A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Sensational, Sentimental by Maurizio Ascari
Published 2007 · 74,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Sensational, Sentimental to read?
A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Sensational, Sentimental scores 61 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 67 out of 100
- Academic vocabulary drawing on literary history, bibliography, and postcolonial theory.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Historiographical argument intertwined with close textual readings.
- Information density: 74 out of 100
- Dense archival and bibliographic detail supporting the theoretical argument.
- Narrative indirection: 18 out of 100
- Counter-historical argument requires sustained indirect engagement with received accounts.
- Symbolic density: 16 out of 100
- Analyzes symbolic functions of the supernatural and sensational in crime narratives.
- Ironic distance: 16 out of 100
- Critical irony toward canonical history and its gatekeeping assumptions.
- Resolution withholding: 14 out of 100
- Opens questions about genre history without always resolving them.
- Structural complexity: 44 out of 100
- Organized as argument against a received narrative, requiring sustained cross-referencing.
How A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Sensational, Sentimental is regarded
A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Sensational, Sentimental holds a literary regard score of 65 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.