Aqa A-level ENGLISH LITERATURE B (7717/2A) Paper 2A Texts and genres: Elements of crime writing- June 2022 OFFICIAL Question Paper

Aqa A-level ENGLISH LITERATURE B (7717/2A) Paper 2A Texts and genres: Elements of crime writing June 2022 OFFICIAL Question Paper. 0 1 .Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract. Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed analysis of the ways the author has shaped meanings. [25 marks] This extract appears near the end of Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong (1999). Martin, the narrator, has identified a painting owned by his neighbour, Tony, as being a landscape by Bruegel. Bruegel is a sixteenth-century Flemish artist whose paintings are worth millions. In order to confirm this truly is a painting by Bruegel, Martin needs to find a detail in the picture which shows a bound man being drowned in a millpond. In this extract Martin has stolen the painting with the help of Tony’s wife, Laura. They are trying to escape with it in Tony’s Land Rover. Tony, however, is in hot pursuit, with his shotgun, in Martin’s car. I look in the mirror to see if it’s all right to stop. No, not yet – there’s a car coming up fast behind me. The headlights come rapidly closer and closer, undipped and dazzling, lighting up the picture as if the driver were trying to see inside my tailgate and check the detail himself. I move my head out of line with the mirror, and catch sight of Laura’s face shining as she turns round to look at the source of all this sudden light. ‘Your car!’ she cries. ‘We forgot to collect your car!’ The implications dawn on me rather slowly. Not possible! Is it? I look in the mirror again, my eyes screwed up against the dazzle. Unnecessarily, though, because the headlights are now so insanely close that they’ve vanished below the bottom of the tailgate window. ‘Quick!’ screams Laura. ‘He’s going to ram us!’ The story’s not over, after all. I speed up, feeling nothing but despair. The headlights briefly reappear, then disappear as the car behind comes bounding forward to within touching distance again. I slow down, terrified. The Land-Rover lurches as the car behind actually nudges it. ‘Get away from him!’ screams Laura. ‘He’s hopelessly drunk!’ I try speeding up again. But now the headlights have adopted a different policy. They go swinging wildly out into the centre of the road. ‘No, no – don’t let him overtake!’ I put my foot down harder, and now we’re running side by side in mad parallel. ‘Faster!’ cries Laura. ‘Faster! Faster!’ Characteristic advice, I realize even in the midst of my terror, and almost certain to be characteristically wrong, but I can’t think of any better policy. The whole accelerating, headlong rush of events has been focused into this one final insane fugue, which will only be ended by a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. But no vehicle does. We’re on the emptiest road in England. For second after second, for year after year, we race on together. Come on! Someone! Please! End it, end it! Kill him! We soar, almost airborne, over the crest of a hill – and there at last it is. A pair of headlights closing us at a combined speed which must be at least 150 miles an hour.