Murder in Motion

A Sociological Analysis of the City, Transit, and Identity in the Modernist and Postmodernist Thriller

This book examines the fictional category of thriller through the lens of city life using exegetical tools drawn from urban sociology to locate the mechanism of suspense and determine the significance of representations of anxiety within metropolitan settings against the backdrop of increased mobility and speed of modern life.

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.

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