Since its appearance nearly two centuries ago, crime fiction has gripped readers' imaginations around the world. Detectives have varied enormously: from the nineteenth-century policemen (and a few women), through stars like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, to newly self-aware voices of the...Read more
Stephen Knight's book is a full analytic survey of crime fiction from its origins in the 19th century to the most contemporary developments. Knight explains how and why the various forms of the genre evolved, explores major authors and movements, and argues that the genre as a whole has...Read more
Who killed the most unpleasant woman on Bagalow Beach?
What is the deathly secret of the skeleton buried in the garden?
How did a dead man come to sit on a plane beside a harmless-looking professor and his wife?...Read more