P.D. James's Mystery Tales

Reflections on the Genre

Abstract

Abstract: Throughout her long career P. D. James turns mainly to novels, but occasionally she also tackles shorter forms, short stories written on commission, often at Christmas time and published in magazines. She thus follows a well-established tradition, at the same time exploiting narrative modes typical of the Golden Age. However, the Author reworks the conventions of the past creating a textual game based on intertextuality and metafiction. In the limited space of the short story P. D. James reflects on the genre, she sometimes exploits humorous traits and introduces references to writers and characters of detective fiction, to Agatha Christie to start with, but also more cryptic intertextual elements, playing with names, situations and using the character of a writer as a protagonist/detective.

Key words: Christmas detective fiction, short story, meta/intertertextuality