Murder in Motion: A Sociological Analysis of the City, Transit, and Identity in the Modernist and Postmodernist Thriller (Routledge Studies in Crime, Culture and Media)

Murder in Motion examines the fictional category of the thriller - a genre founded on the effects and objects of suspense - through the lens of city dwelling.In particular, the purpose is to locate the mechanism of suspense against the backdrop of the increased mobility and speed of modern life, employing exegetical tools drawn from urban sociology and related fields to determine the significance of representations of anxiety within metropolitan settings. Existing scholarship has tended to treat suspense as a technique of temporal delay and the thriller as a formal genre.Quite differently, this study reads key (literary, cinematic, and televisual) narratives in relation to epochal transformations of society, from industrialization and modernity to globalization, placing emphasis on the intersection of modern transport and identity.It is a phenomenon the sociologist Hartmut Rosa has designated "social acceleration." It becomes evident through the classical, modernist, and postmodernist