The art of detective fiction / edited by Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales, and Robert Vilain.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Chernaik, Warren L.

Swales, Martin.

Vilain, Robert.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Detective and mystery stories--History and criticism--Congresses.

Detective and mystery stories.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xv, 240 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press in association with Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2000.

Summary:

The contributors of this volume pay tribute to and seek to account for the astonishing durability of the detective story as a genre. The essays take a variety of theoretical approaches and include detective fiction in languages other than English. Particular attention is paid to the "Golden Age" of English detective story writing and to the hard-boiled American version of the genre.

Contents:

Poe and the beautiful segar girl / Josef Škvorecký

Body language : a study of death and gender in crime fiction / Sarah Dunant

Fascination and nausea : finding out the hard-boiled way / David Trotter

Writers who knew too much : populism and paradox in detective fiction's golden age / David Glover

Sherlock's children : the birth of the series / Martin Priestman

Making the dead speak : spiritualism and detective fiction / Chris Willis

Locus of disruption : serial murder and generic conventions in detective fiction / David Schmid

Detective as clown : a taxonomy / Audrey Laski

Mean streets and English gardens / Warren Chernaik

Authority, social anxiety and the body in crime fiction : Patricia Cornwell's Unnatural Exposure / Peter Messent

Desires and devices : on women detectives in fiction / Birgitta Berglund

Band of sisters / Margaret Kinsman

Urban myth : Fantômas and the Surrealists / Robert Vilain

Bleeding the thriller : Alain Robbe-Grillet's intertextual crimes / Jonathan C. Brown

Oedipus express : trains, trauma and detective fiction / Laura Marcus

Open letter to detectives and psychoanalysts : analysis and reading / Patrick ffrench.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0312229895

OCLC:

42462698