In This Essay, I Will Discuss Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum
PLUM’STHEGIRL!JANET EVANOVICH AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF MS COMMON AMERICA THEO D’HAEN In this essay, I will discuss Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series – thirteen instalments to date, from OnefortheMoneyin 1994 to Lean Mean Thirteen in 2007,1 and undoubtedly many more to follow – in the light of some recent theorizing on American crime writing, and particularly on the various forms of empowerment involved. For a long time, crime writing in general and detective fiction in particular were regarded as merely escapist forms of popular litera- ture, as cheap entertainment for the masses, unworthy of serious con- sideration, or, worse, as distractions on the road to the cultured appre- ciation of true or good Literature. In recent years, though, the insight has dawned that, just like its more glamorous high literary counterpart, popular literature too can do what Jane Tompkins has memorably termed “cultural work”.2 Tompkins coined the term primarily with regard to a nineteenth-century American popular genre, sentimental domestic fiction, written by and for women. Specifically, she argued that this kind of writing, rather than the mere drivel it was branded as by contemporary male writers, actually constituted a form of female empowerment. Sean McCann, in Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled 1 Janet Evanovich, One for the Money, London: Penguin, 1994 and Lean Mean Thirteen, New York, St Martin’s Press, 2007. See also Two for the Dough, London, Penguin, 1996; Three to Get Deadly, London, Penguin, 1997; Four to Score, London, Pan, 1999; High Five, London: Pan, 2000; Hot Six, London: Macmillan, 2000; Seven Up, London: Headline, 2002; Hard Eight, London: Headline, 2003; To the Nines, London: Headline, 2004, Ten Big Ones, London: Headline, 2005, Eleven on Top, London, Headline, 2006, Twelve Sharp, London: Headline, 2007.
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