fiction and social justice

Nouvo Noir: Mystery and detective fiction is increasingly concerned not just with solving the crime, but with digging into the injustices of society

By Anne-Marie O’Connor

Once upon a time, American popular fiction was full of stories of social inequality and great injustice. Consider the fiction of writers such as John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair, what might be called social realism.

Today, such themes may be less common in mainstream best-sellers, but they are alive in well in popular genre fiction – especially in the areas of crime fiction and mystery….