any more, but rather on the inner quest of a detective who, even before searching for clues to solve the case, is first and foremost searching for his own self. Avant-garde detective fiction in all its forms, and especially comic books and novels, deprives the detective of his iconic status and oneness to turn him into myriad figures which serve as pretext to propose a new definition of the well-known codes of the genre and the metaphysical exploration of our times.
Figures of the detective in contemporary american detective fiction