AQA A-Level English Literature B: Option 2A Elements of Crime Writing — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and the unseen extract below was written for this page. Examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board, since genuine board material is the only reliable guide to exact phrasing and mark scheme wording for your specific examination series.

Related: Paper 2 Texts and Genres study guide, revision notes, Paper 2 exam-technique practice and Option 2B practice.

What does Paper 2A ask you to do? Paper 2A (7717/2A) is a 3-hour, open-book exam worth 75 marks and 40% of AQA A-level English Literature B. You answer one compulsory question on an unseen crime extract (Section A), one essay on a set text (Section B) and one essay connecting two crime texts you did not use in Section B (Section C), each worth 25 marks. Over Sections B and C you must cover three texts: one poetry text, one post-2000 prose text and one further text.

Which texts can you write about in Option 2A?

The current AQA specification (Version 1.5.1, 1 October 2025, section on Elements of crime writing) lists these set texts. Students study one post-2000 prose text, one pre-1900 poetry text and one further text.

Category	Set texts
Post-2000 prose	Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?; Ian McEwan, Atonement; Colin Walsh, Kala (first assessment 2027)
Pre-1900 poetry	Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; George Crabbe, Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde (‘Peter Grimes’, ‘The Laboratory’, ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’)
Further text	Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (pre-1900); Graham Greene, Brighton Rock; William Shakespeare, Hamlet (pre-1900)

Kala can only be answered on from the 2027 series onwards. Check with your teacher which three texts your centre teaches.

---

Section A: unseen passage (25 marks)

The following extract was written for this page. It is the opening of a short story set in a northern English market town in the present day.

Nobody in Haverleigh locked the chapel, so nobody could say who had been inside. The verger found the collection box on the vestry floor at seven, its lid levered up like a tooth, and beside it a single child’s glove, red wool, damp at the fingertips.

By nine, Sergeant Ruth Ellery had walked the aisle twice. She did not like churches. They made people lower their voices, and people who lowered their voices told you less. The verger followed her, apologising to the pews.

“Forty pounds, perhaps,” he said. “Hardly a crime.”

“It’s a crime,” she said. She held the glove up to the window. The light came through the red wool in a hundred small holes. “The question is whose.”

Outside, the market traders were setting up. A boy of about ten stood by the fruit stall with his hands in his pockets, watching the chapel door as if it might open on its own. When Ellery looked at him, he looked at the apples.

She knew the family. Everyone did. She also knew what the town would say by lunchtime, and that by teatime it would be true whether it was or not.

1. Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract. Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed analysis of the ways the author has shaped meanings. [25]

---

Section B: one set text (25 marks)

Answer one question. Each asks you to weigh a view; you must include relevant detailed exploration of the author’s methods.

2. Selected poems: Crabbe, Browning and Wilde. “In these poems the criminal is always punished, if not by the law then by the mind.” To what extent do you agree with this view? You should refer to the work of at least two authors in your answer. [25]

3. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. “The Mariner’s crime matters less than his punishment.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

4. When Will There Be Good News? “The novel is less interested in solving crimes than in the lives that crime leaves behind.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

5. Atonement. “Briony’s false accusation is the real crime of the novel.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

6. Kala (from 2027). “In Kala, the community is as guilty as the killer.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

7. Oliver Twist. “Dickens is more angered by the crimes of institutions than by the crimes of individuals.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

8. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. “The reader, not the detective, is the real target of Christie’s deception.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

9. Brighton Rock. “Ida Arnold’s pursuit of justice is more disturbing than Pinkie’s crimes.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

10. Hamlet. “Hamlet is as much a criminal as Claudius.” To what extent do you agree with this view? Remember to include relevant detailed exploration of Shakespeare’s dramatic methods. [25]

---

Section C: connecting two texts (25 marks)

Answer one question. You must write about two texts that you have not used in Section B.

11. “Crime writing is driven by secrets.” Explore the significance of secrecy in two crime texts you have studied. [25]

12. Explore the significance of guilt and the desire for forgiveness in two crime texts you have studied. [25]

---

How are these answers marked?

AQA marks every Paper 2 answer holistically against five level descriptors that cover all five assessment objectives: AO1 (informed, coherent response with accurate terminology), AO2 (analysis of how meanings are shaped), AO3 (significance of contexts), AO4 (connections across texts) and AO5 (different interpretations). There is no fixed points breakdown, so the indicative content below shows what a top-band answer is likely to explore, not a list to total.

Question 1: indicative content

• The crime and its scale. The theft is small (“Forty pounds, perhaps”), and the verger’s “Hardly a crime” invites the reader to test the specification’s element of the nature of the crimes and the criminals. Ellery’s flat reply, “It’s a crime,” asserts moral order even over a petty offence.
• The detective figure. Ellery fits the element of the typical detective hero: observant (she reads the glove against the light), sceptical of institutions (“She did not like churches”), and focused on agency (“The question is whose”).
• Clues and setting. The unlocked chapel creates the closed-world puzzle of who had access; the sacred setting sharpens the transgression. The red glove is a classic planted clue, but its smallness also hints at a child victim or a child suspect, shifting the reader’s sympathies.
• Structure and suspense. The extract moves from discovery to investigation to a suspect glimpsed in a public space. The boy’s averted gaze (“he looked at the apples”) gives the reader a suspect before the detective names one, a common way crime writing creates suspense.
• Society and judgement. The final paragraph turns from the crime to the town’s gossip: what people say “would be true whether it was or not”. This links to the element of crime writing used to comment on society and to injustice and accusation. Strong answers notice that the extract’s real anxiety may be wrongful blame rather than the theft.
• Language. The simile “levered up like a tooth” makes the damage bodily and violent; the verger “apologising to the pews” is gently comic, contrasting institutional guilt with personal responsibility.

Questions 2 to 10: what a strong essay does

A top-band Section B answer argues a clear position on the view, tests it against counter-evidence, and analyses method (structure, voice, form, imagery) rather than retelling plot.

• Question 2 (Crabbe, Browning, Wilde). For: Crabbe’s Peter Grimes, who mistreats and outlives his workhouse apprentices, is shunned by the Borough and tormented by visions that drive him to a delirious death, so punishment comes through the mind. Against: Browning’s Duke in ‘My Last Duchess’ is never punished; his chilling understatement, “I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together”, shows a criminal protected by rank, and the speaker of ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ ends unpunished and waiting (“And yet God has not said a word!”). Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ complicates the view by turning punishment itself into the crime: the state’s execution of the trooper is presented as cruel, and the refrain “each man kills the thing he loves” spreads guilt to everyone. Good answers compare dramatic monologue (Browning) with narrative verse (Crabbe, Wilde).
• Question 3 (The Rime). The shooting of the albatross is told in a single line and never explained, which supports the view; the long sequence of drought, the death of the crew and the figure of Life-in-Death gives the punishment the weight of the poem. A counter-argument: the crime’s lack of motive is the point, a sin against the “one life” of creation, and the moral, “He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small”, depends on it. The Mariner’s compulsion to retell his tale shows the punishment never fully ends.
• Question 4 (Atkinson). The novel opens with a child’s survival of a violent attack on her family, then follows Joanna Hunter as an adult, the teenage Reggie Chase, Jackson Brodie and DCI Louise Monroe. Shifting viewpoints, coincidence and digressive interior voice keep attention on the aftermath of crime rather than on procedure, which supports the view. Against: the novel still turns on a disappearance that has to be investigated, so detection shapes its later chapters.
• Question 5 (Atonement). For: Briony’s accusation sends Robbie to prison and to war, and the novel’s form, Briony’s own narrative, is her attempt at atonement. Against: the rape of Lola is committed by Paul Marshall, who prospers; McEwan also implicates class, which makes Robbie (the cleaner’s son) believable as a suspect. The metafictional final section asks whether fiction can atone at all, which strong answers use to question “real”.
• Question 6 (Kala). The novel centres on the disappearance of a teenage girl from a small Irish seaside town and the return, years later, of friends who knew her when her remains are found. Arguments can weigh the community’s silences, small-town power and complicity against the individual culpability that the investigation finally exposes. Answer only from the 2027 series.
• Question 7 (Oliver Twist). For: the workhouse, the parish board and Mr Bumble (“the law is a ass”) starve and exploit children legally, and Dickens’s satirical narrator attacks the New Poor Law of 1834. Against: Sikes’s murder of Nancy is the most violent and morally charged episode, and Fagin’s condemned cell is written with intense personal horror, so individual crime is not sidelined.
• Question 8 (Roger Ackroyd). The narrator, Dr Sheppard, is the murderer. Because his account is technically truthful but full of omissions, the reader is deceived by the narrative itself, which supports the view. Poirot, however, is also misled for much of the novel, and his final exposure of Sheppard restores order, so the detective is still central to Christie’s design.
• Question 9 (Brighton Rock). For: Ida pursues Pinkie out of a confident, secular sense of right and wrong and an appetite for life, and Greene sets her morality against the Catholic categories of good and evil held by Pinkie and Rose; her pursuit drives Rose’s suffering. Against: Pinkie murders, threatens and plans to kill Rose, so his crimes are the novel’s moral centre. Strong answers engage with the debate over whether the novel’s sympathy lies with Ida or with Rose.
• Question 10 (Hamlet). For: Hamlet kills Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths and drives Ophelia toward madness. Against: Claudius commits regicide and fratricide, “Murder most foul”, and admits “O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven”; Hamlet’s acts belong to the revenge-tragedy pattern of a wronged avenger. Strong answers use the element of the type of crime text, revenge tragedy, to discuss whether revenge itself is criminal.

Questions 11 and 12: what a strong connective essay does

• Organise by idea, not by text. Build each paragraph on one aspect of the element (for secrecy: concealed guilt, withheld information, the secret as a structural device) and move between both texts within it.
• Give both texts substantial depth. The coverage need not be exactly equal, but both must be explored in detail.
• Use the element list. For Question 12, guilt and remorse, confession and the desire for forgiveness is a named element; pairings that work well include the Mariner’s penance with Briony’s lifelong rewriting, or Claudius’s failed prayer with Sheppard’s written confession.
• Bring in context and interpretation. For example, Victorian penal debate for Wilde or Dickens, Catholic theology for Greene, or the Golden Age conventions that Christie both follows and breaks.

---

Where are marks usually lost on Paper 2A?

• Retelling the story in Section B instead of arguing with the view.
• Writing about the text used in Section B again in Section C, which the rubric forbids.
• Covering three texts that do not include the required poetry and post-2000 prose texts.
• Treating the unseen extract as a comprehension exercise rather than analysing crime elements and the author’s methods.
• Writing two separate mini-essays in Section C, with comparison only in the conclusion.
• Bringing an annotated copy of a set text into the open-book exam.

Frequently asked questions

Is Paper 2A open book? Yes. You may take clean copies of your set texts into the exam, but they must not be annotated or contain any additional notes or materials, so you still need to know the texts well enough to find material quickly.

How long should I spend on each section? The paper lasts 3 hours and each section carries 25 marks, so roughly an hour per section is sensible. Use the first part of the Section A hour to read the unseen extract closely before you plan.

Can I write about Kala in 2026? No. The specification marks Kala as first assessed in 2027, so it can only be used from the 2027 exam series onwards.

Do I have to write about all three of my texts? Yes. Over Sections B and C you write about three texts: one poetry text, one post-2000 prose text and one further text. Section B uses one, and Section C uses the other two.

Official syllabus

AQA AS and A-level English Literature B specification (7716/7717), Version 1.5.1, 1 October 2025, Paper 2 Texts and genres, Elements of crime writing (numbered 3.2.1 in this site’s course outline), with the paper format checked against AQA’s published 7717/2A question papers. See aqa.org.uk.