SOURCE: "Serial Detection and Serial Killers in Twin Peaks," in Literature Film Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1993, pp. 271-76.

In the following essay, Nickerson discusses ways in which Twin Peaks both embodies and subverts the conventions of detective fiction while employing characteristics of the literary gothic tradition.

During its first season, Twin Peaks invited us to watch as if we were reading a detective novel. The narrative began with—or at—a dead body, as all proper detective stories do, then unfolded into a series of investigative responses to the murder of a young woman: the arrival of a heroic detective, the evaluation of physical and forensic evidence, the interrogation of suspects and witnesses. But as many people have observed, the series seemed, in the second season—if not even earlier—to become something quite other than a televised detective novel. Twin Peaks asks us to compare it with the...