A Great Deliverance Essay essays

A Great Deliverance Essay essays The Use of the Sidekick in Contemporary Detective Fiction It is sometimes difficult to find a detective novel worth reading, especially amidst all of the grocery store trash that many people seem to thrive on and consider great literature. However, two contemporary authors are rising to meet just that challenge. Elizabeth George and Patricia Cornwell do not use cheap tactics to win readers over. They take classic detective fiction approaches to make their novels interesting and worth reading. By using creative techniques as well as contemporary approaches to investigation, both authors are able to create and redefine detective fiction for the new age of readers. One of the most classic themes of detective fiction is that of the detective and a sidekick. This has become an age-old tradition, dating back to Edgar Allan Poe and more famously, Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Both Patricia Cornwell and Elizabeth George make good use of this theme in their novels Postmortem and A Great Deliverance, respectively. Cornwell and George address contemporary societal conflicts as well as the problem of keeping a balance of normalcy and reality within the detective fiction novel through the use of similar detective sidekicks. Detective assistants are a critical yet necessary aspect of solving crimes. They occur throughout the history of the detective fiction genre, beginning with Poe and the unknown narrator who assists Auguste Dupin in solving his murder cases. The sidekick however, has developed and changed much over the years from this beginning nameless and mostly voiceless character. Instead of simply standing back and narrating as the detective solves the crime, cotemporary assistants have become just as involved in the crimes as the primary investigators. They make judgments, provide new ideas, and even in some cases use their own deduction and skills to save the ...