A Companion to Crime Fiction

• 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

Charles J. Rzepka is Professor of English at Boston University, where he teaches and writes on British Romanticism, popular culture, and detective and crime fiction. His publications include The Self as Mind (1986), Sacramental Commodities (1995), Detective Fiction (2005), Essays, Inventions, Interventions (2010), and most recently, Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard (2013; pbk 2017).

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).

List of Figures ix

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

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