The Steel Registry. Characters of Crime Fiction is a celebration of the genre of detective fiction and detective fiction characters. Beginning with the earliest eighteenth and nineteenth century crime fiction and concluding with leading contemporary exponents of the genre, the history and development of detective fiction is traced through vignettes of seventy-five crime and detective fiction characters derived from the famous novels of the genre. Famous detective fiction characters and the authors who created them are celebrated through brief descriptive and exploratory synopses including...