Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Mystery & Detective Fiction

John Grisham is one of the most prolific and beloved mystery writers today, still reaching the top of the bestseller lists with books like "The Testament" (1999) and "King of Torts" (2003). In recent times, he has also experimented with different genres, such as "A Painted House" (2001), a semi-autobiographical work, and "Skipping Christmas" (2001), a holiday narrative. This volume follows up the critical analysis of Grisham's work in John Grisham: A Critical Companion, examining his writing from 1997 to the present.

What impact did Red Storm Rising have on Ronald Reagan's policy for dealing with the Soviet Union? Was A Clear and Present Danger a trial balloon for the administration's international war on drugs? Did the climax of Debt of Honor foreshadow the actual terrorist plans for 9/11?... And how did Jack Ryan, a lowly analyst, wind up becoming the President of the United States? Was it wishful thinking or a choreographed roadmap for the time when the defense of America was placed firmly in the hands of backroom strategists?
The Jack Ryan Agenda places each of Tom...

As London became the first major city of the nineteenth century, new models of representation emerged in the journalism, poetry, fiction, and social commentary of the period. Simon Joyce argues that such writing reflected a persistent worry about the problem of crime but was never able to contain it. Such commentators as Wordsworth, Dickens, Mayhew, Stevenson, Conan Doyle, Booth, and Wilde all struggled with the same questions about how to represent London and the relations among its varied populations, yet their accounts often undermined one another.

Whereas Victorian...

Though American crime novels are often derided for containing misogynistic attitudes and limiting ideas of masculinity, Greg Forter maintains that they are instead psychologically complex and sophisticated works that demand closer attention. Eschewing the synthetic methodologies of earlier work on crime fiction, Murdering Masculinities argues that the crime novel does not provide a consolidated and stable notion of masculinity. Rather, it demands that male readers take responsibility for the desires they project on to these novels.

Forter examines the narrative strategies of...

Though American crime novels are often derided for containing misogynistic attitudes and limiting ideas of masculinity, Greg Forter maintains that they are instead psychologically complex and sophisticated works that demand closer attention. Eschewing the synthetic methodologies of earlier work on crime fiction, Murdering Masculinities argues that the crime novel does not provide a consolidated and stable notion of masculinity. Rather, it demands that male readers take responsibility for the desires they project on to these novels.

Forter examines the narrative strategies...

"The Girl Sleuth" is a book for anyone who fondly recalls her late-night adventures inside a bedspread cave with a flashlight, a handful of snitched cookies, and a savvy heroine who has just two chapters left in which to decode the message, find the jewels, unmask the impostor, and then catch the next express to the big city.

In this long-out-of-print work, which was first published in 1975, Bobbie Ann Mason examines the girl detective in her various guises through a combination of childhood reminiscences and insights as a fiction writer and observer of American popular culture. Mason...

The publication in 1992 of Miyabe Miyuke's highly anticipated Kasha (translated into English as All She Was Worth) represents a watershed in the history of Japanese women's detective fiction. Inspired by Miyabe's success and the increasing number of Western mysteries in translation, women began writing mysteries of all types, employing the narrative and conceptual resources of the detective genre to depict and critique contemporary Japanese society--and the situation of women in it.

Bodies of Evidence examines this recent boom and the ways in which five contemporary authors (Miyabe,...

The publication in 1992 of Miyabe Miyuke's highly anticipated Kasha (translated into English as All She Was Worth) represents a watershed in the history of Japanese women's detective fiction. Inspired by Miyabe's success and the increasing number of Western mysteries in translation, women began writing mysteries of all types, employing the narrative and conceptual resources of the detective genre to depict and critique contemporary Japanese society--and the situation of women in it.

Bodies of Evidence examines this recent boom and the ways in which five contemporary authors (Miyabe,...