Little Detectives: An introspection into Young Adult Detective & Autistic Spectrum

Abstract

From its inception Detective genre has placed marginalised groups in periphery. Two of the greatest and archetypal mystery narratives involving Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes feature white men as their protagonists with no role attributed to women in the narrative. The Golden Age of Deduction broke these stereotypes by creating Women detectives, Children detectives and most importantly, by incorporating racially, culturally and traditionally diversified narratives into their storyline. In the Twenty First Century, Detective fiction is one of the most experimental genres and it has situated itself as one of the pioneer genres of literature with wide reading population.
Inclusion and Diversity are keywords that dominate this genre today and creating stories with autistic representation and rewriting already existing narratives with autistic characters has become a common feature in mystery genre. This research paper will explore the representation of autistic children in detective stories and in terms of their relevance and authenticity.