| Description |
724 pages ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Contents |
Revolution : Origins -- Mystery and imagination : Edgar Allan Poe and the first detective stories -- Guilty secrets : Sensation novels -- Detective fever : Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and early detective fiction -- Poacher turned gamekeeper : The French Revolution: Vidocq, Gaboriau and their worldwide influence -- The great detective : Sherlock Holmes -- Rogues' gallery : Raffles and other villains -- The nature of evil : G.K. Chesterton and faith and sin in detective fiction -- Plot minds : Marie Belloc Lowndes and Edwardian-era detective fiction -- The science of detection : R. Austi Freeman and scientific mysteries -- Had I but known : Mary Roberts Rinehart and "women in jeopardy" novels -- War and peace : The First World War and detective fiction -- Treacherous impulse : Early spy fiction -- The mistress of deception : Agatha Christie -- American tragedy : Van Dine and the American Golden Age -- Superfluous women : Queens of crime -- Challenging the reader: Detection and game-playing -- Locked rooms : Impossible crime mysteries -- The long arm of the law : Early police stories -- Blood simple : Dashiell Hammett -- Murder and its motives : True crime -- Twists of fate : Francis Iles and ironic crime fiction -- The sound of mystery : Radio mysteries -- In lonely rooms : Raymond Chandler -- Brothers in crime : Patrick and Bruce Hamilton -- Cracks in the wall : Georges Simenon and European crime fiction -- Sensation in court : Legal mysteries -- California dreaming : Crime writers and Hollywood -- Carnival of crime : Mystery and the macabre -- Waking nightmares : Noir fiction -- Dagger of the mind : Casebook novels -- Whose body? : Whowasdunins: mysteries about the victim's identity -- Private wounds : Transitioning from the Golden Age -- Out of this world : Traditional detective fiction evolves in the United States -- |
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Perfect murders : Crime and the end of empire -- Mind games : Post-war psychological suspense -- Deep winter : Patricia Highsmith -- Forking paths : Borges and postmodernism -- Bloody murder : Julian Symons and crime fiction criticism -- People with ghosts : Post-war private investigators and the legacy of Vietnam -- Killing jokes : Comedy and crime -- Literary agents : Post-war spy fiction -- Nerve : Adventure novels and thrillers -- Outside in Amsterdam : Dutch crime -- Whodunwhat? : Theatrical murder -- Black and blue : British police fiction -- Home discomforts : Domestic suspense -- Mystery games : East Asian detective fiction -- Early genres : Difference and diversity -- A suitable job for a woman : Women writing about private investigators -- A feeling for snow : Scandinavian crime writing -- Fatal inversions : Ruth Rendell and modern psychological suspense -- Dark places : American police fiction -- Long shadows : Historical crime -- A taste for death : P.D. James and the truth about human character and experience. |
| Summary |
"The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative - and readable - study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors - from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell - into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading"--Dust jacket |
| Subject |
Detective and mystery stories -- History and criticism.
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| ISBN |
9780008192426 |
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0008192421 |
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