La scène de crime évolue-t-elle
au fil des siècles?
Le roman policier est un genre à succès depuis plus d'un siècle. Qu'est-ce qui rend ce
genre si populaire? les détails sordides ? le profil du tueur ? une course contre la montre?
Voici un panel de romans policiers à partir duquel nous élaborerons les caractéristiques
d'une scène de crime en littérature. Qu’est-ce qui fait donc l’attrait d’une scène de crime ?
1. Edgar Allan Poe, Murder in the Rue Morgue, 1841
Il y a eu un meurtre à la Rue Morgue. La police ainsi que les détectives investiguent la scène du
crime.
«The apartment was in the wildest disorder—the furniture broken and
thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this
the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the floor. On a
chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth were two or three
long and thick tresses of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood, and
seeming to have been pulled out by the roots. Upon the floor were found
four Napoleons, an ear–ring of topaz, three large silver spoons, three smaller
of métal d’Alger, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand francs in
gold. The drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner were open, and
had been, apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them. A
small iron safe was discovered under the bed (not under the bedstead). It
was open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents beyond a few old
letters, and other papers of little consequence.»
2. Stephen King, It, 1986
Le bateau de George, un petit garçon, tombe dans le lac. Lorsque George
le regarde être englouti par l’eau, un clown vient parler au petit garçon. Ce
clown aux yeux jaunes propose à George de récupérer son bateau grâce à
des ballons qui flottent.
« ‘They float,’ the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It
held George’s arm in its thick and toward wormy grip, it pulled George
toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and
bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George
craned his neck away from the final blackness and began to scream into
the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn ski which curved
above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and
piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their