Crime Scenery in Postwar Film and Photography: HENRIK GUSTAFSSON, 2019, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. xv + 285, illus., index, £64.99 (cloth), £51.99 (eBook).

Unlike Wajda's, however, Gustafsson's preferred landscape is (almost) unpopulated, silent, deformed ("stained, striated, bruised or rubbed", p. 255), enigmatic and challenging to read, as it often presents an "inscrutable evidence of an unfathomable crime" (p. 4). Those who expect this book, on the strength of its title, to engage with film thrillers and police photography, will be in for a disappointment. For Gustafsson, the two parts of Mitchell's assertion seem to be a non-sequitur, as (Gustafsson counterclaims) landscape 'has assumed a new critical role precisely because its time has passed' (p. 20). [Extracted from the article]