Transformation of American «hard boiled» detective in the novel «Fiddle city» by D.Kavanagh (J.Barnes)

The article examines the second novel by Julian Barnes about private investigator Nick Duffy, written under the assumed name Dan Kavanagh. Appealing to the tradition of the American «hard-boiled» detective, the author proceeds with the veiled experiments with the genre. Playing with the elements of the genre «formula», apparent in Raymond Chandler’s novels about private investigator Philip Marlowe, Barnes-Kavanagh gets closer to the poetics of postmodern literature. Ironic and grotesque parodying of settled clichés reveals new social and psychological sense. The comparison of R.Chandler’s «Farewell, My Lovely» (1940) and J.Barnes’s «Fiddle City» (1981) analyses the type of the character, chronotope and peculiarities of the plot structure.