Elements of Crime and Mystery (9675): Revision Notes

Unit 3 (Elements of crime and mystery) of OxfordAQA International A-level English Literature (9675) is a two-hour, closed-book exam worth 50 marks and 30% of the International A-level. You study two set texts from the crime and mystery list and write two essays of 25 marks each, one on each text. The texts are connected by genre: in each, a significant crime drives the narrative and shapes its structure. For the full explanation, use the Unit 3 study guide.

Unit 3 at a glance

Detail	Specification (Version 5.3)
Exam	2 hours, closed book
Marks	50: two essay questions, 25 marks each
Weighting	30% of the International A-level (A2 only)
Texts	Two from the set list
AOs	AO1, AO2, AO3, equally weighted in all questions

Closed book means you cannot take the texts into the exam, so learn short quotations and precise references.

Set texts

Author	Text
William Shakespeare	Macbeth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Robert Browning	Selected poems: “The Laboratory”, “My Last Duchess”, “Porphyria’s Lover”, “The Patriot”, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, “The Confessional”, “Time’s Revenges”, “Count Gismond”
Charles Dickens	Oliver Twist
Edgar Allan Poe	Collected stories: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Man of the Crowd”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Black Cat”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Purloined Letter”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
Robert Louis Stevenson	Collected stories: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, “The Body Snatcher”, “Markheim”, “A Lodging for the Night”
Agatha Christie	The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Qiu Xiaolong	Death of a Red Heroine
Kate Atkinson	When Will There Be Good News?

(The specification’s introduction to the unit says “a choice of any two texts from eight”, but its list prints the nine texts above; check your centre’s choice against the current specification.)

The genre elements (the specification’s list)

All set texts “focus on transgressions against established order” and the breaking of national, social, religious or moral laws. Elements to explore, depending on the text:

Element	Example question to ask of your text
Mystery to be unravelled	What is withheld, and when is it revealed?
Settings for crime and pursuit	How do places and times create menace?
Crimes, criminals, motives	Is the criminal monstrous, sympathetic or both?
Detectives and detection	Who investigates, and how reliable are they?
Investigation leading to capture or punishment	Is the criminal caught?
Moral purpose and restoration of order	Is order restored, and is it convincing?
Guilt, remorse, confession, forgiveness	Who confesses, and to whom?
Victims and suffering	Are victims given a voice?
Motifs: love, money, power, danger, death	Which dominate your text?
Punishment, justice, retribution, the legal system	Is justice legal, divine or poetic?
Structural patterning through crises to order	How does the plot move?
Language of the created world	What register or idiom defines it?
Crime writing as social comment	What does it say about its society and period?
Effects on readers	Suspense, repugnance, excitement, relief

Assessment objectives (equal weighting)

AO	Wording	In a Unit 3 essay
AO1	Demonstrate understanding of the ways in which readers find meanings in texts, showing an understanding of genre, the significance of contexts, and the ways in which different interpretations can be found	Argue about the text as crime writing; consider contexts and alternative readings
AO2	Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts with close attention to authorial methods	Narrative voice, structure, form, imagery, dramatic or poetic methods
AO3	Express informed, personal and argued responses, using appropriate concepts and terminology, and coherent, accurate writing	A clear thesis, critical vocabulary, accurate expression

Each of Units 3 and 4 contributes 10% of each AO to the International A-level.

“Significance”

The specification gives the word “significance” a special meaning drawn from semiotics: weighing up all the contributions to meaning, namely how the text is constructed and written, relevant text-specific contexts, and potential interpretations. When a question asks about the “significance” of an element, cover all three.

Text-specific prompts

Text	Crime elements worth knowing
Macbeth	Regicide; guilt and hallucination; the sleepwalking scene as confession; Macduff as avenger; order restored under Malcolm
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	The shooting of the albatross as transgression; supernatural punishment; penance and compulsive confession to the Wedding-Guest
Browning	Dramatic monologues voiced by murderers or would-be poisoners (“My Last Duchess”, “Porphyria’s Lover”, “The Laboratory”); no detective; the reader as judge
Oliver Twist	Fagin’s gang; Sikes’s murder of Nancy and his flight; social criticism of the workhouse and the criminal underworld
Poe	Dupin as rational detective (“Rue Morgue”, “The Purloined Letter”); unreliable confessing narrators (“The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”)
Stevenson	Respectability and hidden crime; Utterson as investigator; “Markheim” and conscience
Christie	The narrator as murderer; the “fair-play” puzzle and its subversion; Poirot’s restoration of order
Qiu Xiaolong	Inspector Chen in 1990s Shanghai; crime investigation entangled with politics
Atkinson	Multiple viewpoints; crimes and their long aftermath; Jackson Brodie as detective

Worked example: an argued paragraph on Poe

Question: “In crime writing the most important mystery is the criminal’s mind.” Discuss with reference to your chosen text.

“Poe’s confessing narrators make the criminal mind the mystery and the evidence at once. In ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ the narrator insists on his sanity while describing the murder in feverish detail, so the reader becomes the detective, reading the confession against itself. There is no investigator of Dupin’s kind here: the police are almost incidental, and the crime is solved by the narrator’s own guilt, heard as the beating heart. Yet Poe also wrote ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, where the mind that matters is the detective’s, which suggests that across his stories the real subject is the mind’s capacity for both order and disorder.”

Common mistakes / exam traps

• Plot summary of the crime instead of analysis of how the text constructs it.
• Ignoring genre: AO1 asks for understanding of genre; frame your argument around crime elements.
• Forgetting it is closed book: vague references weaken AO2.
• One reading only: AO1 includes “the ways in which different interpretations can be found”.
• Treating poems as stories: in Browning and Coleridge, analyse form, voice and sound.
• Context as background: use it to explain significance, for example Victorian anxieties about respectability in Stevenson.

Frequently asked questions

Do I compare my two texts in Unit 3? The specification describes two essay questions, one on each text, so each answer focuses on one text. Knowledge of the genre links them, but comparison is not required.

Is Unit 3 open book? No. The specification states that Unit 3 is a closed-book examination.

Which AO matters most? None. All three assessment objectives are weighted equally in every question.

Why is Macbeth on a crime list? The specification connects the Unit 3 texts through a genre in which “a significant crime drives the narrative”. In Macbeth that crime is regicide, and the play’s guilt, retribution and restoration of order are all genre elements the specification names.

Syllabus coverage

OxfordAQA International AS and A-level English Literature (9675), Version 5.3: 4.1 Unit 3: Elements of crime and mystery (genre elements and set texts); 2.3 International A2 assessments; 5.3 assessment objectives and the definition of “significance”; assessment-objective weightings.

Self-test

1. How long is the Unit 3 exam, and is it open or closed book? (2 hours; closed book.)
2. How many essays do you write, and for how many marks each? (Two; 25 each.)
3. Name two genre elements from the specification. (For example, detectives and detection; guilt and remorse.)
4. Which Poe story features Dupin? (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” or “The Purloined Letter”.)
5. What three things does “significance” involve? (Construction and writing; contexts; interpretations.)

Related pages

• Unit 3 study guide
• Unit 3 practice questions
• Aspects of Dramatic Tragedy revision notes

Official specification

OxfordAQA International AS and A-level English Literature (9675) specification, Version 5.3 — oxfordaqa.com.