Crime Fiction in the Age of #MeToo presents a compelling and timely fourth-wave feminist reading of crime fiction in the age of #metoo. The book explores four major fourth-wave feminist focal points, #metoo, rape culture/reclaim the night, toxic masculinity, and LBGTQ+ perspectives. These topics have been the subject of intense feminist scrutiny and campaigning, and this attention is reflected in contemporary crime fiction and its generic and thematic preoccupation with such topics.

The book opens with a chapter presenting an overview of existing critical perspectives and feminist debates, demonstrating how fourth-wave feminist ideas and debates are generating fresh ways of reading past crime texts, and new ways of reading new crime fictions. The chapter also outlines the book’s methodology. Each of the four main chapters examining these issues will use the critical vocabulary and concepts from discourses of resistance to present new readings of recently published crime fictions, and to reassess canonical works and authors in order to produce new compelling critiques of gender and genre.

Through a focus on actively reading and engaging with crime literature, Crime Fiction in the Age of #MeToo will redress this significant gap in knowledge and meet a substantial need in scholarly debates for a fourth-wave feminist analysis of crime fiction which draws links between literature and ongoing urgent social and cultural debates.

Charlotte Beyer is a crime fiction specialist and has published widely on contemporary literature, feminism and pedagogy.

Introduction; Chapter One: Reading Crime Fiction Through a Fourth-Wave Feminist Lens; Chapter Two: #Metoo; Chapter Three: Rape Culture – Reclaim the Night; Chapter Four: Toxic Masculinity; Chapter Five: LBGTQ+; Conclusion.