The First English Detectives

This is the first comprehensive study of the Bow Street Runners, a group of men established in the middle of the eighteenth century by Henry Fielding, with the financial support of the government, to confront violent offenders on the streets and highways around London. They were developed over the following decades by his half-brother, John Fielding, into what became a well-known and stable group of officers who acquired skill and expertise in investigating crime, tracking and arresting offenders, and in presenting evidence at the Old Bailey, the main criminal court in London. They were, Beattie argues, detectives in all but name. Fielding also created a magistrates' court that was open to the public, at stated times every day. A second, intimately-related theme in the book concerns attitudes and ideas about the policing of London more broadly, particularly from the 1780s, when the detective and prosecutorial work of the runners came to be challenged by arguments in favour of the prevention of crime by surveillance and other means. The last three chapters of the book continue to follow the runners' work, but at the same time are concerned with discussions of the larger structure of policing in London - in parliament, in the Home Office, and in the press. These discussions were to intensify after 1815, in the face of a sharp increase in criminal prosecutions. They led - in a far from straightforward way - to a fundamental reconstitution of the basis of policing in the capital by Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. The runners were not immediately affected by the creation of the New Police, but indirectly it led to their disbandment a decade later.

This is the first comprehensive study of the 90-year history of the Bow Street Runners, a group of men established in the middle of the eighteenth century by Henry Fielding, with the financial support of the government, to confront violent offenders on the streets and highways around London. They were developed over the following decades by his half-brother, John Fielding, into what became a well-known and stable group of officers who acquired skill and expertise in investigating crime, tracking and arresting offenders, and in presenting evidence at the Old Bailey, the main criminal court in London. They were, Beattie argues, detectives in all but name. Fielding also created a magistrates' court that was open to the public for the first time, at stated times every day. A second, intimately-related theme in the book concerns attitudes and ideas about the policing of London more broadly, particularly from the 1780s, when the detective and prosecutorial work of the runners came to be increasingly opposed by arguments in favour of the prevention of crime by surveillance and other means. The last three chapters of the book continue to follow the runners' work, but at the same time are concerned with discussions of the larger structure of policing in London - in parliament, in the Home Office, and in the press. These discussions were to intensify after 1815, in the face of a sharp increase in criminal prosecutions. They led - in a far from straightforward way - to a fundamental reconstitution of the basis of policing in the capital by Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police act of 1829. The runners were not immediately affected by the creation of the New Police, but indirectly it led to their disbandment a decade later.

Explores the diverse and often arcane world of English police detectives during the formative period of their profession, from 1842 until the First World War, with special emphasis on the famed detective branch established at Scotland Yard.

Essential reading for all armchair detectives, this collection of 33 classic whodunits is the cream of crime writing.

When a bomb devastates the office of London's most unusual police unit and claims the life of its oldest detective, Arthur Bryant, his surviving partner John May searches for clues to the bomber's identity. His search takes him back to the day the detectives first met as young men in 1940. In Blitz-ravaged London, a beautiful dancer rehearsing for a sexy, sinister production of 'Orpheus In The Underworld' is found without her feet. Bryant & May's investigation plunges them into a bizarre gothic mystery, where a faceless man stalks terrified actors and death strikes in darkness. Tracking their quarry through the blackout, searching for a murderer who'll stop at nothing to be free of a nightmare, the duo unwittingly follow the same path Orpheus took when leading Euridyce from the shadows of Hell. Back in the present day, John May starts to wonder if their oldest adversary might be the killer who took his partner's life. He must work alone to solve a puzzle that began over half a century earlier... In a war-shaken city of myths, rumours and fear, Bryant & May discover that a house is not always a home, nothing is as it appears, the most cunning criminals hide in plain sight, and the devil has all the best tunes. Dark drama and black comedy combine as Bryant & May take centre stage in their first great case.

The book brings together three strains of detective fiction: British, American, and Bengal. The essays explore varied aspects of detective fiction, offering new avenues of critical thought from a Postcolonial perspective.

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut für Englisch- und Amerikastudien), course: Transcultural Crime Writing, language: English, abstract: This paper describes Kazui Ishiguro's Detective Christopher Banks and compares him to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Crime fiction is one of the most successful, extensive and international genres of the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century. Detective fiction is very versatile, consisting of the whodunit, thriller, private eye and hard-boiled, just to name a few subgenres. In a detective story, the reader expects a crime as well as doubt about motive, means and perpetrator, provided with a fair trail of clues to investigate and solve the crime. Nineteenth-century detective fiction shed a light on the British Empire in a destabilising whilst at the same time reassuring way for national readers. England’s aggressive authority and force were considered a frequent method of maintaining social control and were therefore often addressed by late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century writers. Detective stories were able to turn such obsolete aggression into a more contemporary, benign authority by offering detection as a possibility to avoid despotic representations of government authority. Modern British detective fiction tends to include transcultural perspectives. Today, writers use a variety of topics, sometimes even combined with ancient myths or tales in order to attract more readers at home and abroad. The British author Elly Griffiths, for example, set the plot of her novel Smoke and Mirrors in Brighton in 1951, where the bodies of two missing children, dubbed by the newspapers as ‘Hansel and Gretel’, were found, giving the story a fairy-tale touch. The Nobel Prize winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro also went back in time for his novel "When We Were Orphans". The author might not be the first coming to mind when thinking about detective fiction. In his novels, Ishiguro explores the topic of cultural identity. The novel is full of allusions to Sherlock Holmes. Small details and objects remind the reader of the iconic investigator and even characters in the book compare Holmes and Banks, who is impressed by Doyle’s mysteries. As Barry Lewis claims, Ishiguro’s protagonist may be investigating his past life “with Holmes-like meticulousness”. Nevertheless, When We Were Orphans does not describe a detective as depicted in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Stories. In Ishiguro’s novel, the structure of the story, the detective’s associates and the detective’s character are presented differently and not in a Holmesian way.

Crime fiction is one of the most popular literary genres and has been for more than a century. At the heart of almost all forms of mysteries—from the Golden Age puzzler to the contemporary police procedural, from American hardboiled fiction to the Japanese timetable mystery—is the investigator. He—or, increasingly, she—can be a private eye, a police officer, or a general busybody. But whatever forms these investigators take, they are the key element of crime fiction. Criminals and their crimes come and go, while our attention is captured by these fascinating characters who exist at the intersection of so many different literary and social roles. 100 Greatest Literary Detectives offers a selection of the most influential, important, and intriguing fictional sleuths—amateur or professional—from around the world. From Sherlock Holmes to Harry Hole, Kinsey Millhone to Kiyoshi Mitarai, the detectives profiled here give readers a broader picture of one of fiction’s most popular genres. Each entry summarizes the distinctive features of notable investigators and their approaches to crime, provides a brief outline of major features of their fictional careers, and makes a case for their importance based on literary-historical impact, novelty, uniqueness, aesthetic quality, or cultural resonance. The characters profiled here include Lew Archer, Martin Beck, Father Brown, Brother Cadfael, Adam Dalgliesh, Mike Hammer, Miss Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, Kay Scarpetta, Sam Spade, Phillip Trent, V. I. Warshawski, Lord Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, and many others. Readers will find some of their favorite detectives here, learn more about their literary and cultural significance, and discover other great sleuths—old and new, local and international—in this engaging volume. 100 Greatest Literary Detectives provides a fascinating look into some of the most intriguing fictional characters of all time.