Often more disturbing than entertaining, James Ellroy is an author who never shies away from the ugly or repellent. Eminent crime fiction scholar Peter Wolfe examines how Ellroy transcends the genres of pulp and neo-noir fiction to write stories that are both psychologically haunting and culturally relevant. Wolfe skillfully combines biography--including the unsolved murder of Ellroy's mother--with literary analysis to provide a fascinating and readable study of this popular author. The first in-depth companion to the work of James Ellroy, Like Hot Knives to the Brain will interest students...

Eric Ambler's novelistic career falls into two halves. In the first half belong the works he published between 1935 1940. These include the highly acclaimed Epitaph for a Spy (1938) and The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), both of which were made into successful films in 1944. The intrigue books of this period unfold in interwar Europe, a bitten-up, anxious place reeling between the extremes of fascism and Soviet communism. To reflect changes in the postwar world, Ambler set his later books in third-world countries where first-world financing collides with unstable, often...

The classic television show The Twilight Zone explored the possibilities inhering in the ordinary. A Twilight Zone episode moved us by being poignant and intimate, rambunctious or thought provoking. But whether it takes place on an asteroid, in a city pool room, or in the backwoods, it will usually convey both a folklorist s eye for detail and the born raconteur s sense of pace. Rod Serling, the show s originator, main scriptwriter, and artistic director, knew how much burden he could place on his rhetorical and dramatic gifts. Deservedly celebrated as a pioneer fiction writer...

The classic television show The Twilight Zone explored the possibilities inhering in the ordinary. A Twilight Zone episode moved us by being poignant and intimate, rambunctious or thought provoking. But whether it takes place on an asteroid, in a city pool room, or in the backwoods, it will usually convey both a folklorist's eye for detail and the born raconteur's sense of pace. Rod Serling, the show's originator, main scriptwriter, and artistic director, knew how much burden he could place on his rhetorical and dramatic gifts. Deservedly celebrated as a pioneer fiction writer...

In Understanding Alan Bennett, Peter Wolfe conveys Bennett's originality, complexities of thought, and creative vigor while examining Bennett in his various roles as actor, director, playwright, and lyricist. As Wolfe illustrates, Bennett's success in his many spheres was no fluke. Bennett's theatrical eminence has been accompanied by awards and professional recognition. His play Single Spies won the Oliver Award as England's best comedy for 1989. The casts of his plays, starting with Forty Years On in 1968, have included such luminaries as Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright,...

Havoc in the Hub brings to light the long-neglected work of George V. Higgins, revealing the wealth of intellectual, social, literary, and religious thought that underlies his 25 novels and numerous other works. Higgins's writing, fed by equal parts wit and sorrow, touches our senses, emotions, and minds. Peter Wolfe makes a resounding contribution to the study of this writer. Wolfe places Higgins's work in its geographical context and outlines the many sources from which Higgins drew during his highly productive career. The first in-depth examination of George V. Higgins, Havoc in the Hub...

Havoc in the Hub examines the long-neglected work of George V. Higgins, bringing to light the wealth of intellectual, social, literary, and religious thought that underlie his 25 novels and numerous other writings.

Raymond Chandler's eminence as a mystery writer is unchallenged. Somerset Maugham and George Grella both rate him above Dashiell Hammett; Eric Partridge deems him a serious artist and a very considerable novelist, while praising him as one of the finest novelists of his time. Peter Wolfe examines the many sides of Chandler and his work--his apparent will to self-destruct, his obsession with beautiful women, and his apparent brush with homosexuality--and casts much new and needed light on this major American author.

John le Carre is viewed by many critics as one of the best spy and espionage novel writers. His most famous works are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and The Little Drummer Girl. Peter Wolfe has produced an informative study of le Carre's works, showing how le Carre's five years in the Service (British Intelligence) helped him become a keen observer, social historian, and expert in bureaucratic politics. He has supplanted the technological flair marking much of today's spy fiction with moral complexity and psychological depth. He shows us what spies are like,...

The work of British playwright Simon Gray (1936-2008) has always discouraged labels. His inventive plays never lodged easily within the confines of ideologies and, as a consequence, have failed to garner the critical scholarship afforded his peers. This book examines Gray's legacy, from his early plays which hack away at the formalism and humanism of traditional English Satire, to his later work, in which he explores English professionals and their problems connecting with each other. If he remains the least known major English dramatist of his day, he's also one of the boldest and best.