Crime Fiction and Missing Persons Appeals to the Public

Abigail Boucher is a senior lecturer in English literature at Aston University, UK. She is a scholar of genre fiction, literature of the long nineteenth century, and medicine and science in literature. She is also the Director for Aston University’s Research Centre for the Humanities.Tim Grant is a professor of forensic linguistics at Aston University, UK. He is one of the world’s most experienced forensic linguistic practitioners with a particular interest in forensic authorship analysis, focusing on short form messages.Daniel Jenkin-Smith is a lecturer at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK, and a postdoctoral researcher at Aston University, UK. He has specialisms in British and French literature of the long nineteenth century and the history of labour and office work.Emily Powell is the Head of the Centre for International English at the University of South Wales, UK. Her research sits at the intersection between criminology and linguistics and applies corpus linguistics to forensic texts.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Describing, motivating, and appealing: A move analysis of missing persons appeals.- 3. Missing Persons Appeals and Literary Studies: A genre fiction analysis.- 4. Implications for Practice.- 5. Conclusion.