Recent crime fiction increasingly transcends national boundaries, with investigators operating across countries and continents. Frequently, the detective is a migrant or comes from a transcultural background. To solve the crime, the investigator is called upon to decipher the meaning(s) hidden in clues and testimonies that require transcultural forms of understanding. For the reader, the investigation discloses new interpretive methods and processes of social investigation, often challenging facile interpretations of the postcolonial world order. Under the rubric 'postcolonial postmortems', this collection of essays seeks to explore the tropes, issues and themes that characterise this emergent form of crime fiction. But what does the 'postcolonial' bring to the genre apart from the well-known, and valid, discourses of resistance, subversion and ethnicity? And why 'postmortems'?