MODERNIZATION OF A LITERARY GENRE IN TOM CLANCY AND MARK GREANEY’S «COMMAND AUTHORITY»: UKRAINIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

In 2012 T. Clancy and M. Greaney predicted some tragic events that later proved real in Ukraine. The paper aims to identify developments of the detective genre in the novel «Command Authority», taking into account the contemporary circumstances in Ukraine. The book combines the individual writing style, large-scale actions and precise descriptions, rapid changing locations, unpredictable elaboratenesses of several plot lines.
Based on reviewed theoretical approaches to defining and classifying genres of criminal literature, we argue that the book is hybrid in form since it presents two narrative models, i.e. a novel and a story, describing both the results of the crime and the prospects of its investigation.
The novel illustrates the ambiguity of literary criticism since we can identify it as a spy detective as well as a conspiracy detective. Like in the classic detective story, the authors attract the reader to solve the mystery of a crime, but real events outside the book make you think about whether the unravelled mysteries of the present, rooted in the seemingly understandable past, could be ever solved in the future.
To summarize: by combining the characteristic features of several types of detective novels (spy, political, historical and conspiracy), the authors of «Command Authority» T. Clancy and M. Greaney have extended the genre of the spy detective, so the novel falls under the class of the political spy thriller merging with the conspiracy detective.