How Much Crime Novel is there in the Crime Novel? On Genre Reflexivity in Gaja Grzegorzewska’s Stony Night

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the contemporary crime novel by looking at genre reflexivity in Gaja Grzegorzewska’s novel Stony Night (Kamienna noc). Taking the traditional genre and the work of Agatha Christie as reference points, this article identifies commonalities and divergences between Grzegorzewska’s novel and the traditionally oriented detective novel. The article analyzes fundamental issues of the detective novel, such as: plot, narration, composition, and the employment of conventions to reference the genre tradition along with Grzegorzewska’s experimentation, which is supported by intertextuality – a mode that is becoming increasingly relevant to the Polish variant of this genre.