Patterns of murder: Crime fiction, serial killers and late capitalism

This study explores the dynamics of best-selling crime fiction as functional to American culture. Using the content analytic method, this study relies on Ernest Mandel's model of late capitalism to explain violent crime as a phenomenon of strong commodity-based cultures. The study looks specifically at crime, punishment and acceptable behavior in the crime fiction genre, paying close attention to inherent contradictions in the genre. In locating patterns, the study also suggests that crime fiction is socially useful in the recurring theme that punishment, and therefore retribution, is possible not in the afterlife, but in the here and now. The paper argues that crime fiction is an illustrative genre of American culture in the advanced stage of capitalism that Mandel describes and that crime fiction provides one way for the citizen to reconcile notions of internal frustration that is sustained when attempting to live the American Dream. Ultimately the study argues that the serial killer in crime fiction epitomizes the conflicts that arise in the identity of the postmodern self.