Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Cornwell, Patricia - Peter Messent (essay date fall–winter 2000)

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Peter Messent (essay date fall–winter 2000)

SOURCE: Messent, Peter. “Patricia Cornwell's Unnatural Exposure and the Representation of Space: Changing Patterns in Crime Fiction.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 21, no. 2 (fall–winter 2000): 37–45.

[In the following essay, Messent explores the changing landscape of investigative fiction, citing Unnatural Exposure as a prime example.]

The representation of space, and particularly of city space, is of crucial importance in American hard-boiled detective fiction. In this article, I first map the normative relationship between the detective and that urban landscape which he or she inhabits, using the work of Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau and Steve Pile as my critical base. I then examine the Patricia Cornwell novel, Unnatural Exposure (1997), to illustrate how, in this particular contemporary crime novel, such relationships are subject to considerable...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Charles Champlin (review date 11 February 1990)
   2. Joan Hamerman Robbins (review date 7 July 1991)
   3. Charles Champlin (review date 20 September 1992)
   4. Eva Schegulla (review date summer 1993)
   5. Bettina Berch (review date fall 1993)
   6. Charles Champlin (review date 4 September 1994)
   7. Dinitia Smith (review date 11 September 1994)
   8. Maureen Corrigan (review date 20 August 1995)
   9. Jonathan Coe (review date 1 October 1995)
   10. Mary Scott (review date 13 October 1995)
   11. Mary Cantwell (essay date 14 July 1996)
   12. David Sexton (review date 1 March 1997)
   13. Kirkus Reviews (review date 1 July 1997)
   14. Paul Skenazy (review date 20 July 1997)
   15. Peter Messent (essay date fall–winter 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright