The Egypt that so enticed and enchanted intrepid archaeologist-sleuth Amelia Peabody in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a place of wonder, mystery, danger, and the lure of antiquity. Now, with this monumental volume of Egyptian culture, history, and esoterica, readers will be able to immerse themselves in the great lady's world more completely than ever before.

Journey through the bustling streets and markets of Cairo a century ago. Surround yourself with the customs and color of a bygone time. Explore ancient tombs and temples and marvel at the history of this...

During a period of twenty years--from his start as a young writer for H. L. Mencken's classic pulp magazine The Black Mask in the early 1930s, through the publication of his novels The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, to his career as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940s--Raymond Chandler kept a series of private notebooks.

Drawn from those journals, The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler offers an intimate view of the writer at work, revealing early ideas, descriptions, and anecdotes that would later be used in The Long Goodbye, The Blue...

From Tony Hillerman's Navajo Southwest to Martin Cruz Smith's Moscow, an exotic, vividly described locale is one of the great pleasures of many murder mysteries. Indeed, the sense of place, no less than the compelling character of the detective, is often what keeps authors writing and readers reading a particular series of mystery novels.

This book investigates how "police procedural" murder mysteries have been used to convey a sense of place. Gary Hausladen delves into the work of more than thirty authors, including Tony Hillerman, Martin Cruz Smith, James Lee Burke, David Lindsey,...

In the past decade, Raymond Chandler has come to be recognized as a major mid-century American novelist. Though an immensely popular writer of mysteries, Chandler is now receiving the serious attention of scholars. He is seen as a writer with a deliberate approach toward the creation of fictions that present a significant criticism of American life. The essays and reviews in this volume trace the response to Chandler's work from 1944 to the present.

This volume traces the changing reception of Chandler's works. It includes essays and reviews from 1944 to the present. These pieces treat...

Best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark, the Queen of Suspense, uses a popular literary genre, the novel of mystery and suspense, to explore contemporary social issues and the reality of evil in the lives of ordinary people. This first critical study of her work reveals the serious intent of a popular writer of popular fiction. It examines common themes--the consequences of crime on innocent victims, how crime forces its victims to confront their deepest psychological fears and the terror of the past--and explores Clark's treatment of current social issues from capital punishment to child...

White provides the most comprehensive scholarly compilation of fictional work of legal suspense in existence. Primarily a bibliography of novels, it also annotates plays, scripts for film and television, novelizations, and short-story collections about lawyers and the law. The idea behind the principal of selection is to disdain labels that reduce the variety of the legal thriller to a subgenre of mystery fiction. Novels that range from suspense thrillers through science fiction to the philosophical novel are included if justice is thematically important. It is therefore an eclectic...

Combining theoretical and practical approaches, this collection of essays explores classic detective fiction from a variety of contemporary viewpoints. Among the diverse perspectives are those which interrogate the way the genre reflects important social and cultural attitudes, contributes to a reader's ability to adapt to the challenges of daily life, and provides alternate takes on the role of the detective as an investigator and arbiter of truth.

Part I looks at the nature of and the audience for detective fiction, as well as at the genre as a literary form. This section includes an...

Latin America has a rich literary tradition that is receiving growing amounts of attention. The body of Latin American mystery writing is especially vast and diverse. Because it is part of Latin American popular culture, it also reflects many of the social and cultural concerns of that region. This reference provides an overview of mystery fiction of Latin America. While many of the authors profiled have received critical attention, others have been relatively neglected.

Included are alphabetically arranged entries on 54 writers, most of whom are from Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba. Every...

The author of such works as "The Big Sleep" (1939), "Farewell, My Lovely" (1940), "The Lady in the Lake" (1943), and "The Long Goodbye" (1953), Raymond Chandler was one of the most popular mystery writers of his time. His works continue to be read today and have been adapted many times into films. Chandler's writings have also been receiving growing amounts of scholarly attention, and while most of this attention has focused on his use of language, critics are now studying the fictitious world he created and the milieu in which he wrote. This reference is a detailed guide to his writings....

Ross Macdonald is best known as the creator of private detective Lew Archer and as the author of such works as "The Drowning Pool" (1950) and "The Underground Man" (1971). One of the most popular American mystery writers of the 20th century, he is often compared to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler-authors from whom he borrowed literary techniques-but is generally considered more serious and complex, often writing about dysfunctional families in academic settings. This reference is a convenient guide to his life and works.

Included are numerous alphabetically arranged entries for...

Since the publication and cinematic success of 1992's "Along Came a Spider," James Patterson seems to have taken up permanent residence on the bestseller lists. In the ensuing decade, his hit detective novels, with memorable nursery rhyme titles like "Cat and Mouse," (1997) and "Pop Goes the Weasel "(1999), came in rapid-fire succession and generated similar popularity and praise. His "Alex Cross" series created one of the most recognizable detectives in literature, and one of the first urban African American detectives to appeal, on such a grand scale, to audiences of all demographics....