Аннотация:In today’s world of increasing tolerance it has probably become less popular to follow linguistic change using texts belonging to the genre of literary fiction, since there are more abundant sources of relevant information, such as writings of non-fictional nature, internet communication, oral speech of media presenters, etc. However, there is at least one category of fiction that could be of perceptible value in this respect: the books whose characters have a pronounced penchant for linguistic matters. On the one hand, their statements on the issues of grammar and vocabulary are intended to be spontaneous and academically disinterested. On the other – they have been created by the authors, who in many cases have philological education and always special interests in the area. The texts chosen for the analysis include quality crime fiction by the English writer Colin Dexter and American author Kinky Freedman. The former’s central character inspector Morse is an ex-student of philology; the latter’s private detective Kinky is fond of creative use of the language and often makes observations of linguistic nature. We seek to familiarize the audience with texts of this kind and discuss the possibilities of using them in a university classroom. cons