front cover of Anatomy of Murder
Anatomy of Murder
Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction
Carl D. Malmgren
University of Wisconsin Press, 2001
Anatomy of Murder identifies and explores three basic fictional forms dealing with murder and detection—mystery, detective, and crime fiction. Mystery fiction takes place in a centered world, one whose most distinctive characteristic is motivation. Covering the forms of murder fiction, the book examines texts by Doyle, Christie, Sayers, Hammett, Chandler, Highsmith, Jim Thompson, Thomas Harris, and others.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Bloodhounds of Heaven
The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle
Ian Ousby
Harvard University Press, 1976

logo for Intellect Books
Crime Uncovered
Detective
Edited by Barry Forshaw
Intellect Books, 2015
For most of the twentieth century, the private eye dominated crime fiction and film, a lone figure fighting for justice, often in opposition to the official representatives of law and order. More recently, however, the police have begun to take center stage—as exemplified by the runaway success of TV police procedurals like Law and Order. In Crime Uncovered: Detective, Barry Forshaw offers an exploration of some of the most influential and popular fictional police detectives in the history of the genre.

Taking readers into the worlds of such beloved authors as P. D. James, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Ian Rankin, and Håkan Nesser, this book zeroes in on the characteristics that define the iconic characters they created, discussing how they relate to their national and social settings, questions of class, and to the criminals they relentlessly pursue. Showing how the role of the authority figure has changed—and how each of these writers creates characters who work both within and against the strictures of official investigations—the book shows how creators cleverly subvert expectations of both police procedure and the crime genre itself.

Written by a leading expert in the field and drawn from interviews with the featured authors, Crime Uncovered: Detectivewill thrill the countless fans of Inspector Rebus, Harry Hole, Adam Dalgliesh, and the other enduring police detectives who define the genre.
[more]

front cover of The Death of the Detective
The Death of the Detective
A Novel
Mark Smith
Northwestern University Press, 2007
A madman is on the loose in the city. Alone and on the verge of psychic collapse, detective Arnold Magnuson follows clues in murder's wake--through the Chicago of society clubs and nightclubs and the city of small-time hoods and big-time Mafia, the slums smelling of machine oil and riverside tanneries and pristine lakeside villages--through subtle interrogations, split-second lies, and improvised stories, moving ever closer to a culprit who begins to feel alarmingly like himself.

The Death of the Detective is a quest novel in the tradition of Don Quixote, Moby-Dick, and Dead Souls. During his frenetic and blood-soaked odyssey, Mark Smith's detective moves through the city on highways, boulevards, side streets, and alleys. He tracks "the death-maker" from a mansion in Lake Forest to the underbelly of the South Side, from a glass high-rise on the Gold Coast to a run-down tavern in the northwestern suburbs, and everywhere in between. In this New York Times best seller and finalist for the 1974 National Book Award, Smith takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go until the last page of his relentless journey into the dark recesses of the American soul.
[more]

front cover of The Detective as Historian
The Detective as Historian
History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction
Edited by Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr.; Preface by Robin W. Winks
University of Wisconsin Press, 2000
Readers of detective stories are turning more toward historical crime fiction to learn both what everyday life was like in past societies and how society coped with those who broke the laws and restrictions of the times. The crime fiction treated here ranges from ancient Egypt through classical Greece and Rome; from medieval and renaissance China and Europe through nineteenth-century England and America.
       Topics include: Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael; Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose; Susanna Gregory’s Doctor Matthew Bartholomew; Peter Heck’s Mark Twain as detective; Anne Perry and her Victorian-era world; Caleb Carr’s works; and Elizabeth Peter’s Egyptologist-adventurer tales.
[more]

logo for University of Wisconsin Press
You Know My Method
Science of the Detective
J.K. Van Dover
University of Wisconsin Press, 1994
You Know My Method surveys the century following Edgar Allan Poe’s invention of the fictional detective in 1841. The same century saw the development of the idea of the scientist as a person who defined himself by his use of a disciplined method of inquiry. By 1940, the detective had established himself as the most popular figure in literature, and science had become the custodian of truth in the modern world. These two developments were not unrelated.
    The four principal writers covered are Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, R. Austin Freeman, and Arthur B. Reeve. Another dozen more writers are treated somewhat more briefly: Gaboriau, Pinkerton, Green, Morrison, Futrelle, and Leroux, among others.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter