This chapter analyses and outlines the aesthetic devices of pastiche, mimesis and metafiction and relate them to the genre of crime fiction as well as the type of crime fiction Blackville engages with. It explores the metafictional aspects in relation to Banville’s oeuvre as to elements of self-reflection within the crime fiction category more widely. Generally speaking, it is shown that Banville merely had to stretch out some of the features that already were quite familiar in order to adapt them to the crime genre. The Chandler pastiche is analysed in detail revealing differences and similarities between that work and hardboiled aspects of other Blackville works. Realism as a concept is analysed in relation to the theatricality that also crops up in the crime worlds. Partly suggesting that if there is room for any kind of realism in Blackville, it would have to be in the form of a world where the simulacra already are accepted as the bottom line of ‘reality’. However, in addition to that, there exists an affective level underpinning the epistemological and ontological possibilities. In the epiphanic moments for different characters, there exists a level on which characters cannot flee from themselves, when they seemingly act against their own will or what is imagined as their own will. The well-known rather dark humour that lurks in Blackville and Banville will also be made more explicit in this chapter. There are concrete examples of how it functions more in detail.