Detective Narrative Typology: Going Undercover in the French Caribbean

Caribbean literature of French expression is certainly not lacking in terms of mystery and intrigue. Quite to the contrary, murders, disappearances, kidnappings, poisonings, larceny, and countless other acts of an illicit nature abound in the region's works. Furthermore, while verging on the commonplace, the everenigmatic richness of such activity-ranging from the petty crime evoked in passing to that which, front and center, serves as the plot's driving force-is not just as soon forgotten. Faced with circumstances that resist clear interpretation or rationale, protagonists and readers alike find themselves compelled to question the sum of their observations and to seek out additional clues in anticipation of better understanding the evidence before them. Far from constituting mere ad hoc musings or avenues of inquiry, many of the ensuing investigations are thus replete with a veritable detective, witnesses, testimonies, alibis and-often, but not always-a guilty party. Curiously, however, such abundance of unmistakable traits has not led to the emergence of the detective novel as a readily-identifiable genre in the French Caribbean.1 Although publishers have not hesitated to promote texts' crime-novel features-touting, for example, the makings of an “unbridled detective novel, an “erotico-detective plot or an investigation that goes “from interrogation to interrogation2-the French-Caribbean detective narrative remains by and large an undercover operation that has yet to be officially recognized.