This introduction briefly deals with the major orientations of this European Review Focus on ‘European crime fiction’. It first specifies what is meant by ‘Europe’ and which type of questions can be asked of crime fiction in view of a better understanding of Europe’s multiple and changing identities. It then presents the various contributions by linking them with the three fundamental questions of (1) circulation of crime fiction, (2) expansion of crime fiction in the broader cultural, social and economic field, and (3) the relevance of crime fiction for a thorough reflection on some properly European aspects of culture and society.

During the last two decades a dramatic shift in the production and distribution strategies of TV series has taken place on a global level. This article discusses how these broad changes also led to a transformation in the form and the themes of European crime series, which emerge as ideal objects to study the representation of European societies in contemporary popular culture. The article looks at recent serial crime dramas such as La casa de papel, Suburra, and Peaky Blinders, which have abandoned the classic formula of European crime TV series, usually focused on the figure of the detective and primarily addressed to a national audience. Designed for an international market, these series provocatively concentrate on the figure of the criminal and adopt an explicitly sensationalist approach. The article argues that this style and the bleak depiction of European society in these series are both an expression and a critical representation of the rise of populism across the Old Continent.

This article will offer an overview of the ever-changing relationship between the crime genre – understood as a global, transnational phenomenon – and European art cinema, with its national specificities. After a historical contextualization, this contribution focuses on the mode of production and circulation of contemporary European crime cinema by looking at two case studies of the contemporary national productions of Spain and Northern Ireland. The goal is to grasp the shifts occurring in this relationship, so understanding both the role played by the ‘auteur’ label in the distribution, commercialization, and appreciation of European crime cinema and how easily-marketable crime storylines promote the creation of new modes of authorship.

In this article, we examine developments in HBO’s original European productions based on a quantitative overview of production from 2007 to early 2020. We supplement this overview with an analysis of the generic changes during the past decade as well as a practical producers’ approach to remakes. The intention is not to analyse the specific series’ content; rather, we scrutinize genre, talent and remakes through the perspective of the HBO brand and the creatives behind the series. The main empirical material for this article is interviews with key informants and an exploitation of online resources. Altogether, this establishes both a historical overview of the productions and an up-to-date idea of how the transnational institution considers its own local endeavours.

The French noir tradition is supposed to dominate the French market of crime fiction, regardless of the growing success of French and non-French thrillers in France. Yet in the last two decades, the French literary crime fiction market has been marked by the arrival of non-French European authors. By combining a quantitative and qualitative approach to publishing series, translations, prizes and festivals, this article highlights the transnational dimension of the French market independently from a spontaneous methodological nationalism encouraged by the reception discourses.

This article investigates the trend of smartphone-enabled screen tourism based on the findings from practice-based research carried out during the development and testing of the locative screen tourism experience ‘DETECt Aarhus’. This work shows how smart screen tourism can facilitate multilayered cultural encounters because it can provide a multifaceted perspective on locations and can motivate people to explore local culture. App-guided tours enable the embodied and emotional experiences of traditional screen tourism, but in a more flexible way that eases the crossing of thresholds between the material space and fictional places of crime stories. The testing of the DETECt Aarhus app’s pilot version further highlighted that popular crime narratives and smart tourism technology can address a broader group beyond fans of specific crime media. In addition, visitors with no previous connection to (local) crime stories can use apps to encounter the destination as a material space, fictional place and site of cultural production.

Noir is a genre label with a long and complex history. The success of certain European home-grown forms of the genre (the French polar, the Scandinavian noir, etc.) invite us to reflect on the range but also the limits of the label in today’s European culture. The seemingly paradoxical example of Donald Westlake’s Ordo, an American noir novel that is perhaps neither ‘truly American’ nor ‘noir’ (and perhaps not even a ‘novel’) will serve here as a test case for some reflections on the actual use and function of the noir label in European literary culture.

In this article, Elizabethan and Jacobean Baroque drama is considered as a comparative, structuring reference and as a control parameter for understanding contemporary British public television police drama as a genre in its own right. The argument for its autonomy and specificity lies not primarily with formal arguments, but with its intimate connection with representations on government and governance, as practices and world-models aimed at the management of complexity. Starting from the above, I premise that the public police drama format is highly relevant for Europe at large, not only as a fictional means of comprehending complex government, but as an emerging forum of actual public deliberation on the means and goals of complex government. The logical extension of the current study would be a future analysis of the manner in which the suggested template of police drama was absorbed in the continental television and government culture. For the moment the argument is restricted to pointing out the premises offered by the British original format for a poetics of complex order and of multi-level governance essential for the configuration of a European political imaginary.

Philanthropic foundations have become increasingly important in present-day societies. In relation to governance, they represent some specific features. Like corporations, they are subject to regulation, but they differ by having neither owners nor customers. This makes the governance of foundations an important issue for study. At the same time, governance by foundations is likewise of importance. It includes the role of foundations in corporate governance based on their ownership in corporations and their role in resource allocation based on the returns of their assets. Against this background, this article addresses three research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of the governance of foundations? (2) What role do foundations play for corporate governance? (3) What role do foundations play for resource allocation? In order to contribute to answering these questions this article provides an analysis of the first centenary (1917−2017) of a major Swedish philanthropic foundation, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. It is concluded that successful foundation governance is characterized by (1) rule compliance, (2) loyalty to the founders, and (3) legitimacy among prospective grantees. Additional conclusions are that the larger, the more concentrated, and the more long-term the asset portfolio, the more significant will be the role a foundation may play in corporate governance, and the more successful asset management and the more careful project selection, the more significant will be the role a foundation may play in resource allocation. In addition, the article demonstrates the reciprocal relationships between foundations, corporations, and grantees.