Overview

This exegesis reflects and explores the literary techniques and the author's journey in the creation of the novel 'Better Dead Than Never'. The novel's frame is built around the tradition of the hard-boiled genre of crime fiction, popular in the USA in the 1930s and 1940s. Whilst the novel keeps the tradition of having a Private Investigator as the protagonist, the setting is Melbourne, Australia, and the timeframe is the mid-2000s. In addition, the protagonist is an attached woman in her thirties rather than the traditional single male protagonist. The novel, through the protagonist's journey, explores issues of class, racism, sexism, homophobia, police corruption and the Australian legal system. The exegesis explains how the novel was created, both in terms of fiction technique and the author's self-reflection on his choice of genre, setting, protagonist, dialogue and structure. The methodology includes placing the novel in comparative evaluation with other works from Cornwell, Grafton, Evanovich and works from the hard-boiled genre. It also examines feminism issues in terms of the protagonist's place in a male-dominated police environment and discusses the author's choice of using a female protagonist whilst being a male author.

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9781632080493

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Laurent Boulanger is a novelist and scriptwriter. He writes both literary novels and genre fiction. His literary novels include 'The Research', 'Addiction' and 'The Girl From France', winner of the 2014 Paris Book Festival Awards for 'Best E-book' in all categories (all genres, five languages) and the 2014 eBook Award (#1 Gold) for 'Best Multicultural Fiction'. His genre novels include 'The Intern' (suspense thriller), 'First Kill', 'Second Cut', 'Third Victim' and 'Better Dead Than Never' (crime). First Kill won a Tom Howard Best Mystery Honourable Mention. Second Cut (original published as 'Deadly Deeds' under the pseudonym Kathryn Patterson) won the 2015 Hollywood Book Festival Award for Best Sequel. His crime novel 'Better Dead Than Never' was a finalist (short-listed) at the Crime Writer's Association of Australia (CWWA) 2007 Ned Kelly Awards for Best First Crime Novel, which made it one of the top 4 best crime novels from new authors released in Australia that year. The e-Book version won the 2014 eLit Bronze Award for Best Multicultural Fiction, and the 2014 Readers' Favorite Honorable Mention Award for 'Best Mystery'. It was also nominated for the 2014 Readers' Favorite Awards for 'Best Chick Lit' and 'Best Mystery Sleuth'. His novel The Suffering (originally published as 'The Girlfriend' under the pseudonym Amy Abelli) won an Honorable Mention at the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival for Best Gay Fiction. The French-language feature film version titled 'La Souffrance' is currently in post-production from a screenplay written and directed by Laurent Boulanger and featuring 2013 Miss Australia Universe Finalist Roxanne Fernandez in the lead role. His science-fiction short story 'Outpatient' was included in 'Dying For It: Tales of Sex and Death' and published by Thunder Mouth Press (Perseus Book Group, New York). His literary novel 'The Research' was made into the feature film 'Six Lovers' (2012), featuring Cameron Daddo. He wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Laurent has a Ph.D. in Writing and has taught in the postgraduate writing program (M.A. in Writing) at Swinburne University (Australia) since 2004 with a focus on Journalism, Scriptwriting and Script Adaptation.

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