This study of crime and masquerade in fiction focuses upon the criminal as a 'performer'. Through stimulating discussions of a wide range of criminal types, Peach argues for the importance of novels that have been neglected. The book integrates incisive literary and cultural criticism with arguments about gender, masquerade, crime and culture.

This book takes a look at the evolution of crime fiction. Considering 'criminography' as a system of inter-related sub-genres, it explores the connections between modes of literature such as revenge tragedies, the gothic and anarchist fiction, while taking into account the influence of pseudo-sciences such as mesmerism and criminal anthropology.

This study shows how she sought to reconcile her attachment to the Victorian past with her recognition of a new society that undermined established order and in doing so gave more opportunities to women, confused class-boundaries, extended tolerance, allowed the cult of pleasure and self-assertion and revealed the ambiguities of respectability.

From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell is the first book to consider seriously the hugely popular and influential works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L.Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine. Providing studies of forty-two key novels, this volume introduces these authors for students and the general reader in the context of their lives, and of critical debates on gender, colonialism, psychoanalysis, the Gothic, and feminism. It includes interviews with P.D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.

Much analysis of gangster movies has been based upon a study of the gangster as a malign figuration of the American Dream, originally set in the era of the Depression. This text extends previous analysis of the genre by examining the evolution of gangster movies from the 1930s to the contemporary period and by placing them in the context of cultural and cinematic issues such as masculinity, consumerism, and technology. With a close examination of many films from Scarface an Public Enemy to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, this book provides a fascinating insight into a topical and popular...

Detective fiction's real origins lurk in the popular press of the early nineteenth century, where the detective and the case were steadily developed. The well-known masters of early crime fiction, including Collins and Dickens, drew on this material, found in texts that have rarely been reprinted or even discussed. Heather Worthington combines scholarly and archival study with theoretically informed analysis to unearth the foundations of detective fiction.

Christie's books depict women as adventurous, independent figures who renegotiate sexual relationships along more equal lines. Women are also allowed to disrupt society and yet the texts refuse to see them as double deviant because of their femininity. This book demonstrates exactly how quietly innovatory Christie was in relation to gender.

This book explores the three aspects of deviance that contemporary crime fiction manipulates: linguistic, social, and generic. Gregoriou conducts case studies into crime series by James Patterson, Michael Connelly and Patricia Cornwell, and investigates the way in which these novelists correspondingly challenge those aforementioned conventions.

This new addition to the Crime Files series explores the complex relationship between 'noir' in France and in the U.S., including discussion of both film and fiction.

This book takes a look at the evolution of crime fiction. Considering 'criminography' as a system of inter-related sub-genres, it explores the connections between modes of literature such as revenge tragedies, the gothic and anarchist fiction, while taking into account the influence of pseudo-sciences such as mesmerism and criminal anthropology.