Murder in Motion - A Sociological Analysis of the City, Transit, and Identity in the Modernist and Postmodernist Thriller

Murder in Motion examines the fictional category of the thriller - one founded on the affects 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 phases of the thriller, while the meaning of suspense changes according to the velocity and spatial compressions resulting from technological change.
The audience for the book will be students, instructors, and researchers in literary studies, film studies, media studies, as well as researchers in sociology and critical theory.

List of contents

1.Introduction: The Speed of Suspense. 2.Mistaken for No One: Intersubjective Transfers on Trains. 3.Suspensions of Identity: Social Acceleration and Character. 4.The Child Vanishes: Spatial Enclosure in Aero-Thrillers. 5.Remapping Espionage: Don DeLillo's Narratives of Transnational Intrigue. 6.New Frontiers for Suspense: Dispatches from the Multiverse. 7.The Suspense of Speed. 8.Bibliography.

About the author

Michael Mirabile is an Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College, where he teaches courses in film and post-World War II fiction. He earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University. He is the author of Edges of Noir: Extreme Filmmaking in the 1960s (2024).

Product details

• Authors: Michael Mirabile
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 07.05.2026
• EAN: 9781032789293
• ISBN: 978-1-032-78929-3
• No. of pages: 252
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen, Raster,schwarz-weiss
• Series: Routledge Studies in Crime, Culture and Media
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, Social Theory, FICTION / Thrillers / Crime, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban, Interdisciplinary studies, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Urban communities, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, FICTION / Urban & Street Lit, Urban communities / city life