From hansom cabs to harbour raves: a history of the city in Australian crime fiction

The city has long been the dominant setting of the Australian crime novel. The representations of this setting, however, are under constant change and the city has evolved from the image of a distant stranger, to a threatening character in its own right, and finally to a themed space that connects body and landscape. This paper maps the evolution of the way cities are integrated and characterised in Australian crime fiction from the days of colonisation to modern times, discussing the work of colonial writer Fergus Hume, the retro-historical 1920s fiction of Kerry Greenwood, the 1980s Sydney-based work of Marele Day, and the contemporary Melbourne-centred work of Peter Temple, amongst others. It draws on John Wylie’s theories of landscape, Gaston Bachelard's explorations into the notion of space, and the competing interpretations of the city dweller proposed by Robert Park and John Irwin.