ISBN-13: 9780879727321 / Angielski / Miękka / 1997 / 210 str.
The Reader and the Detective Story is unique it treats the detective story as a special case of reading, governed by special rules and shaped by a highly specialized formula. The method of interpretation is the application of the principles of response theory (especially those developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wolfgang Iser, and Hans Robert Jauss) to the reading of a tale of detection.
George Dove demonstrates how the English soft-boiled mystery and the American private-eye story, although they have different settings and develop different plots, belong in the same subgenre and follow the same formula, inherited directly from Poe s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. "