Gothic Forensics: Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery (Semiotics and Popular Culture) - Hardcover

Arntfield, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1137567937 ISBN 13: 9781137567932

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Synopsis

Michael Arntfield interrogates the legacy of Victorian-era crime fiction and Gothic horror on investigative forensic methods used by police today.

About this title

About the Author

 Michael Arntfield is Associate Professor in the Department of English & Writing Studies at Western University, Canada. He is also a fellow with the University of Toronto’s Centre for Research in Forensic Semiotics, an academic and investigative advisor with the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases, and a previous Fulbright Chair at Vanderbilt University, USA. Formerly serving as a police officer and detective for over fifteen years, he now specializes in literary criminology and the criminal humanities. For more information, visit www.michaelarntfield.com.  

From the Back Cover

This book explores a number of foundational Victorian Gothic texts that have either predicted or prefigured key investigative methods used by police today. It also critically assesses the legislative, procedural, and forensic implications of crime fiction and horror produced during the Victorian era. Titles ranging from Bleak House to Dracula are demonstrated to be driving forces behind the professional standards and investigative methods used by police departments in the United States and United Kingdom, both then and now. Gothic Forensics explains how and why the Gothic served as the unlikely but irrefutable creative engine for advances in forensics made in the following century―techniques and technologies taken for granted today―as well as the literary progenitor of the prevailing methodologies now used in criminal investigation and profiling, the collection of evidence, and the administration of justice. 

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1137567937
• ISBN 13: 9781137567932
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278