Genre conventions in crime fiction

The article raises the question of the existence of conventions that define the poetics of each of the main genres of detective literature: classical detective, “adventurous investigation” (in N.N. Kirilenko terms), police novel, and “victim investigation” (as described by the author of the article). Unlike the established tradition of highlighting the rules for writing an abstract “detective story”, it is proposed to turn to the system of criminal genres, denoted with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s three-dimensional model. Based on this, several genre conventions are highlighted, which, consciously or not, are adhered to by both authors and readers. At the heart of their differentiation lies the perception of the game, forming its own kind of poles in the system of criminal literature: the gaming relationships between the detective, the criminal, and the representatives of official authorities in the classical detective and “adventurous investigation” stand in stark contrast to the purely negative game of the criminal with the victim and / or detective in the police novel and “victim investigation”. Other important genre conventions are also considered: the essential infallibility of the Great Detective in the classical detective, which, on the contrary, is not relevant to “adventurous investigation”; the team investigation of professionals in the police novel, and the forced investigation conducted by the victim to save their own life. The final conclusions: each of the criminal genres embodies its specific convention upon which works and their reception by readers are constructed; the violation of such a convention blurs the boundaries of the genre and can be a form of authorial play.