Dashiell Hammett, like most successful writers, honed his skills in the trenches. Long before The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man made him a household name, Hammett developed his technique writing satirical magazine pieces, then moved on to churn out tales of sex, crime and adventure for pulp magazines. Characters like Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles made him famous, but Hammett perfected his style - and created the first hard-boiled detective fiction - writing stories and novels about an anonymous, middle-aged detective, known as the Continental Op. This detailed examination of the early...

Edgar Allan Poe essentially invented the detective story in 1841 with Murders in the Rue Morgue. In the years that followed, however, detective fiction in America saw no significant progress as a literary genre. Much to the dismay of moral crusaders like Anthony Comstock, dime novels and other sensationalist publications satisfied the public's hunger for a yarn. Things changed as the century waned, and eventually the detective was reborn as a figure of American literature. In part these changes were due to a combination of social conditions, including the rise and decline of the police...

This book is a no-apologies introduction to Detective Fiction. It's written in an aggressive, modern English well-suited to a genre which has traditionally broken ground in terms of aggressive writing, contemporary scenarios, and tough dialogue.

Detective stories should be examined from a literary point of view, with special attention to literary history and to materials and patterns from which the writers created their fictions. This book sheds new light into the fascinating field of detective fiction.

Although the classic tales of mystery have faded from popular culture, avid collectors and cataloguers have ensured their place in the annals of literature. This anthology offers readers an exemplary sample of the hundreds of detective stories published in 19th century newspapers and magazines. All but two are stories published before 1891, before Sherlock Holmes appeared in America. The stories are categorized according to common motifs, including the largely unexplored field of women in late 19th century detection. Revealing cultural intricacies that other kinds of fiction cannot, the...

The appearance of Sherlock Holmes in The Strand Magazine in 1891 began a stampede of writers who wanted to emulate, build upon or even satirize Arthur Conan Doyle s work. This book explores the development of detective fiction during the critical period between Conan Doyle s creation of Holmes and the advent of the Golden Age of the detective story during World War I. Both British and American detective writers of the period are surveyed as well as writers who turned to gentleman burglars and master criminals."

With unprecedented access to digital collections of period newspapers and magazines, this text examines detective fiction during its formative years, focusing on crucial elements of the genre-setting, lawyers and the law, physicians and forensics, women as victims and heroes, crime and criminals, and police and detectives.