Ebb and flow

Research background: Whitehead proposes trauma literature ‘novelists have frequently found that the impact of trauma can only adequately be represented by mimicking its forms and symptoms’ (2004: 3), utilising narrative strategies such as repetition and fragmentation. This Dodd Ebb and flow TEXT Special Issue 45, Writing Death and Dying ed Donna Lee Brien, October 2017 10 research aims to better represent the complexity of traumatic images and sensations in crime fiction by drawing upon these elements of trauma narrative, and aligning them with crime fiction conventions that maintain the pace and suspense of the crime genre. Rowan (1990) claims the dissociated subpersonality that may be induced by trauma is capable of acting as a separate identity. This concept is drawn upon in the creative work to represent the impact of trauma in crime fiction, while using these cuts in perspective to aggravate the crime plot and heighten tension. Research contribution: This text incorporates elements of trauma narrative into crime fiction to develop an original hybrid creative work with a narrative structure that mimics traumatic memory using repetition, through water and drowning motifs, and fragmentation, through cuts in perspective and time. These are aligned with crime fiction conventions in the text by casting the dissociated sub-personalities in first and second tense to create two dialogic voices, which heightens tension in the creation of an unreliable narrator, generates red herrings (false clues), and cliff-hangers where scenes cut to a different perspective. This research aims to develop a framework to classify such hybrid works as a subset of trauma literature. Research significance: The significance of this hybrid sub-genre is that it can adequately represent the impact of trauma to a genre fiction audience. Other excerpts of this novel-length work have been published in peer-reviewed AAWP conference proceedings.