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The golden age of murder: the mystery of the writers who invented the modern detective story
By Martin Edwards. 2015
Study of an elite, mysterious social network of crime writers called the Detection Club, which began in 1930, and the…
group's continuing influence on print and film storytelling. Founding members Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Julian Symons presided over the club for nearly forty years. 2015Talking about detective fiction
By P. D. James. 2009
British author of The Private Patient (DB 67910) and other mysteries examines the genre of detective fiction. Discusses the style,…
plotting techniques, protagonists, and talent of past and current authors, including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Dashiell Hammett, and Josephine Tey. Also describes her own methods. 2009Twenty-three authors, including Alexander McCall Smith and Robert B. Parker, use various methods to describe the creation of their crime…
series protagonists. Jeffery Deaver provides a lengthy obituary for quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme, while Lee Child explains the marketable Jack Reacher. Strong language. 2009A personal devil: A Magdalene la Batarde Mystery (Magdaline la Batarde Ser. #No. 2)
By Roberta Gellis. 2001
London, 1139. Beautiful brothel-keeper Magdalene la Bâtarde enlists the help of her admirer, Sir Bellamy, when blind prostitute Sabina, one…
of Magdalene's former employees, needs assistance. Sabina's lover, Master Mainard the saddle maker, has been accused of murdering his nagging wife. Some descriptions of sex. 2001Powder burn
By Carl Hiaasen, Robert J. Masters, Tony Geiss, Rh Disney Staff. 1998
Architect Chris Meadows is caught up in Miami's cocaine wars when a former girlfriend and her child are killed during…
a gang shootout. Meadows is also wounded but survives to identify the triggerman. Although he works with the police, Meadows also seeks his own form of justice. Strong language, violence, and some descriptions of sexCity of glass (New York Ser.)
By Paul Auster. 1985
Volume I of the New York trilogy. A wrong number in the middle of the night ensnares Daniel Quinn (once…
a serious poet and essayist, now author of pulps), in a case far more bizarre than any he has invented in his fiction. The caller seeks the Paul Auster Agency, even though Paul Auster is not a detective but a young writer who strongly resembles the Paul Auster who wrote this book. Ultimately, the obsessed Quinn, impersonating Auster, descends into madness. A fast-paced thrillerThe best American essays 2020 (Best American)
By Robert Atwan. 2020
Twenty-four previously published essays spanning a variety of life experiences. Rabih Alameddine discusses living in San Francisco during the height…
of the AIDS crisis, his love of soccer, and working in an English pub-themed diner in "How to Bartend."Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. 2020The cruellest month: With the Assistance of Jane Austen's Letters
By Hazel Holt. 2009
Sheila Malory finds herself at Oxford's New Bodleian library, digging into the past of a decidedly unpleasant librarian who was…
found dead under collapsed bookshelves. This librarian had numerous enemies, so Sheila turns to the victim's old diary from World War II for some answers. Some strong language. 1991The murderer in ruins (Inspector Frank Stave #01)
By Cay Rademacher, Peter Millar. 2015
Hamburg, 1947. Career policeman Frank Stave worries about his missing son, even as he works with colleague Maschke from the…
vice squad and Lt. MacDonald of the British military to track down a killer. Translated from the original 2011 German edition. Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. 2015The forger (Inspector Frank Stave #03)
By Cay Rademacher. 2020
Hamburg, 1948. During a routine operation, Chief Inspector Frank Stave is shot. After he recovers, he transfers from the office…
combatting the black market. But then the women clearing rubble discover works of art from the Weimar period--next to a corpse. Translated from original 2013 German edition. Some violence and some strong language. 2018The best American essays 2018 (The best American series)
By Hilton Als, Robert Atwan. 2018
Collection of twenty-four previously published essays exploring different areas of life. Includes authors such as Noam Chomsky, author of Who…
Rules the World? (DB 86717), and Edwidge Danticat, author of The Art of Death (DB 91841). Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. 2018The best American essays 2021 (The best American series)
By Kathryn Schulz, Robert Atwan. 2021
Collection of twenty previously published essays covering topics many experienced in some form during 2020. Authors include Gabrielle Hamilton, author…
of Blood, Bones, & Butter (DB 73318); Patricia Lockwood, author of Priestdaddy (DB 88242); and Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones (DB 74033). Violence and strong language. 2021The best American essays 2019 (Best American series)
By Robert Atwan. 2019
Collection of twenty previously published essays featuring works by Rabih Alameddine, Alexander Chee, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Jia Tolentino. In "Obituary…
for Dead Languages," Heather Altfeld reflects on the deaths of languages when the last speaker dies and the impact of their loss. Violence and strong language. 2019The figure of the detective: a literary history and analysis
By Charles Brownson. 2014
"This book begins with a history of the detective genre, coextensive with the novel itself, identifying the attitudes and institutions…
needed for the genre to emerge in its mature form around 1880. The theory of the genre is laid out along with its central theme of the getting and deployment of knowledge. Sherlock Holmes, the English Classic stories and their inheritors are examined in light of this theme and the balance of two forms of knowledge used in fictional detection--cool or rational, and warm or emotional. The evolution of the genre formula is driven by changes in the social climate in which it is embedded. These changes explain the decay of the English Classic and its replacement by noir, hardboiled and spy stories, to end in the cul-de-sac of the thriller and the nostalgic Neo-Classic. Possible new forms of the detective story are suggested." -- Provided by publisherEntanglement
By Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Zygmunt Miloszewski. 2007
Praise for Entanglement:"An exquisite contemporary crime story. Polish literature boasts a real master."--Jerzy Pilch, author of The Mighty Angel"A tightly…
plotted mystery novel, dark humor and contemporary Warsaw perfectly rendered."--Przekrój MagazineThe morning after a group psychotherapy session in a Warsaw monastery, Henry Talek is found dead, a roasting spit stuck in one eye.Public prosecutor Teodor Szacki, world-weary, suffering from bureaucratic exhaustion and marital ennui, feels that life has passed him by. But this case changes everything. Because of it he meets Monika Grzelka, a young journalist whose charms prove difficult to resist, and he discovers the frightening power of certain esoteric therapeutic methods. The shocking videos of the sessions lead him to an array of possible scenarios. Could one of the patients have become so absorbed by his therapy role-playing that he murdered Telak? Szacki's investigation leads him to an earlier murder, before the fall of Communism.And why is the Secret Police suddenly taking an interest in all this? As Szacki uncovers each piece of the puzzle, facts emerge that he'd be better off not knowing, for his own safety.Zygmunt Miloszewski, born in Warsaw in 1975, is an editor currently working for Newsweek. His first novel, The Intercom, was published in 2005 to high acclaim. Entanglement followed in 2007, and the author is now working on screenplays based on The Intercom and Entanglement as well as on a sequel to the latter, also featuring Teodor Szacki.A Grain of Truth
By Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Zygmunt Miloszewski. 2012
"A Grain of Truth, like every great crime novel, digs up more unsettling questions than it does answers; it also…
demonstrates the seemingly endless possibilities of the form itself to serve as smart social criticism." --Maureen Corrigan, on NPR's Fresh AirPraise for the first novel in the Teodor Szacki series:"In Entanglement Miloszewski takes an engaging look at modern Polish society in this stellar first in a new series starring Warsaw prosecutor Teodor Szacki. Readers will want to see more of the complex, sympathetic Szacki."-Publishers WeeklyIt is spring 2009, and prosecutor Szacki is no longer working in Warsaw-he has said goodbye to his family and to his career in the capital and moved to Sandomierz, a picturesque town full of churches and museums. Hoping to start a "brave new life," Szacki instead finds himself investigating a strange murder case in surroundings both alien and unfriendly.The victim is found brutally murdered, her body drained of blood. The killing bears the hallmarks of legendary Jewish ritual slaughter, prompting a wave of anti-Semitic paranoia in the town, where everyone knows everyone. The murdered woman's husband is bereft, but when Szacki discovers that she had a lover, the husband becomes the prime suspect. Before there's time to arrest him, he is found murdered in similar circumstances. In his investigation Szacki must wrestle with the painful tangle of Polish-Jewish relations and something that happened more than sixty years earlier.Zygmunt Miloszewski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1975. His first novel The Intercom was published in 2005 to high acclaim. In 2006 he published The Adder Mountains; in 2010, the crime novel Entanglement; and this year its sequel, A Grain of Truth.A Dark Song of Blood
By Ben Pastor. 2014
Praise for the Martin Bora series:"The tone of Liar Moon has a flu-like grimness, appropriate the 1943 setting. Pastor is…
excellent at providing details (silk stockings, movie magazines, cigarettes) that light up the setting."-Booklist"Lumen's plot is well crafted, her prose shap . . . a disturbing mix of detection and reflection."-Publisher's WeeklyRome, 1944. While the Allies are fighting their way up the Italian peninsula, Rome lives the last days of Nazi occupation. Their world is falling apart as the German Army, the Gestapo, and the SS vie for power while holding glittering and debauched parties. But this is also a time of Italian partisan attacks, arrests, and mass executions, all to the sound of Allied artillery bombardment just outside the walls of the city.Baron Martin von Bora, an officer in the Wehrmacht, has the complex and delicate task of solving not one, but three murders. A young German embassy secretary has "accidentally" fallen to her death from a fourth-floor window, and a Roman society lady and a headstrong cardinal of the Roman Curia are found dead in her apartment. The cardinal is personally known to Bora and, like the officer, secretly active in the resistance against the Third Reich. With Italian police inspector Sandro Guidi at his side, Bora sets off to establish the truth. Different as they are, the two men confront crime, war, and dictatorship in the awareness that the dignity of man comes at a price beyond all imagination.How to Write a Mystery
By Larry Beinhart. 1996
WHODUNIT? YOUDUNIT!So you want to write a mystery. There's more to it than just a detective, a dead body, and…
Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the candlestick. Fortunately, Larry Beinhart--Edgar Award-winning author of You Get What You Pay For, Foreign Exchange, and American Hero--has taken a break from writing smart, suspenseful thrillers to act as your guide through all the twists and turns of creating the twists and turns of a good mystery. Drawing on advice and examples from a host of the best names in mystery writing--from Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane to Scott Turow and Thomas Harris--plus some of his own prime plots, Larry Beinhart introduces you to your most indispensable partners in crime: *Character, plot, and procedure * The secrets to creating heroes, heroines, and villains ("All writers draw upon themselves and their experience. While the whole of yourself might not be capable of being either a serial killer or an FBI agent, there are parts in each of us that are capable of almost anything.") * The fine art of scripting the sex scene *The low-down on violence ("A crime novel without violence is like smoking pot without inhaling, sex without orgasm, or a hug without a squeeze." ) *And much more!From the opening hook to the final denouement, Larry Beinhart takes the mystery out of being a mystery writer.From the Trade Paperback edition.The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing The Modern Whodunit
By William G Tapply. 1995
The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit has guided and inspired mystery writers--veterans as well as beginners--for nearly…
a decade. Here William G. Tapply, with more than 20 popular mystery and suspense novels under his belt, isolates the crucial "elements" of the mystery novels that publishers want to publish and readers want to read: original plots, clever clues, sympathetic sleuths, memorable villains, multi-dimensional supporting characters, true-to-life settings, sharp narrative hooks, and, of course, smooth writing. In clear, readable prose using examples from many of our best contemporary mystery novelists, Tapply shows how the writer can create the pieces and fit them together to make a story you can't put down. This new expanded edition of Elements contains original chapters by some of our best contemporary writers and most prominent personalities in the publishing world discussing writing and business issues that are vital to mystery writers in the 21st century.Over a century since his first appearance in print, Sherlock Holmes remains an iconic figure today. This unique companion is…
a collector's dream, allowing fans to delve into the criminal environment of foggy, gas-lit Victorian London-the world of the all-time greatest detective. The book brings to life the elements of Holmes's success, the crime scene of his day, his history in film and television, and the present-day Holmes legacy. Featured throughout are famous figures such as Holmes's faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson; his nemesis, Professor Moriarity; and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Filled with more than 150 images-many of the works by the great original illustrators of Conan Doyle's stories-this volume presents an excellent mix of information to satisfy legions of Holmes collectors, mystery fans, and historians fascinated by a bygone era.