Goodwin Crime Family Great Yarmouth trilogy
- Submitting institution
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The University of East Anglia
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 186137304
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Little, Brown
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This work, a trilogy or series of novels following one family, took six years to research and write. It amounts to 250,000 words in length. Research involved considerable groundwork, and consultations with police, law, forensic and medical professionals, as well local media archives. Extensive fictional resources were drawn upon, as well interviews with international writers and crime writers.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The research core of this crime trilogy is the examination of societal turbulence through the depiction of personal distress. Working class deprivation and gender inequality drive people to do extreme things. A forgotten and impoverished corner of the British seaside, under the looming cloud of Brexit, further plays into the sense of approaching apocalypse. The three novels are political, neo-noir fictions, which sit purposefully between what is commonly known as literary fiction and crime fiction. They attest to the dynamism and pertinence of the crime genre, and the urgency of the moment. Textual references to writers including Ted Lewis and David Peace engage with and extend regional and vernacular-grounded fictions. Written and published between 2016 and 2019, the novels are specific to time and place, and offer the first such sustained British criminal narrative at a key time in the nation’s history. The novels follow a suddenly widowed matriarch, and mother of three grown-up children, as she navigates a deeply prejudiced world and underworld. Everyone is corrupt, and the weather unremittingly biting. This noir fiction works to highlight human depravity, suffering and injustice, while also suggesting possible redemption and ways to survive: personally and collectively. The novels self-consciously resist generic formula. No one solves anything, yet the questions posed are vital. It is purposeful fiction written from the perspective of the victims – victims of longstanding state neglect, corruption and inequality. To humanise such work, to engage traditional and new audiences, requires an inclusive and accessible approach to prose style, along with acute characterisation, a tight structure and a solid arc. Such work can make for uncomfortable reading in the wrong setting. That is its point: to remind readers of the power of fiction, in new and lasting ways.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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