The Figure of the Detective

The Figure of the Detective PDF Author: Charles Brownson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786477695
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
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.

The Figure of the Detective

The Figure of the Detective PDF Author: Charles Brownson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786477695
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
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.

The Detective's Assistant - FREE PREVIEW EDITION (The First 8 Chapters)

The Detective's Assistant - FREE PREVIEW EDITION (The First 8 Chapters) PDF Author: Kate Hannigan
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316264067
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
Based on the extraordinary true story of America's first-ever female detective, this fast-paced adventure recounts feats of daring and danger...including saving the life of Abraham Lincoln! Eleven-year-old Nell Warne arrives on her aunt's doorstep lugging a heavy sack of sorrows. If her Aunt Kate rejects her, it's the miserable Home for the Friendless. Luckily, canny Nell makes herself indispensable to Aunt Kate...and not just by helping out with household chores. For Kate Warne is the first-ever female detective employed by the legendary Pinkerton Detective Agency. And Nell has a knack for the kind of close listening and bold action that made Pinkerton detectives famous in Civil War-era America. With huge, nation-changing events simmering in the background, Nell uses skills new and old to uncover truths about her past and solve mysteries in the present.

The Origins of the American Detective Story

The Origins of the American Detective Story PDF Author: LeRoy Lad Panek
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786481382
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Edgar Allan Poe essentially invented the detective story in 1841 with Murders in the Rue Morgue. In the years that followed, however, detective fiction in America saw no significant progress as a literary genre. Much to the dismay of moral crusaders like Anthony Comstock, dime novels and other sensationalist publications satisfied the public's hunger for a yarn. Things changed as the century waned, and eventually the detective was reborn as a figure of American literature. In part these changes were due to a combination of social conditions, including the rise and decline of the police as an institution; the parallel development of private detectives; the birth of the crusading newspaper reporter; and the beginnings of forensic science. Influential, too, was the new role model offered by a wildly popular British import named Sherlock Holmes. Focusing on the late 19th century and early 20th, this volume covers the formative years of American detective fiction. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Oxford Book of Detective Stories

The Oxford Book of Detective Stories PDF Author: Patricia Craig
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780192803719
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
The field of detective fiction is vast, and The Oxford Book of Detective Stories brings together the best short fiction from around the world to show how different nationalities have imposed their own stamp on the genre. As well as English and American stories from acknowledged masters such as Ellery Queen, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie, the anthology includes stories by Simenon, Conan Doyle, Sarah Paretsky, and Ian Rankin, and roams across Europe and further afield to embrace Japan, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Argentina, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. Women detectives, police procedurals, the amateur sleuth, locked-room mysteries are all here, and in her introduction Patricia Craig examines the figure of the detective in international literature.

Detectives in the Shadows

Detectives in the Shadows PDF Author: Susanna Lee
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421437090
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
A century of American history reflected in the iconic private eye. Steadfast in fighting crime, but operating outside the police force—and sometimes even the law—is the private detective. Driven by his own moral code, he is a shadowy figure in a trench coat standing on a street corner, his face most likely obscured by a tilted fedora, a lit cigarette dangling from his hand. The hard-boiled detective is known by his dark past, private pain, and powers of deduction. He only asks questions—never answers them. In his stories he is both the main character and the narrator. America has had a love affair with the hard-boiled detective since the 1920s, when Prohibition called into question who really stood on the right and wrong side of the law. And nowhere did this hero shine more than in crime fiction. In Detectives in the Shadows, literary and cultural critic Susanna Lee tracks the evolution of this truly American character type—from Race Williams to Philip Marlowe and from Mike Hammer to Jessica Jones. Lee explores how this character type morphs to fit an increasingly troubled world, offering compelling interpretations of The Wire, True Detective, and Jessica Jones. Suddenly, in the present day, the hard-boiled detective wears his—or her—fatigue outwardly, revealing more vulnerability than ever before. But the detective remains resolute in the face of sinister forces, ever the person of honor. For anyone interested in crime fiction and television, or for those wanting to understand America's idolization of the good guy with a gun, Detectives in the Shadows is essential reading.

The Death of the Detective

The Death of the Detective PDF Author: Mark Smith
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810123878
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
A madman is on the loose in the city. On the verge of psychic collapse, detective Arnold Magnuson follows clues in the murder's wake - through the Chicago of society clubs and nightclubs and the city of hoods and Mafia - through interrogations, lies and improvised stories, moving closer to a culprit who begins to feel alarmingly like himself.

Detective

Detective PDF Author: Arthur Hailey
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150402219X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
A death row confession sparks an investigation that will tear Miami apart in this “engrossing thriller” from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author (Booklist). Detective-Sergeant Malcolm Ainslie, a former Catholic priest, is about to start his vacation when a call comes in from death row. Before serial killer Elroy Doil is taken to the electric chair, he wants to make a full confession to the cop who put him away. To close the books on additional murder cases in which Doil is a suspect, Ainslie drives four hundred miles to Florida State Prison. Although Doil confesses to ten other homicides, he insists that he didn’t commit the crime for which he will be executed the following day: the grisly slaying of a city commissioner and his wife. In his search for the real killer, Ainslie will discover that the upper levels of Miami’s government—including some of his closest colleagues—are more corrupt and dangerous than he ever imagined.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes PDF Author: Graeme Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643131850
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This masterful collection of seventeen classic mystery stories, dating from 1837 to 1914, traces the earliest history of popular detective fiction. Today, the figure of Sherlock Holmes towers over detective fiction like a colossus—but it was not always so. Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin, the hero of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” anticipated Holmes’ deductive reasoning by more than forty years. In A Study in Scarlet, the first of Holmes’ adventures, Doyle acknowledged his debt to Poe—and to Émile Gaboriau, whose thief-turned-detective Monsieur Lecoq debuted in France twenty years earlier. If Rue Morgue was the first true detective story in English, the title of the first full-length detective novel is more hotly contested. Among the possibilities are two books by Wilkie Collins—The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868)—Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent (1861) or Aurora Floyd (1862), and The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-3) by the pseudonymous “Charles Felix.” As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages—hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted “cozy” murders in Britain—and these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required the intelligence and clear-sightedness that characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured in these pages.

Art Fraud Detective

Art Fraud Detective PDF Author: Anna Nilsen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780753411957
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Some of the priceless masterpieces have been stolen from the Town Gallery and replaced with forgeries, and it's up to you spot the clues and identify the fakes. This spot-the-difference game also contains facts about paintings, tips on the techniques of the Old Masters and a glossary of art terms.

Talking About Detective Fiction

Talking About Detective Fiction PDF Author: P. D. James
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307743136
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James—one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction—gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it. “An avid book-length essay on the roots, ethics and methods of the detective story . . . Her opinions are often surprising and determinedly contrary . . . Refreshingly outspoken.”—The New York Times Examining mystery from top to bottom, beginning with such classics as Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and then looking at such contemporary masters as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell, P. D. James goes right to the heart of the genre. Along the way she traces the lives and writing styles of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and many more. Here is P.D. James discussing detective fiction as social history, explaining its stylistic components, revealing her own writing process, and commenting on the recent resurgence of detective fiction in modern culture. It is a must have for the mystery connoisseur and casual fan alike.