Evil Rides on the Bus

Space and Female Identities in Margery Allingham’s and Josephine Tey’s Crime Novels

Abstract

Similarly to other genres, Britain’s crime fiction could not escape the traumas of the World Wars despite its ‘escapist’ mission. A return to the country house either in ruralareas, small towns or ‘villagized’ city centres is one of the phenomena which intensified with a growing awareness of mass production and technological development after the Great War. Classical crime fiction which has the middle-class in its focus wonderfully reflects such concerns. The unbearable sight of the present and the terrifying feeling of losing the past deprive the English middle-class of their existence in proper space and time. Their perpetuity in the carefully constructed milieu is constantlyinformed by new waves of modernity either in various forms of crime or disturbing characters. Allingham and Tey wonderfully demonstrate the agonies of modernity reflected in the character of the young female figure and her choice of places for action. In my paper I seek to explore the battle of the Victorian Angel and the Modern Avenger in their ‘space explorations’.