Detective Storyworlds: Longmire, True Detective, and La trêve

This paper addresses one question: What makes detective series popular today? In the past, scholars have responded that the genre is mainly focused on plot, to the point of becoming a narrative prototype. This approach explains why detective fiction appears to be more limited in its proliferation across media than other genres such as fantasy or science fiction. If plot is the dominant feature of the genre, and plot somehow works against proliferation, then why are we still producing and consuming so many detective series? Following Marie-Laure Ryan, I wish to argue that a shift from plot to worldbuilding has occurred in detective fiction. This shift follows the evolution of narrative theory which in the last decades had to expand to other disciplines and media. In the same way that narratology embraced the new concept of 'world,' popular series have adopted its potential to proliferate, an aptitude that is now truly part of its aesthetics and poetics. I want to describe and understand the increasingly important role played by storyworlds in detective fiction so as to better apprehend how popular series are made in our cultural era of mass media production.