Murder In Motion A Sociological Analysis Of The City Transit And Identity In The Modernist And Postmodernist Thriller

Murder in Motion examines the fictional category of the thriller – a genre founded on the effects and objects of suspense – through the lens of city dwelling. In particular the purpose is to locate the mechanism of suspense against the backdrop of the increased mobility and speed of modern life employing exegetical tools drawn from urban sociology and related fields to determine the significance of representations of anxiety within metropolitan settings. Existing scholarship has tended to treat suspense as a technique of temporal delay and the thriller as a formal genre. Quite differently this study reads key (literary cinematic and televisual) narratives in relation to epochal transformations of society from industrialization and modernity to globalization placing emphasis on the intersection of modern transport and identity. It is a phenomenon the sociologist Hartmut Rosa has designated social acceleration. It becomes evident through the classical modernist and postmodernist phases of the thriller while the meaning of suspense changes according to the velocity and spatial compressions resulting from technological change. The audience for the book will be students instructors and researchers in literary studies film studies and media studies as well as researchers in sociology and critical theory. |Murder in Motion A Sociological Analysis of the City Transit and Identity in the Modernist and Postmodernist Thriller