Those Anglo-Saxons, habeas corpus, and detective stories

Most southern European theorising re that poorly defined construct, Anglosaxonia, is corny racism dressed up as sociology or socialism or whatever. This, however, from one of my favourite reads, is amusing, if somewhat flawed:

Lampedusa aroused in me the suspicion that the only country in which law and order are, pregonament, synonymous with civilisation and democracy is Great Britain. In the chapter of Letteratura anglese dealing with “Detective stories e thrillers” …, he writes that this type of story is only possible in Anglo-Saxon countries, where “habeas corpus is not taken in vain” … :

Here if a murder takes place the first thing we do is arrest the victim’s wife, children, parents, siblings, uncles, cousins and all his acquaintances. One of them is guilty. And confronted with such dogmatic security any detective who starts fooling around with cigarette ash or coffee stains looks ridiculous, as he is.

If I had anything other than a practical interest in the state of which I am a citizen–it charges me vast sums of money for a passport every time the previous one gets washingmachined, but passports are important–I guess the last part of the post would make me kind of proud.

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