In English and American cultures, detective fiction has a long and illustrious history. Its origins can be traced back to major developments in Anglo-American law, like the concept of circumstantial evidence and the rise of lawyers as heroic figures. Edgar Allen Poe's writings further fueled this cultural phenomenon, with the use of enigmas and conundrums in his detective stories, as well as the hunt-and-chase action of early police detective novels. Poe was only one staple of the genre, with detective fiction contributing to a thriving literary market that later influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's work.-This text examines the emergence of short detective fiction in the nineteenth century, as well as the appearance of detectives in Victorian novels. It explores how the genre has captivated readers for centuries, with the chapters providing a framework for a more complete understanding of nineteenth-century detective fiction.

Until recently no one could read the stories that formed the basics of the detective story in America and made it one of the most popular kinds of fiction in the 19th century. With unprecedented access to digital collections of period newspapers and magazines, this text examines detective fiction during its formative years, focusing on crucial elements of the genre-setting, lawyers and the law, physicians and forensics, women as victims and heroes, crime and criminals, and police and detectives.

The appearance of Sherlock Holmes in The Strand Magazine in 1891 began a stampede of writers who wanted to emulate, build-upon or even satirize Arthur Conan Doyle's work. This book explores the development of detective fiction during the critical period between Conan Doyle's creation of Holmes and the advent of the Golden Age of the detective story during World War I. Both British and American detective writers of the period are surveyed - as well as writers who turned to gentleman burglars and master criminals.

Traditionally, the history of detective stories as a literary genre begins in the nineteenth-century with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Emile Gaboriau, and a handful of other writers. The nineteenth century was actually awash in detective stories, though many, like the so-called detective notebooks, are so rare that they lay beyond the reach of even the most dedicated readers. This volume surveys the first fifty years of the detective story in nineteenth-century America and England, examining not only major works, but also the lesser known--including contemporary pseudo-biographies, magazines, story papers, and newspapers--only recently accessible through new media. By rewriting the history of the mystery genre, this study opens up new avenues for literary exploration.

Dashiell Hammett, like most successful writers, honed his skills in the trenches. Long before The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man made him a household name, Hammett developed his technique writing satirical magazine pieces, then moved on to churn out tales of sex, crime and adventure for pulp magazines. Characters like Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles made him famous, but Hammett perfected his style - and created the first hard-boiled detective fiction - writing stories and novels about an anonymous, middle-aged detective, known as the Continental Op. This detailed examination of the early works of Dashiell Hammett takes a new look at one of the 20th century's most influential crime writers and his creation of the hard-boiled detective story. Each chapter covers an element of Hammett's early writing career - his magazine fiction; the Continental Op's development as a character; the Continental Op novels; and the last Continental Op stories. A concluding chapter provides afterthoughts on Hammett's career, style and place in the history of detective fiction. A chronology of works cited, a bibliography and an index supplement the text.

On July 11, 1891, The Scandal of Bohemia was published in newspapers across America. The first of a series of short stories which would eventually become ""The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"", it not only legitimized the detective story but also reintroduced Americans to an indigenous genre. Edgar Allan Poe had essentially invented the detective story three decades earlier with his introduction of Auguste Dupin. Yet, at the turn of the century, his stories remained obscure to many Americans. The intervening years between Poe and Doyle were basically devoid of literature which could truly be called a detective story. Plentiful dime novels and detective yarns decried vice, promoted sensationalism and generally lacked the literary quality of Poe's work. With Sherlock Holmes, Doyle reintroduced respectability to detective fiction with his emphasis on logic, reason and methodical thinking. Focusing especially on turn-of-the-century publications, this volume covers the formative years of American detective fiction, enumerating the societal forces which changed the sensation-laden detective narrative of the mid - 19th century to the modern detective story which appeared in the years after World War I. It examines elements which influenced the writers of the time including the rise and decline of police as an institution; the parallel development of private detectives; and the birth of the crusading newspaper reporter. The work also looks at the beginnings of forensic science and criminology as well as the ways in which this new awareness changed the rules of evidence and judicial procedures - and consequently, the detective story.

American crime fiction has developed into writing that has a commitment to democracy and the democratic way of life, a compassion and empathy and a style which has created a significant branch of American literature.

Beginning in the 1970s, a new generation of writers took over the hard-boiled story (created by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett) and transformed it to fit the realities of their world--a universe infected by violence, greed, racism, sexism, war, and commercialism. Their protagonists, too, are far different from Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.
The author comments both on the way the hard-boiled story has changed over the past three decades and examines the work of ten significant contemporary hard-boiled writers. Chapters on Robert B. Parker, James Crumley, Loren Estleman, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Carl Hiaasen, Earl Emerson, Robert Crais, James Lee Burke, and Walter Mosley demonstrate how these writers have used the hard-boiled hero to make powerful statements about life in the last quarter of the twentieth century.