I argue that both Doumenc and Fforde adapt their chosen genres in order to explore the nature and purpose of their respective national canons. Crime and its subgenres – in the selected examples the whodunit and hard-boiled thriller – may be seen as a transnational genre which readily adapts itself to local contexts. Taking as its main examples Jasper Fforde’s 2001 novel The Eyre Affair, and Philippe Doumenc’s Contre-enquête sur la mort d’Emma Bovary (2009), this article sets out to consider what is special about crime-fiction engagements with the literary canon, and how they differ from other types of adaptation, in particular the use of the central detective figure as a proxy for the position of the reader. Since the 1990s, a trend towards adapting, rewriting, or otherwise engaging with the literary canon – especially the nineteenth-century novel – via the popular genre of crime fiction may be observed on both sides of the English Channel.
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