100 British Crime Writers

100 British Crime Writers explores a history of British crime writing between 1855 and 2015 through 100 writers, detailing their lives and significant writing and exploring their contributions to the genre. Divided into four sections: 'The Victorians, Edwardians, and World War One, 1855-1918; 'The Golden Age and World War Two, 1919-1945; 'Post-War and Cold War, 1946-1989; and 'To the Millennium and Beyond, 1990-2015, each section offers an introduction to the significant features of these eras in crime fiction and discusses trends in publication, readership, and critical response. With entries spanning the earliest authors of crime fiction to a selection of innovative contemporary novelists, this book considers the development and progression of the genre in the light of historical and social events.

This book tells the story of crime fiction published during the first half of the twentieth century. The diversity of this much-loved genre is breathtaking, and so much greater than many critics have suggested. To illustrate this, the leading expert on classic crime discusses one hundred books ranging from The Hound of the Baskervilles to Strangers on a Train which highlight the entertaining plots, the literary achievements, and the social significance of vintage crime fiction. This book serves as a companion to the acclaimed British Library Crime Classics series but it tells a very diverse story. It presents the development of crime fiction-from Sherlock Holmes to the end of the golden age-in an accessible, informative and engaging style.

""It's a big thing,"" said Loveday Brooke, addressing Ebenezer Dyer, chief of the well-known detective agency in Lynch Court, Fleet Street; ""Lady Cathrow has lost £30,000 worth of jewellery, if the newspaper accounts are to be trusted."" ""They are fairly accurate this time. The robbery differs in few respects from the usual run of country-house robberies. The time chosen, of course, was the dinner-hour, when the family and guests were at table and the servants not on duty were amusing themselves in their own quarters. The fact of its being Christmas Eve would also of necessity add to the business and consequent distraction of the household. The entry to the house, however, in this case was not effected in the usual manner by a ladder to the dressing-room window, but through the window of a room on the ground floor - a small room with one window and two doors, one of which opens into the hall, and the other into a passage that leads by the back stairs to the bedroom floor....""

100 American Crime Writers features discussion and analysis of the lives of crime writers and their key works, examining the developments in American crime writing from the Golden Age to hardboiled detective fiction. This study is essential to scholars and an ideal introduction to crime fiction for anyone who enjoys this fascinating genre.

Last Seen Wearing is the second Inspector Morse novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. After leaving home to return to school, teenager Valerie Taylor had completely vanished, and the trail had gone cold. Until two years, three months and two days after Valerie's disappearance, somebody decides to supply some surprising new evidence for the case and it's up to Morse to solve this curious case. Last Seen Wearing is followed by the third Inspector Morse book, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn.

Want to become a crime novel buff, or expand your reading in your favourite genre? This is a good place to start! From the publishers of the popular, Good Reading Guide comes a rich selection of the some of the finest crime novels ever published. With 100 of the best titles fully reviewed and a further 500 recommended, you'll quickly become an expert on the world of crime. The book also allows you to browse by theme, includes 'a reader's fast-guide to the world of crime fiction' as well listing the top 10 crime characters and their creators, award winners and book club recommendations.

42 fantastic stories from Britain's best crime writers. A superb collection of the year's most outstanding short crime fiction published in the UK. Jakubowski has succeeded, as ever, in showcasing the impressive breadth of crime writing, from cosy tales of detection to noir mayhem and psychological suspense and terror. There are puzzles to solve, nagging questions about the nature of the society in which we live, but, above all, there is an abundance of first-class entertainment. Last year saw a sixth Crime Writers Association Dagger award for the series - shared between Margaret Murphy and Cath Staincliffe - and an Edgar award for Peter Turnbull. All three award-winning stories are included in this volume. Lee Child makes his debut and there is a first story from Neil Gaiman, too, in Sherlockian rather than fantastical mode. Return offenders include Ann Cleeves, Phil Lovesey and Ruth Rendell, among many other familiar names. There are a number of newcomers to the series, too, including Nina Allan, Joel Lane and Lisa Tuttle.

Intersectionality and decolonisation are prominent themes in contemporary British crime fiction. Through an in-depth critical and contextual analysis of selected contemporary British crime fiction novels from the 1990s to 2018, this distinctive book examines representations of race, class, sexuality, and gender by John Harvey, Stella Duffy, M.Y. Alam, and Dorothy Koomson. It argues that contemporary British crime fiction is a field of contestation where urgent cultural and social questions are debated and the politics of representation explored. A significant resource which will be valuable to researchers and scholars of the crime genre, as well as British literature, this book offers timely critical engagement with intersectionality and decolonisation and their representation in contemporary British crime fiction.