From Sherlock Holmes onwards, fictional detectives use lenses: Ocular Proof and the Spectacled Detective in British Crime Fiction argues that these visual aids are metaphors for ways of seeing, and that they help us to understand not only individual detectives’ methods but also the kinds of cultural work detective fiction may do.  It is sometimes regarded as a socially conservative form, and certainly the enduring popularity of ‘Golden Age’ writers such as Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh implies a strong element of nostalgia in the appeal of the genre.  The...

In versus narratives Sherlock Holmes is fighting or otherwise engaging Jack the Ripper. These texts pit the archetypal detective against the archetypal serial killer using established formulas as well as new narrative and generic features, a combination that results in their mass appeal among authors and audiences alike. The list of primary sources includes 120 titles – novels, short stories, plays, fanfiction, ‘Grand Game’ studies, movies, TV shows, video and board games – which are treated as a dialogic network of transfictional and transmedial texts. This study unpacks the...