Title
Erasing the City: Criminality, Sexuality, and Maternity in S.T. Haymon's Ben Jurnet Series
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2001
Department
English
Language
English
Publication Title
Clues: A Journal of Detection
Abstract
S.T. Haymon wrote eight detective novels revolving around Detective Inspector Benjamin Jurnet: Death and the Pregnant Virgin (DPV, 1980); Ritual Murder (RM, 1982); Stately Homicide (SH, 1984); Death of a God (DG, 1987); A Very Particular Murder (VPM, 1989); Death of a Warrior Queen (DWQ, 1991); A Beautiful Death (BD, 1993); and Death of a Hero (DH, posthumously published by her estate in 1996). Three of the novels, though nominally based in the city of Norwich, England (called Angleby after the first novel), actually investigate events which occur in the surrounding Norfolk countryside, in a village which houses a shrine to a pregnant Virgin Mary (Death and the Pregnant Virgin), in a stately home once belonging to the family of Anne Boleyn (Stately Homicide), and at an archaeological dig investigating a Druid temple and the tomb of Queen Boudica's husband, Prasutagus (Death of a Warrior Queen). In these novels, as in so much of Conan Doyle's writing about the London of Sherlock Holmes, Norwich/Angleby is merely a starting place, a point of departure for the detective who is called from the security of his office to the dangerous hinterlands beyond the city walls.
Recommended Citation
Winston, Robert P. “Erasing the City: Criminality, Sexuality, and Maternity in S.T. Haymon’s Ben Jurnet Series.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 22, no. 1 (2001): 85-99.