Rzepka traces the history of the genre from its modern beginnings in the early eighteenth century,with the criminal broadsheets and 'true" crime stories of The Newgate Calendar, to its present state of diversity, innovation, and worldwide diffusion.

Detective Fiction is a clear and highly readable look at some of the best known, yet least-understood, characters and texts of the modern day. Charles J. Rzepka traces the history of the genre from its modern beginnings in the early eighteenth century,with the criminal broadsheets and 'true" crime stories of The Newgate Calendar, to its present state of diversity, innovation, and worldwide diffusion, in a manner that students and scholars alike will find readable and provocative.The book focuses particularly on the relationship of detective fiction's emerging "puzzle element' to the investigative methods of the nascent historical sciences, and to popular cultural attitudes toward history, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. In addition, the author examines the specific impact of urbanization,the rise of the professions, brain science, legal and social reform, war and economic dislocation, class-consciousness, and changing concepts of race and gender.Extended close readings of the classics of detective fiction in several 'Casebook' essays devoted to seminal works by Poe, Doyle, Sayers, and Chandler show in detail how the genre has responded to these influences over the last century and a half.They also serve to introduce students to a variety of current critical approaches.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part Ⅰ Narratives of Detection and the Sciences of History

 1 What is Detective Fiction?

 2 Detection and the Historical Sciences: Two lSocked Rooms and Two Keys to Unlock Them

Part Ⅱ The Rise of Detective Fiction and the Birth of Detection

 3 From Rogues to Ratiocination Casebook Entry No. 1 The Aioe. and the Aristocrat

 4 From Detectives to Detection Casebook Entry No. 2 The Scientific Detective's Bohemian Soul

 5 From Holmes to the Golden Age Casebook Entry No. 3 Of War and Wimsey

Part Ⅲ American Century

 6 Hard-Boiled Detection Casebook Entry No. 4 No Game for Knights

 7 Cold War, Cops, and Counterculture

Epilogue: The End of History?

Works Cited

Index