









































by forcefully calling out the class-based 
scapegoat, considering the perspective 
of the scapegoat, and vindicating the 
scapegoat. This essay will investigate the 
role of the scapegoat within The Secret 
Place and My Sister, the Serial Killer within 
the context of literary crime fiction genre 
conventions with Frantz Fanon’s Wretched 
of the Earth (1961) as a framework to 
examine the significance of class, race, 
and violence in the decolonization of 
literary crime fiction. Tana French and 
Oyinkan Braithwaite transcend genre 
conventions established by wealthy, white 
English authors such as Agatha Christie 
by confronting contemporary issues 
through their consideration of the class-
based scapegoat. This confrontational 
transcendence utilizes scapegoats to call 
out the marginalization and oppression 
of diverse populations by privileged 
individuals and subsequently replace 
the traditionally privileged individuals 
with the previously marginalized people. 

The crime fiction genre is one of many 
clichés, including isolated locations, 
technology struggles, law enforcement 
errors, red herrings, and more. These 
clichés interact with various class, gender, 
language, and religious identities that 
influence how investigations evolve and 
how the genre is received by its audience. 
Tana French’s The Secret Place (2014) and 
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial 
Killer (2018) both interact with these genre 
conventions through isolated boarding 
schools and mansions on hilltops, law 
enforcement errors, investigative dynamic 
duos, and more, but the most significant 
of genre conventions is their consideration 
of the scapegoat and its functionality. 
In this essay, a scapegoat is a character 
knowingly forced to endure the blame and 
punishment for another’s actions. While 
these pieces follow genre conventions 
in the presence of a scapegoat, each 
piece of literature juggles red herrings 
and the class-based scapegoats in new 
lights. These pieces transcend the genre 

Money Moves: 
Class-Based Scapegoats and 

the Decolonization of Literary 
Crime Fiction

Riley Ellis, Ball State University

51



Introduction

The crime fiction genre has a rich background with notable authors like Agatha 
Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, both renowned, well-off British authors best known 
for The Mousetrap and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes respectively (“About 
Agatha Christie;” “Biography”). Christie and Doyle are often credited for many of 
the genre’s popular conventions like isolated locations, technological struggles, 
red herrings, detective duos, and more. Within these conventions, one also finds 
considerations of class, gender, and language identities, all of which play large 
parts in those suspected, accused, and victimized within the chilling stories. Today, 
contemporary novels such as Tana French’s The Secret Place and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s 
My Sister, the Serial Killer  transcend genre conventions established by wealthy, 
white English authors like Christie and Doyle by confronting the class-disadvantaged 
scapegoat. French does this by grappling with the obstacles of investigating a murder 
at a wealthy, all-girls boarding school, while Brathwaite explores what it means to be 
and assist a murderer.  
 Within this essay, the term “scapegoat” will be used to identify a character 
knowingly forced to endure the blame and punishment for another’s actions. 
This transcendence utilizes scapegoats to call out the marginalization of diverse 
populations by privileged individuals. After calling out the scapegoat, the authors 
subsequently replace the traditionally privileged individuals with the previously 
marginalized people. This replacement mirrors that prescribed by Frantz Fanon 
in his novel Wretched of the Earth (1963), which considers the actions necessary 
to decolonize a people through the class war. In accordance with the principles 
presented within Wretched of the Earth, contemporary crime fiction pieces, specifically 
Tana French’s The Secret Place and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial 
Killer, challenge and decolonize genre conventions by calling out, considering the 
perspective of, and ultimately vindicating the class-based scapegoat. 

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth 
Within his text The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon considers violence, race, and the 
class war as he dissects the relationship between the colonist and the colonized. 
Most significant to this essay is Fanon’s idea that “decolonization is quite simply the 
substitution of one ‘species’ of mankind by another” that occurs in an “unconditional, 
absolute, total, and seamless” manner (1). Regarding literary crime fiction and the 
class-based scapegoat, this substitution would occur when the conventionally 

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suspected marginalized scapegoat takes the place of the traditionally untouchable 
privileged victims. For this substitution to take place, Fanon declares that “the last 
can be the first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two 
protagonists,” the privileged and the marginalized (3). Additionally, any “proof of 
success lies in a social fabric that has been changed inside out” (1),  meaning not only 
must the economic structures change, but any supplemental power structure dictated 
by gender, race, or class must also be substituted. Decolonization is the absolute 
destruction of colonial structures and systems within a society. In addition to the 
substitution of species, this essay addresses the figures, such as police officers, that 
work to protect and maintain the colonial or classist regime and status quo, otherwise 
known as the “legitimate agent” of the regime (Fanon 3). In crime fiction, this violent 
confrontation against the regime and its agents takes place both in the literal crime 
committed, as well as in the accruing of land, money, and social influence.  

Calling Out the Scapegoat 
Scapegoats are rife within literary crime fiction. These red herrings can be used to lead 
readers and detectives away from the truth, effectively making the conclusion more 
shocking and subsequently more entertaining. In the nineteenth century, crime fiction 
began with the understanding that “[i]f crime was the problem, then identification 
and removal of the perpetrator was the solution” (Lee 282). However, in contemporary 
novels such as My Sister, the Serial Killer and The Secret Place, authors play with the 
many ways those falsely accused as the perpetrator are victims of a larger oppressive 
society. Today, the crime fiction genre has shifted to become a place of dissent, where 
previous conventions are transformed by radical decolonial politics (Roy 120). As 
contemporary authors begin the process of decolonizing the genre, they first call out 
the scapegoat, defining the many ways an oppressive regime is built and maintained.  
 Within My Sister, the Serial Killer, Braithwaite utilizes the scapegoat in a variety 
of ways. There’s the primary and most prevalent scapegoat, Korede, who becomes 
increasingly suspected and blamed as Ayoola, Korede’s sister, continues murdering her 
romantic partners. After Korede and her sister Ayoola have an interview with the police 
about Femi, Ayoola’s third victim, the police request to see Korede’s car (Braithwaite). 
The police’s possession of her car prompts Korede to question “why should [Ayoola’s] 
hands be clean, while [her’s] become more and more stained” (102). Regardless of who 
committed the violent murder, Korede is repeatedly suspected of the murders, making 
her hands, as she says, “more and more stained.” This passing of the blame to Korede is 
significant because of the sisters’ differing jobs and social standings. While Korede is a 
nurse who works at a local hospital, Ayoola “models the clothes she designs on social 

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media” as a social media influencer (Braithwaite 68). While both sisters hold service-
based jobs, the audience perceives Korede as the harder-working, grittier individual 
relative to Ayoola due to established societal connotations of influencers. Braithwaite 
maintains these perceptions when Ayoola invites Korede to lunch and gets upset and 
frustrated when Korede cannot abandon her workload to go out. Through the class 
distinctions established by the sisters’ jobs, readers “are witness to the mobilization of 
a people, who now have to work themselves to exhaustion,” a people represented by 
Korede, “while a contemptuous and bloated Europe,” represented by Ayoola, “looks on” 
(Fanon 55).  
 Furthermore, Ayoola’s beauty and adherence to feminine body and behavior 
standards, as illustrated in her modeling/influencer career, signifies higher social 
standing within the patriarchal order due to implications of masculine desire, as 
described by David Buchbinder, a professor of Masculinities Studies (108-110). In 
contrast, Korede’s undesirable presentation relative to Ayoola’s decreases her social 
standing within the patriarchal order (Braithwaite 84-166; Buchbinder 108-110). 
Women’s beauty acts as a social currency that cultivates influence and power in the 
same way financial currencies garner power within the colonial order. Throughout the 
novel, Braithwaite utilizes Korede as an effective scapegoat, who is marginalized based 
on distinctions established between Korede and Ayoola’s jobs and the pair’s social 
standings within the patriarchal order.  
 In addition to Korede becoming a scapegoat for murder, Braithwaite also 
utilizes Mohammed, one of the janitorial staff members at the hospital where 
Korede works, as a scapegoat for thievery. After Tade, a doctor who works in the 
same hospital as Korede, finds his office a mess and his engagement ring for Ayoola 
broken, Yinka, a fellow nurse, decides that Mohammed likely trashed the office and 
broke the engagement ring because of drugs (Braithwaite 194). In response, Korede 
observes that “[i]t’s easy to point the finger at Mohammed. He is poor, uneducated. 
He is a cleaner” (194). Despite his tenure at the hospital and how “Mohammed 
denies the charges vehemently,” he is fired (194). Here, the class-based distinctions 
are clearer than those established with Korede, as there are direct references to 
Mohammed’s socioeconomic status as lower-class and “poor,” which is associated 
with being “uneducated” and his job as “a cleaner.” These class-based distinctions 
allow those around him at the hospital to easily prosecute and fire him. The scene 
that encompasses suspicions of Mohammed, his accusation, and the subsequent 
punishment takes up no more than one page. The more elite at the hospital, Korede’s 
fellow nurses and Tade, manage to utilize their social position and class to wrongfully 
punish Mohammed (194). Braithwaite reflects Fanon’s observation that “[c]onfronted 
with a world configured by the colonizer, the colonized subject is always presumed 

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guilty” (Fanon 16).  
 While all of Braithwaite’s characters exist within a colonized context since 
Lagos was colonized by Britain, the story’s “colonist” is the one with power and social 
influence. Fanon understands the colonist as one who “derives his validity, i.e., his 
wealth, from the colonial system” and the “colonized” (2).  In this context, the nurses 
and Tade hold the social and financial power, effectively making them the colonists 
and Mohammed the colonized (Bishku 361). Mohammed is automatically presumed 
guilty and is punished at the will of the “colonizer.” Within My Sister, the Serial Killer, 
Braithwaite emphasizes how class-based distinctions and discrimination are used 
to keep the fiscally and socially wealthy in power and unpunished through the 
unjustified prosecution of poorer characters.  
 In The Secret Place, French, too, utilizes the class-based scapegoat to call out 
how society discriminates and punishes those of lower classes. After detectives 
Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway return to St. Kilda’s, an all-girls boarding 
school in Dublin, Conway recalls how “[o]ne of the groundskeepers came up on the 
system: prior for supply” and they “figured it was [their] lucky day: two solves for the 
price of one. Chris snuck out to buy drugs off the groundskeeper, some fight over 
money, bang” (French 39). However, the “groundskeeper alibied out…We got him for 
possession with intent, but the murder…I should have known it wasn’t gonna be that 
simple” (39). Within this scene, there are a few instances of class-based discrimination. 
To find the “simple” answer, Conway and the previous detective on the case chose 
to go after the groundskeeper who would have stuck out at a rich, all-girls boarding 
school. As a blue-collar worker with “priors,” the groundskeeper would make an easy 
target. Within this quick, off-hand comment, French establishes how the regime uses 
class-based scapegoats as an easy way to get answers and solve crime with a bow, 
regardless of whether their answers are genuine and truthful. In this moment, “[t]he 
agent does not alleviate oppression or mask domination” (Fanon 4), but rather there 
is a proud display of the many ways society utilizes class-based oppression to more 
easily display control over the public. French’s utilization of the class-based scapegoat, 
like that of Braithwaite’s, works to “exacerbate inequalities” and reveal crime and its 
punishment as key elements of societal struggles for power (Roy 123).  
 After establishing the scapegoats within their stories, the contemporary 
authors face the challenge of “seiz[ing] th[e] violence as it realigns itself” (Fanon 21).  
By calling out scapegoats, these contemporary authors start the process of seeking 
justice, prompting the need to “seize their efforts” (Lee 289). This search for justice 
realizes itself in the many ways authors consider the scapegoat identity along with the 
different gender and racial identities that influence it. French and Braithwaite are two 
women residing within postcolonial contexts in Ireland and Nigeria respectively. Both 

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Ireland and Nigeria have been colonized by European powers and while those colonial 
powers have left, their structures have stayed. French and Braithwaite’s understanding 
of this dichotomy allows them to utilize Korede, Mohammed, and the groundskeeper 
to establish class-contexts and subsequent identity politics necessary to prompt a 
confrontation against the status quo with regard to crime fiction genre conventions. 

Considering the Scapegoat 
While traditionally Franz considers the police officer to be “the spokesperson for the 
colonizer and the regime of oppression” (122), Shampa Roy, an Associate English 
Professor at the University of Delhi, considers how detectives provide greater 
opportunities for marginalized peoples in crime fiction. Within Braithwaite and 
French’s novels, scapegoats are marginalized by societal values and standards, 
implanted by colonial interests within several contexts. Braithwaite highlights Korede’s 
identity as undesirable relative to patriarchal beauty and behavioral standards, one 
which Korede is “marginalized” and subsequently “demonized” for, as seen through 
her continuous persecution throughout the novel . However, Braithwaite deepens 
her consideration of the scapegoat by understanding the position of being colonized 
as fluid with many degrees of severity. In these moments, Braithwaite acknowledges 
Fanon’s idea of the traitorous common person “who apparently gets along very well 
with the occupier and strives to succeed in the context of the colonial system” (67). 
While Korede and Mohammed are in a continuous state as colonized, Korede also 
often acts as a “spokesperson for the colonizer” or traitor to the fellow colonized 
by regularly chastising and disciplining Mohammed (Braithwaite). While Korede is 
“disenfranchised within colonial contexts,” she also finds her voice within the same 
context as a powerful figure. In her consideration of the scapegoat, Braithwaite 
acknowledges the nuance of the colonial context concerning the various powers, 
including economic and patriarchal powers. 
 In addition to Braithwaite, French works to consider the scapegoat by 
consistently evaluating why the detectives, as well as the employees and students 
of St. Mary’s, presumed and believed the scapegoat’s guilt. For three-quarters 
of the novel, students, detectives, and other school faculty admit to believing 
“Groundskeeper Willy” was guilty of killing young Chris Harper (French 358). When 
first reviewing the murder, detectives only had the murder weapon, a hoe, that only 
had the groundskeepers’ prints and access. However, this lack of information was not 
limited to just the detectives. Much of the general student body recollected that they 
were not even sure of the accused’s name, claiming that “that’s just what everyone else 
called him” (89). Moreover, the girls of St. Kilda’s even admitted that “[they] don’t know 

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if he was a pervert or just a drug dealer, but either way, ew” (89). The school readily 
associated the groundskeeper with being a “pervert,” going as far as actively referring 
to him as “Willy” in reference to the colloquial term used for the male sexual organ.  
 Relying solely on rumors and weak police evidence, the entire school and 
police force fortified the colonizer-colonized system that relies on identity-based 
discrimination. While the audience never hears the groundskeeper’s perspective, 
French provides insight into the weak and seemingly baseless assumptions that 
support the public’s quick assumption of guilt concerning the groundskeeper. A 
blue-collar job and previous drug charges were enough for students, staff, and 
detectives to quickly think the worst—that a man was capable of murdering a child. 
French further considers the scapegoat, determining that detectives are “not going 
to suspect [someone like] Selena,” a rich, white girl (404). Rather, they would suspect 
a groundskeeper. As illustrated by French, there are certain identities people more 
frequently associate with crime, specifically ones associated with socioeconomic 
status, gender, and race.  
 By highlighting the different biases involved in determining a scapegoat, 
French and Braithwaite participate in what Buchbinder determines to be “‘mark[ing]’ 
in the sense of being singled out for retribution” (99). The contemporary authors’ 
acknowledgment of discrimination creates a vehicle for the retribution of the 
scapegoat. By considering the scapegoat within each novel, French and Braithwaite 
examine, poke, and spotlight the many biases and structural errors that influence the 
creation and perpetuation of the scapegoat determined by class distinctions.  

Vindicating the Scapegoat 
Within Braithwaite and French’s works, vindicating the scapegoat takes many 
forms, most particularly given that only certain scapegoats are vindicated. In her 
article entitled “Crime Fiction and Theories of Justice,” Susanna Lee remarks that 
“[t]heories of punishment include such traditional justifications as retribution, 
deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and restoration” (284). Within My Sister, 
the Serial Killer and The Secret Place, scapegoats are vindicated primarily through 
means of retribution and restoration. These punishments are enacted against the 
people, powers, and institutions that actively work to marginalize and demonize the 
scapegoats. The punishments support those working against the marginalizing system 
and the marginalized themselves—victims are “not just the actual individual victim of 
the crime at hand, but also society at large, the city, moral fiber and even the individual 
detective” (Lee 284).  
 In Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, while Mohammed is not saved, the 

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novel does end with an acknowledgment of the system’s failures. While at work, 
after dealing with Muhtar and Ayoola, Korede calls for Mohammed only to be told, 
“Mohammed is gone, ma” (Braithwaite 221). In this moment, Korede must hold herself 
accountable for her part in supporting the status quo and forcing Mohammed to be 
a scapegoat. In addition to this reflection, which serves as Mohammed’s vindication, 
Korede ends the novel with an understanding of retribution against several powerful 
identities, including men and the patriarchal order, that act as a colonizing power 
within Korede’s space. There’s also retribution on the class front since many of Ayoola’s 
victims are rich men. Towards the end of the novel, when asked who stabbed her, 
Ayoola quickly blames Tade, determining that “he proposed to [her] and [she] said 
[she] wasn’t interested and he lost it” (206-207). When Korede pushes back on her 
sister’s statement, Ayoola remarks that “it’s him or me,” telling Korede that “[she] can’t 
sit on the fence forever” (207). In this scene, Ayoola forces Korede to make the decision 
to either support her sister and fight against the larger patriarchal order, or fight 
against her sister. Both represent a colonial power in Korede’s context. At the end of 
the novel, Korede, Ayoola, and any other person impacted by the masculine construct 
are vindicated when Korede happens upon Ayoola’s new boyfriend: “They are in the 
living room—my mum, Ayoola and the man…The man smiles. I smile back” (223). 
At this point, Korede is not vindicated from her sister, but rather no longer letting 
her life be ruled by rich men. Within My Sister, the Serial Killer, Braithwaite vindicates 
the scapegoat by recognizing the intersectional nature of the colonized and the 
subsequent power dynamics within colonized populations.  
 In The Secret Place, there’s retribution against patriarchal powers with a 
recognition of class influences. At the end of French’s novel, detectives figure out 
that Becca, a boarding student at St. Kilda’s, murdered Chris. The girl recounts that 
“all those stupid slimebags, James Gillen and Marcus Wiley, it could never have been 
them. They’re nothing; they’re totally worthless. You can’t have a sacrifice that’s worth 
less. It has to be something good” (French 424). Rather than killing one of the boys 
who fit the patriarchal order, the boys who had a history of teasing girls like Becca, 
Becca killed Chris, someone she described as “kind” (109). To protect her and the girls’ 
sacred friendship, Becca follows through with Fanon’s final violent confrontation. 
Rather than letting a wealthy, white boy that represented, in Becca’s mind, the best 
of the patriarchal order rule over or destroy the girls’ bond, she kills him. This murder 
substitutes the standing power of the wealthy man with a new power, the feminine. 
There’s vindication in this moment because the girls get their vengeance—they 
maintain their friendship, as seen when, “in the center of the clearing, Holly dropped to 
her knees in the grass” and her friends “opened like a puzzle, arms unfurling, reached 
out to draw her in and closed around her” (427). Despite Becca’s criminal behavior, 

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the standing societal order does not reclaim its power, rather there’s a complete 
acceptance of the girls’ power for a moment. French vindicates the scapegoat by 
disconnecting the groundskeeper from Chris’s murder and by allowing the girls’ sacred 
friendship to persevere contrary to the patriarchal order.  

Conclusion
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer and Tana French’s The Secret Place 
both deal with the scapegoat with considerations of class and subsequent identity 
influences, most especially gender. These deliberations, in alignment with Frantz 
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, illustrate how “[t]he crime fiction of the colonized 
or previously colonized writers is often a resistant force” (Roy 127). Braithwaite and 
French spotlight, consider, and vindicate scapegoats in such a manner that creates 
a confrontation between two forces created by the colonial context (Fanon 2). This 
confrontation is illustrative of the authors’ efforts to “move away from ‘classic’ detective 
fiction and its formal conventions in order to engage critically with the compelling 
sociopolitical issues” and decolonize the genre (Roy 127). At the end of My Sister, the 
Serial Killer, Braithwaite encompasses contemporary crime fiction authors’ efforts by 
acknowledging that in their deconstruction of the genre, any investigation is a game 
of “ [their] word against ours”  (213).  

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Works Cited

“About Agatha Christie.” The Home of Agatha Christie, www.agathachristie.com/about-
christie.  

Anderson, Lisa. “‘Shithole Countries’: The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon.” Social 
Research: An International Quarterly, vol. 85 no. 3, 2018, p. 487-502. Project 
MUSE, doi:10.1353/sor.2018.0026. 

“Biography.” Arthur Conan Doyle, www.arthurconandoyle.com/biography.html.  

Bishku, Michael B. “Nigeria and the Muslim Middle East: Historical, Political, Economic, 
and Cultural Ties.” Journal of the Middle East and Africa, vol. 12, no. 4, Oct. 2021, 
pp, 361–383. proxy.bsu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=a9h&AN=154040507&site=ehost-live&scope=site.  

Braithwaite, Oyinkan. My Sister, the Serial Killer. First Anchor Books, 2018. 

Buchbinder, David. Studying Men and Masculinities. Routledge, 2013. 

Fanon, Frantz, et al. The Wretched of the Earth. Anniversary, Grove Press, 2021. 

French, Tana. The Secret Place. Penguin Random House, 2014. 

Lee, Susanna. “Crime Fiction and Theories of Justice.” The Routledge Crime Fiction 
Companion, edited by Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King, and Andrew 
Pepper, Routledge, 2020, pp. 282-290. 

Roy, Shampa. “Coloniality and Decoloniality.” The Routledge Crime Fiction Companion, 
edited by Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King, and Andrew Pepper, 
Routledge, 2020, pp. 120-127.  

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http://www.agathachristie.com/about-christie
http://www.agathachristie.com/about-christie
http://www.arthurconandoyle.com/biography.html
http://proxy.bsu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=154040507&site=ehost-live&scope=site
http://proxy.bsu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=154040507&site=ehost-live&scope=site

