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Presents critical studies of more than 390 authors of detective and mystery fiction from around the world dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day.
Presents critical studies of more than 290 authors of detective and mystery fiction from around the world dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day.
Presents critical studies of more than 290 authors of detective and mystery fiction from around the world dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day.
Provides detailed analyses of the lives and writings of major contributors to the fascinating literary subgenre of mystery and detective fiction.
P. D. James, the undisputed queen of mystery, gives us an intriguing, inspiring and idiosyncratic look at the genre she has spent her life perfecting. Examining mystery from top to bottom, beginning with such classics as Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and then looking at such contemporary masters as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell, P. D. James goes right to the heart of the genre. Along the way she traces the lives and writing styles of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and many more. Here is P.D. James discussing detective fiction as social history, explaining its stylistic components, revealing her own writing process, and commenting on the recent resurgence of detective fiction in modern culture. It is a must have for the mystery connoisseur and casual fan alike.
In this bestselling book that inspired the hit movie by the same name, starring Frank Sinatra, an apparent suicide forces a PI to reconsider his most famous case Joe Leland returned from World War II with a chest full of medals, but his greatest honor came after he traded his pilot’s wings for a detective’s shield. Catching the Leikman killer made Joe a local hero, but the shine quickly wore off, and it wasn’t long before he left the police force to start his own private agency. Years after his greatest triumph, Joe has a modest income and a quiet life—both of which may soon fall apart. When Colin MacIver dies at the local racetrack, the coroner rules that he took his own life, but his widow knows better. Because MacIver’s life insurance policy doesn’t cover suicide, his wife is left broke, desperate, and afraid for her safety. She hires Leland to find out who could have killed her gentle, unassuming husband—a simple question that will turn this humble city inside out.
Popular fiction, with its capacity for diversion, can mask important cultural observations within a framework that is often overlooked in the academic world. Works thought to be merely "escapist" can often be more seriously mined for revelations regarding the worlds they portray, especially those of the disenfranchised. As detective fiction has slowly earned critical respect, more authors from minority groups have chosen it as their medium. Chicana/o authors, previously reluctant to write in an underestimated genre that might further marginalize them, have only entered the world of detective fiction in the past two decades. In this book, the first comprehensive study of Chicano/a detective fiction, Ralph E. Rodriguez examines the recent contributions to the genre by writers such as Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Rolando Hinojosa, Michael Nava, and Manuel Ramos. Their works reveal the struggles of Chicanas/os with feminism, homosexuality, familia, masculinity, mysticism, the nationalist subject, and U.S.-Mexico border relations. He maintains that their novels register crucial new discourses of identity, politics, and cultural citizenship that cannot be understood apart from the historical instability following the demise of the nationalist politics of the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to that time, when Chicanas/os sought a unified Chicano identity in order to effect social change, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have seen a disengagement from these nationalist politics and a new trend toward a heterogeneous sense of self. The detective novel and its traditional focus on questions of knowledge and identity turned out to be the perfect medium in which to examine this new self.
A reference and overview of the genre of crime fiction, primarily covering the 1950s onwards, although major earlier writers, such as Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, also have entries.
Mystery and detective novels are popular fictional genres within Western literature. As such, they provide a wealth of information about popular art and culture. When the genre develops within various cultures, it adopts, and proceeds to dominate, native expressions and imagery. American mystery and detective novels appeared in the late nineteenth century. This reference provides a selective guide to the important criticism of American mystery and detective novels and presents general features of the genre and its historical development over the past two centuries. Critical approaches covered in the volume include story as game, images, myth criticism, formalism and structuralism, psychonalysis, Marxism and more. Comparisons with related genres, such as gothic, suspense, gangster, and postmodern novels, illustrate similarities and differences important to the understanding of the unique components of mystery and detective fiction. The guide is divided into five major sections: a brief history, related genres, criticism, authors, and reference. This organization accounts for the literary history and types of novels stemming from the mystery and detective genre. A chronology provides a helpful overview of the development and transformation of the genre.
Presents critical studies of more than 270 authors of detective and mystery fiction from around the world dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day.