A1 Journal article (refereed)
Perpetrator Trauma in Television Crime Series We Hunt Together (2022)

Rodi-Risberg, M., & Mäntymäki, H. (2022). Perpetrator Trauma in Television Crime Series We Hunt Together. Crime Fiction Studies, 3(2), 175-193. https://doi.org/10.3366/cfs.2022.0073

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Rodi-Risberg, Marinella; Mäntymäki, Helen

Journal or series: Crime Fiction Studies

ISSN: 2517-7982

eISSN: 2517-7990

Publication year: 2022

Volume: 3

Issue number: 2

Pages range: 175-193

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Publication country: United Kingdom

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/cfs.2022.0073

Publication open access: Not open

Publication channel open access: 

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/84134

Abstract

Crime fiction scholarship increasingly focuses on trauma in contemporary crime narratives but has largely neglected to investigate perpetrator trauma. This article contributes to filling this gap by exploring perpetrator trauma in We Hunt Together (2020), a British television crime series written by Gaby Hull, that portrays the consequences of perpetrator trauma on a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Babeni (Baba) Lenga, waiting for permanent residency in the UK. Viewers learn about his violent past through flashbacks and his involvement with Frederica ‘Freddy’ Lane which precipitates Baba’s present return to violence. Informed by crime fiction studies, literary trauma theory, and research on child soldier narratives, this study argues that perpetrator trauma complicates and renders agency ambiguous in We Hunt Together, where Baba’s story eventually leads to healing. Ultimately, the perpetrator trauma narrative of a former child soldier, focalised through Baba, brings together the themes of war, colonialism, and the growing use of child soldiers in the present, challenging the crime-solving plot by raising ethical and political issues of guilt and responsibility and problematising any easy distinctions between victim and perpetrator/criminal.

Keywords: crime series; themes (narration); traumas (mental objects); guilt; liability; flashback; fictional characters; offenders; child soldiers

Free keywords: ambiguous agency; child soldiers; flashback; perpetrator trauma; television crime series; We Hunt Together

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2022

JUFO rating: 1