A Companion to Crime Fiction
Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
1. Edition June 2020
648 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Further versions
A Companion to Crime Fiction presents the definitive
guide to this popular genre from its origins in the eighteenth
century to the present day
* A collection of forty-seven newly commissioned essays from a
team of leading scholars across the globe make this
Companion the definitive guide to crime fiction
* Follows the development of the genre from its origins in the
eighteenth century through to its phenomenal present day
popularity
* Features full-length critical essays on the most
significant authors and film-makers, from Arthur Conan Doyle and
Dashiell Hammett to Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese exploring
the ways in which they have shaped and influenced the field
* Includes extensive references to the most up-to-date
scholarship, and a comprehensive bibliography
Notes on Contributors xi
Introduction: What is Crime Fiction? 1
Charles J. Rzepka
Part I History, Criticism, Culture 11
1 From The Newgate Calendar to Sherlock Holmes 13
Heather Worthington
2 From Sherlock Holmes to the Present 28
Lee Horsley
3 Criticism and Theory 43
Heta Pyrhönen
4 Crime and the Mass Media 57
Alain Silver and James Ursini
5 Crime Fiction and the Literary Canon 76
Joel Black
Part II Genre of a Thousand Faces 91
6 The Newgate Novel and the Police Casebook 93
Lauren Gillingham
7 From Sensation to the Strand 105
Christopher Pittard
8 The "Classical" Model of the Golden Age 117
Susan Rowland
9 Early American Crime Fiction: Origins to Urban Gothic 128
Alexander Moudrov
10 The "Hard-boiled" Genre 140
Andrew Pepper
11 The Pursuit of Crime: Characters in Crime Fiction 152
Carl Malmgren
12 Crime, Forensics, and Modern Science 164
Sarah Dauncey
13 The Police Novel 175
Peter Messent
14 Noir and the Psycho Thriller 187
Philip Simpson
15 True Crime 198
David Schmid
16 Gangs and Mobs 210
Jonathan Munby
17 Historical Crime and Detection 222
Ray B. Browne
18 Crime and the Spy Genre 233
David Seed
19 Crime and the Gothic 245
Catherine Spooner
20 Feminist Crime Fiction and Female Sleuths 258
Adrienne E. Gavin
21 African-American Detection and Crime Fiction 270
Frankie Bailey
22 Ethnic Postcolonial Crime and Detection (Anglophone) 283
Ed Christian
23 Crime Writing in Other Languages 296
Sue Neale
24 Postmodern and Metaphysical Detection 308
Patricia Merivale
25 Crime and Detective Literature for Young Readers 321
Christopher Routledge
26 Crime in Comics and the Graphic Novel 332
Arthur Fried
27 Criminal Investigation on Film 344
Philippa Gates
Part III Artists at Work 357
Fiction 359
28 William Godwin (1756-1836) 361
Philip Shaw
29 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) 369
Maurice S. Lee
30 Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) 381
Andrew Mangham
31 Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) 390
John A. Hodgson
32 Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) 403
Leroy Lad Panek
33 Agatha Christie (1890-1976) 415
Merja Makinen
34 James M. Cain (1892-1977) 427
William Marling
35 Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) 438
Esme Miskimmin
36 Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) 450
Jasmine Yong Hall
37 Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) 462
Alicia Borinsky
38 Chester Himes (1909-1984) 475
Stephen Soitos
39 David Goodis (1917-1967) 487
David Schmid
40 P. D. James (1920-) 495
Louise Harrington
41 Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) 503
Bran Nicol
42 Elmore Leonard (1925-) 510
Charles J. Rzepka
43 Sara Paretsky (1947-) 523
Malcah Effron
44 Walter Mosley (1952-) 531
John Gruesser
Film 539
45 Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) 541
Nick Haeffner
46 Martin Scorsese (1942-) 553
Mark Desmond Nicholls
47 John Woo (1946-) 562
Karen Fang
Conclusion 570
Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley
References 574
Index 599
Lee Horsley is a retired Reader in Literature and Culture at Lancaster University, where she taught two specialist crime courses. Her publications include Political Fiction and the Historical Imagination (1990), Fictions of Power in English Literature 1900-1950 (1995), Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (2005), and an expanded paperback edition of the 2001 publication The Noir Thriller (2009).
