Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction aims to enhance understanding of one of the most popular forms of genre fiction by examining a wide variety of the detective and crime fiction produced in Britain and America during the twentieth century. It will be of interest to anyone who enjoys reading crime fiction but is specifically designed with the needs of students in mind. It introduces different theoretical approaches to crime fiction (e.g., formalist, historicist, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, feminist) and will be a useful supplement to a range of crime fiction courses, whether they focus on...

What is literary noir? How do British and American noir thrillers relate to their historical contexts? Lee Horsley's updated study of the genre, now available in paperback, ranges over hundreds of novels from the hard-boiled fiction of Hammett, Chandler and Cain to the game-players, voyeurs and consumers of contemporary thrillers and future noir.

As a result of its imperial role, Britain was closely involved with such romantic and disruptive myths of power such as the imperial adventure hero and the self-deified charismatic leader. Lee Horsley explores fictional representations of political power during this period, surveying a wide range of texts from the adventure story, romance, thriller and science fiction to the novels of Conrad, Huxley, Orwell and Greene.