Thrill to Kill

Thrill to Kill: Crime Fiction in South Asia expands the geography of crime fiction studies beyond India to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Burma, exploring diverse crime narratives across multiple languages and regional cultures including Assam, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, and Kerala since the 1950s.

This critical intervention moves beyond imitative Anglophone models to reveal crime fiction's complex generic history in South Asia. Using postcolonial and decolonial approaches, contributors analyse mysteries, forensic memoirs, thrillers, pulp fiction, spy fiction, comics, and cinematic adaptations. Chapters examine Burmese Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Agatha Christie's influence on Hindi cinema and OTT platforms, Edgar Allan Poe's ratiocination tales in contemporary Assamese fiction, and more, consistently challenging singular models of crime fiction studies and revealing the heterogeneity of South Asian crime narratives.

Part of the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, this volume is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners, literary critics, and historians working in genre studies, crime fiction, postcolonial literatures, cultural studies, popular literature, and South Asian studies.