The article considers one of the major genres of crime literature, designated in the author’s terms as ‘victim investigation’, as well as a practical instance of its implementation in contemporary novelistics and cinema. The distinctive feature of this genre is a special kind of hero conducting the investigation (a potential victim of crime, which also defines other aspects of the poetics). The material is Arturo Perez Reverte’s novel The Flanders Panel and Jim McBride’s movie Uncovered based on this work. The comparative analysis of the literary source and its screen adaptation highlights different mechanisms of transformation of the canonical model of ‘victim investigation’. They are related partly to the general propensity to simplification when translating a fiction text into the cinematographic medium (in particular, through changes in the plot and character system). However, the authors of film interpretation also play with the genre convention in their own way by reducing it comically.
crime literature; cinema; genre; ‘victim investigation’; The Flanders Panel.