Douthwaite selects the television series Inspector George Gently as an exemplification of critical crime fiction in order to lay bare the ideological workings of that sub-genre and of the linguistic techniques it employs to position readers/viewers, offering an overview of the constructional techniques deployed together with close readings of the texts to bear out the arguments. A continual comparison is made with Graham’s novels and the Midsomer Murders television series to demonstrate how differences in constructional techniques and the use of linguistic devices aiming to position viewers constitute a clear difference between the goals of conservative and critical crime fiction.