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The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950
By Carmen Callil, Colm Toibin. 2011
For Colm Toíbín and Carmen Callil there is no difference between literary and commercial writing - there is only the…
good novel: engrossing, inspirational, compelling. In their selection of the best 200 novels written since 1950, the editors make a case for the best and the best-loved works and argue why each should be considered a modern classic. Enlightening, often unexpected and always engaging this tour through the world of fiction is full of surprises, forgotten masterpieces and a valuable guide to what to read next. Authors in the collection include Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Daphne du Maurier, Patrick Hamilton, Carson McCullers, J. D. Salinger, Bernard Malamud; Flannery O'Connor, Mulk Raj Anand, Raymond Chandler, L. P. Hartley, Amos Tutuola, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Samuel Beckett, Patricia Highsmith, Chinua Achebe, Isak Dineson, Alan Sillitoe, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Grace Paley, Harper Lee, Olivia Manning and Mordecai Richler.The Ambivalent Detective in Victorian Sensation Novels studies how the detective as a literary character evolved through the mid-nineteenth century…
in England, as seen in sensation novels. In contrast to most assumptions about the English detective, Yoon argues that the detective was more often tolerated than admired following the establishment of professional detectives in the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1842. Through studying the historical and literary contexts between the 1840s to the 1860s, Yoon argues that the detective was seen as a suspicious, even mistrusted and disdained, figure who was nonetheless viewed as necessary to combat rising levels of crime. The detective as a literary character responded to the often contradictory values and aspirations of the middle class, representing an independent masculinity and laying claim to scientific authority. This study surveys novels by Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Wilkie Collins, alongside lesser-known writers like William Russell, James Redding Ware (pseudonym Andrew Forrester), and William Stephens Hayward. This book contributes to the study of mid-nineteenth-century Victorian culture and connects with broader studies of the detective fiction genre.Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction
By Eric Sandberg. 2024
The primary aim of Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction is to introduce the emerging cross-disciplinary area of study that…
combines the fields of crime fiction studies and criminology. The study of crime fiction as a genre has a long history within literary studies, and is becoming increasingly prominent in twenty-first-century scholarship. Less attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which elements of criminology, or the systematic study of crime and criminal behaviour from a wide range of perspectives, have influenced the production and reception of crime narratives. Similarly, not enough attention has been paid to the ways in which crime fiction as a genre can inform and enliven the study of criminology. Written largely for undergraduate and graduate students, but also for scholars of crime fiction and criminology interested in thinking across disciplinary boundaries, Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction provides full coverage of the backgrounds of the related fields of crime fiction studies and criminology, and explores the many ways they are reciprocally illuminating. The four main chapters in Section 1 (Orient You) familiarize readers with the history and contours of the broad fields within which Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction operates. It introduces the history of crime and criminology, as well the history of crime fiction and the academic field dedicated to its study. In its final chapter it looks at the ways these areas of study can be conceptually interrelated. Section 2 of the book (Equip You) is dedicated to examining aspects of criminological theory in relation to various forms of crime fiction. It highlights a range of the most relevant theories, paradigms, and problematics of criminology that appear in, shed light on, or can be effectively illuminated through reference to crime fiction. Its five chapters deal with the definition of crime; explanations for crime and criminal behaviour; investigations into crime; the experience of crime; and, finally, punishments for crime. All of these areas are examined alongside examples of crime fiction drawn from across the genre’s history. Section 3 (Enable You) presents six case studies. Each of these reads a work of crime fiction alongside one or more criminological approaches. Each case study is supplemented with a set of questions addressing issues central to the study of crime in fiction.The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction
By Pamela Bedore. 2024
Who are the most important Canadian crime and detective writers? How do they help represent Canada as a nation? How…
do they distinguish Canada’s approach to questions of crime, detection, and social justice from those of other countries? The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction provides a much-needed investigation into how crime and detection have been, are, and will be represented within Canada’s national literature, with an attention to contemporary popular and literary texts. The book draws together a representative set of established Canadian authors who would appear in most courses on Canadian crime and detective fiction, while also introducing a few authors less established in the field. Ultimately, the book argues that crime fiction is a space of enormously productive hybridity that offers fresh new approaches to considering questions of national identity, gender, race, sexuality, and even genre.The art of mystery: the search for questions (Art Of... Ser.)
By Maud Casey. 2018
Where does mystery reside in a work of fiction Maud Casey takes us into the Land of Un a space…
of uncertainty and unknowing to find out and looks at the variety of ways mystery is created through character, image, structure, and haunted texts, including the novels of Shirley Jackson, Paul Yoon, J. M. Coetzee, and more. Casey's wide-ranging discussion encompasses spirit photography, the radical nature of empathy, and contradictory characters, as she searches for questions rather than answers. Adult. UnratedSouthland
By Nina Revoyr. 2003
A compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of an ever-changing Los Angeles. "I'm an LA…
native with a lot of love for LA crime fiction, but instead of preaching to the noir choir about The Long Goodbye, I'd like to gush about Southland by Nina Revoyr. It's a brilliant, ambitious, moving literary crime novel about two families in South Los Angeles and their tangled history between the 1930s and the 1990s. The central mystery is the death of four black boys in a Japanese-American man's store during the Watts Rebellion of 1965. It's a powerful book, one that I think about often, as well as a huge influence on my work. Right up there with Chandler." --Stephanie Cha (of the LARB) in GQ on "The Greatest Crime Novelists on Their Favorite Crime Novels Ever" "A story about injustice dressed up as a detective novel, Southland reminds us that activism is both an ongoing project and a deeply personal choice." --Vallaire Wallace in Electric Lit on "The Novel That Shows Us How to Face our Past to Change Our Future" "Jackie Ishida's grandfather had a store in Watts where four boys were killed during the riots in 1965, a mystery she attempts to solve." --New York Times Book Review, Ross MacDonald on "Where Noir Lives in the City of Angels" "It is the kind of saga that often epitomizes and shocks LA--friction and violence between races and cultures." --Los Angeles Times, named one of the 20 Essential LA Crime Books "When I started working on Your House Will Pay, I hoped to write something that was half as smart and affecting as Southland. Revoyr's novel takes place in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, following two families--one black, one Japanese--over several decades. It's a character-driven saga with the engine of a crime novel, unravelling a horrific multiple murder that took place in the chaotic days of the Watts Rebellion in 1965." --The Guardian (UK), one of Steph Cha's Top 10 Books About Trouble in Los Angeles "[A]n absolutely compelling story of family and racial tragedy. Revoyr's novel is honest in detailing southern California's brutal history, and honorable in showing how families survived with love and tenacity and dignity." --Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon Southland brings us a fascinating story of race, love, murder and history, against the backdrop of an ever-changing Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four African-American boys were killed in the store Frank owned during the Watts Riots of 1965. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, Jackie tries to piece together the story of the boys' deaths. In the process, she unearths the long-held secrets of her family's history. Southland depicts a young woman in the process of learning that her own history has bestowed upon her a deep obligation to be engaged in the larger world. And in Frank Sakai and his African-American friends, it presents characters who find significant common ground in their struggles, but who also engage each other across grounds--historical and cultural--that are still very much in dispute. Moving in and out of the past--from the internment camps of World War II, to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s, to the streets of Watts in the 1960s, to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s--Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.The 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 publisher