Murder in Motion

A Sociological Analysis of the City, Transit, and Identity in the Modernist and Postmodernist Thriller
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-78929-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 252 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Crime, Culture and Media

Murder in Motion examines the fictional category of the thriller – one founded on the affects 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, media studies, as well as researchers in sociology and critical theory.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mirabile, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Populärkultur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1.Introduction: The Speed of Suspense. 2.Mistaken for No One: Intersubjective Transfers on Trains. 3.Suspensions of Identity: Social Acceleration and Character. 4.The Child Vanishes: Spatial Enclosure in Aero-Thrillers. 5.Remapping Espionage: Don DeLillo’s Narratives of Transnational Intrigue. 6.New Frontiers for Suspense: Dispatches from the Multiverse. 7.The Suspense of Speed. 8.Bibliography.

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Mirabile is an Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College, where he teaches courses in film and post-World War II fiction. He earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University. He is the author of Edges of Noir: Extreme Filmmaking in the 1960s (2024).