Inventing History: Katalin Baráth's Hungarian Middlebrow Detective Series

The chapter discusses the historical detective series by Hungarian author Katalin Baráth, set in early 20th century Hungary, with a heroine, bookshop-keeper, feminist journalist, and busybody amateur detective Veron Dávid, who is strongly reminiscent of a younger, albeit none the less meddlesome and sharp-witted Miss Marple. Veron's physical and emotional journey of negotiating her identity, both as an accidental detective and an ambitious young woman, takes her all over the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, finally returning to and making peace with her rural hometown, Ókanizsa. In the series Baráth attempts to lay down the foundations for the heretofore mostly missing Hungarian middlebrow fiction, while integrating it to the Hungarian literary tradition and to the Hungarian landscape and testing the limits of the classic crime genre's adaptability.