Peter Messent. The Crime Fiction Handbook. [Hoboken]: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-470-65704-1
With its compelling blend of murder, mystery, and detection, itshould come as no surprise that crime fiction is a hugely popularliterary genre. The Crime Fiction Handbook presents acomprehensive introduction to the origins, development, andcultural significance of the crime fiction genre, focusing mainlyon its American, British, and Scandinavian forms.
The book’s first main section presents an overviewof the subject, addressing the politics of crime fiction andexploring some of its main variants – classical andhard-boiled detective fiction, the private eye and the policenovel, and fictions of transgression. The section concludes with anexploration of three key elements of the genre: the links betweenvision, supervision, and the urban landscape; representations ofthe body and the acts of violence done to it; and issues both ofrace and gender.
In-depth readings of fourteen of the most important crimefictions in the Western tradition then follow, beginning with EdgarAllan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” andproceeding from classic works by Arthur Conan Doyle, AgathaChristie, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler to contemporarywritings by James Ellroy, Thomas Harris, Patricia Cornwell, IanRankin, and Stieg Larsson.
The Crime Fiction Handbook offers fascinatinginsights into the appeal of crime fiction while revealing how thegenre both entertains and provides a mirror to the most pressingsocial issues of the day.
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