Since their inception, detective novels have been a wildly successful genre of American fiction, featuring a uniquely American belief in rugged individualism. This historical and critical text surveys early and mid-20th century American detective novels, particularly those by John Carroll Daly, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, and Raymond Chandler. The book focuses on Raymond Chandler's creation of Philip Marlowe, a detective whose feeling for community and willingness to compromise radically changed the genre's vigilantism and violence. British detective fiction is also...