Evolution of Crime Fictions

Early crime fictions involved the hunting and the seizing of the fictional criminals where they would be punished after being seized. Life would then be back to normal since this process was known to restore law and order in the fictional society. However, modern crime fictions have evolved to involve more aspects such as many criminals and solving of mysteries among others.

Mostly, crime fictions were used to represent the socio-economic condition at that time. The crime fictions were not left behind as the society’s norms and practices developed. This caused to hard-boiled crime fictions that we see today, which have a tough protagonist against, who sometimes has no moral because of an inward capacity for violence. This includes role confusion of this protagonist, who sometimes may turn from hunting to being hunted by the criminals. This is very different to the criminals in earlier fictions who were normally hunted by the detectives and not the vice versa. Modern crime fictions also include other twisted tales in the crime, which call for the detective to solve a mystery first before being able to catch the criminal. They are also inclusive of a gang of criminals and serial killers unlike when fictions had only one criminal (Hornung and Mueller, 2003).

 This is well presented by Holmes from his film The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), which incorporated morals and learning in the crime solving process. This is what made the film popular among the public to a point of being included in radio series (Gaines, 2009).

In conclusion, as observed earlier, today’s fictions have evolved to exclude morals and to include the defeat of the protagonists. This is unlike fictions in old days, which had seized the criminal restore law and order pattern.