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The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators

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The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators

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Overview

Winner of four major prizes for the best critical/biographical book related to crime fiction: the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating Awards; and shortlisted for both the Agatha and Gold Dagger Awards.

‘Martin Edwards is the closest thing there has been to a philosopher of crime writing.’ The Times

In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction.

Author Martin Edwards is a multi-award-winning crime novelist, the President of the Detection Club, archivist of the Crime Writers’ Association and series consultant to the British Library’s highly successful series of crime classics, and therefore uniquely qualified to write this book. He has been a widely respected genre commentator for more than thirty years, winning the CWA Diamond Dagger for making a significant contribution to crime writing in 2020, when he also compiled and published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club and the novel Mortmain Hall. His critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder (Collins Crime Club, 2015) was a landmark study of Detective Fiction between the wars.

The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative – and readable – study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors – from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell – into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780008192426
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/30/2022
Pages:	736
Sales rank:	364,773
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 2.40(d)

About the Author

Martin Edwards has published twenty crime novels, including series set in Liverpool and the Lake District. He has won the CWA Short Story Dagger and CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and his book The Golden Age of Murder won the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity and H.R.F.Keating awards. Martin is consultant for the British Library's Classic Crime series, archivist of the CWA and President of the Detection Club. He has edited 30 anthologies, published about 60 short stories, and written seven other non-fiction books.

Introduction 1

1 Revolution: Origins 9

2 Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe and the first detective stories 20

3 Guilty Secrets: Sensation novels 29

4 Detective Fever: Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and early detective fiction 37

5 Poacher Turned Gamekeeper: The French Revolution: Vidocq, Gaboriau and their worldwide influence 49

6 The Great Detective: Sherlock Holmes 58

7 Rogues' Gallery: Raffles and other villains 71

8 The Nature of Evil: G. K. Chesterton and faith and sin in detective fiction 81

9 Plot Minds: Marie Belloc Lowndes and Edwardian-era detective fiction 92

10 The Science of Detection: R. Austin Freeman and scientific mysteries 103

11 Had-I-But-Known: Mary Roberts Rinehart and 'women in jeopardy' novels 116

12 War and Peace: The First World War and detective fiction 127

13 Treacherous Impulses: Early spy fiction 138

14 The Mistress of Deception: Agatha Christie 149

15 American Tragedy: Van Dine and the American Golden Age 161

16 Superfluous Women: Queens of crime 174

17 Challenging the Reader: Detection and game-playing 187

18 Locked Rooms: 'Impossible crime' mysteries 199

19 The Long Arm of the Law: Early police stories 212

20 Blood-Simple: Dashiell Hammett 223

21 Murder and its Motives: True crime 234

22 Twists of Fate: Francis Iles and ironic crime fiction 245

23 The Sound of Mystery: Radio mysteries 259

24 In Lonely Rooms: Raymond Chandler 270

25 Brothers in Crime: Patrick and Bruce Hamilton 281

26 Cracks in the Wall: Georges Simenon and European crime fiction 291

27 Sensation in Court: Legal mysteries 304

28 California Dreaming: Crime writers and Hollywood 314

29 Carnival of Crime: Mystery and the macabre 326

30 Waking Nightmares: Noir fiction 336

31 Dagger of the Mind: Casebook novels 347

32 Whose Body?: Whowasdunins: mysteries about the victim's identity 355

33 Private Wounds: Transitioning from the Golden Age 365

34 Out of this World: Traditional detective fiction evolves in the United States 375

35 Perfect Murders: Crime and the end of empire 387

36 Mind Games: Post-war psychological suspense 398

37 Deep Water: Patricia Highsmith 410

38 Forking Paths: Borges and postmodernism 418

39 Bloody Murder: Julian Symons and crime fiction criticism 429

40 People with Ghosts: Post-war private investigators and the legacy of Vietnam 443

41 Killing Jokes: Comedy and crime 454

42 Literary Agents: Post-war spy fiction 466

43 Nerve: Adventure novels and thrillers 480

44 Outsider in Amsterdam: Dutch crime 490

45 Whodunwhat?: Theatrical murder 502

46 Black and Blue: British police fiction 511

47 Home Discomforts: Domestic suspense 522

48 Mystery Games: East Asian detective fiction 533

49 Early Graves: Difference and diversity 545

50 A Suitable Job for a Woman: Women writing about private investigators 560

51 A Feeling for Snow: Scandinavian crime writing 571

52 Fatal Inversions: Ruth Rendell and modern psychological suspense 581

53 Dark Places: American police fiction 591

54 Long Shadows: Historical crime 601

55 A Taste for Death: P. D. James and the truth about human character and experience 613

Select Bibliography 623

Acknowledgements 644

Index of Titles 646

Index of Names 688

Subject Index 716

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/25/2022
Edwards (The Golden Age of Murder), an archivist for the Crime Writers’ Association, puts his expertise to good use in this magisterial history of crime fiction. The author traces the roots of crime fiction beyond where most scholars start; while he credits Edgar Allan Poe as the father of detective fiction, he identifies a lesser-known figure, William Godwin (Mary Shelley’s father), as having written the “first thriller about a manhunt” with his 1794 novel Things as They Are. Each chapter opens with an anecdote from the life of a consequential author, putting their literary efforts in the context of their lives. For example, Marie Belloc Lowndes “used mysterious real-life crimes” among London’s early 1900s social elite “as source material for her fiction,” and Kinsey Millhone creator Sue Grafton had been fantasizing about murdering her husband before channeling that anger and hatred into a mystery novel. Edwards doesn’t hesitate to criticize weaknesses even in works by prominent authors (Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet is “flawed,” for example), and unlike other major studies of the genre, gives plenty of space to non-Anglo authors and writers of color. The result is an encyclopedic and consequential volume, a must-read for readers who’ve wondered who-, how-, or whydunit. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

‘Magisterial but wickedly entertaining … reliably readable and frequently amusing. It also inspires awe: Edwards combines wide reading with a good memory, meticulous control over his unruly material, critical acumen and sheer bloody persistence.’ ANDREW TAYLOR, THE SPECTATOR
‘As entertaining and illuminating a history of crime and thriller fiction as I’ve ever read.’ IAN RANKIN
‘Impressively scholarly and joyfully anecdotal… it’s hard to imagine this book being superseded for many years to come.’ MORNING STAR
‘Vastly entertaining … [Edwards] plots the development of the genre and the bizarre lives of writers … You’ll find all your favourites here, from Edgar Allan Poe to PD James … But be warned – you’ll end up with a reading list as long as a giant’s arm.’ DENIS MANN, DAILY EXPRESS
‘A magisterial history of mysteries and their creators.’ THE TIMES
‘There is plenty here for mystery readers, whether well-versed in the genre’s history or not —and mystery writers will welcome this book as a resource.’
THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘A magisterial work… THE LIFE OF CRIME does more than just inform, entertain and provoke, it also sends new readers back to old books.’
THE WASHINGTON POST
REVIEWS FOR MARTIN EDWARDS:
‘Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight so enthusiastically and, for the reader, so enjoyably’ THE TIMES
‘Illuminating and entertaining – provides a new way of looking at old favourites.’ LEN DEIGHTON, author of The Ipcress File
‘Forensically sharp and exhaustively informed… Crime fiction is driven by death. In this superbly compendious and entertaining book, Edwards ensures that dozens of authorial corpses are gloriously reborn.’ MARK LAWSON, Guardian

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2022
It's been 50 years since Julian Symons published Mortal Consequences, his classic history of the detective story. The genre has continued to grow, throwing off new offshoots, inversions, and modes of expression; crime writers today come from all over the globe. It's time for a new study, and there can be no better fit for the task than Detection Club president Edwards (The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story), with 18 distinguished crime novels and numerous studies and anthologies of crime fiction to his credit. Edwards hasn't tried to clone Symons's book, as good as it was. There's much more personal detail in Edwards's study, which draws details from the lives of individual crime writers to explain how and why they wrote. The breadth of this book's grasp reflects the fuzziness of traditional definitions of detective fiction: Symons redefined it as "crime fiction," while Edwards expands it to include, e.g., spy thrillers. Beyond describing more than two centuries of key crime novels, Edwards reflects on subjects like the contributions of Borges and the differences and affiliations between Chandler and MacDonald; his analyses are acute, and his appreciation of his predecessor Symons is sharp and fair. VERDICT A delight to read, including the footnotes. Essential for all serious devotees of crime and detective fiction.—David Keymer

Library Journal

2022-05-05
How the literary imagination of crime has evolved over two centuries.
In this ambitious historical survey, novelist and scholar Edwards charts the development of crime fiction from the late 18th century to the present moment, covering authors from around the globe. This is a big, sweeping text, with 55 chapters and 100 authors given close consideration. Each chapter, arranged in rough chronological order, introduces the work of one or more authors along with key biographical information, followed by extensive footnotes that provide additional commentary. Edwards examines pioneering figures—Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and others—next to an impressive range of less-well-known authors, including Erskine Childers, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Frank Castle Froest. Edwards devotes several chapters to authors of special merit, though most are organized around significant themes: narratives located in and seemingly influenced by a particular historical period, those dependent on framing devices such as courtroom or police procedures, or those defined by particular moods, as in noir and macabre fiction. The author’s efforts at inclusiveness extend to his exploration of East Asian detective fiction, Scandinavian crime writing, and “women writing about private investigators.” His descriptions of particular works, and of specific contributions to the genre, are often incisive and provide genuine insights, though the approach is generally to provide an overview of essential facts and patterns rather than close interpretive arguments. Among the most intriguing chapters are those that examine works by major authors primarily known for their contributions to other genres, such as Charles Dickens and Jorge Luis Borges. Ultimately, Edwards offers a thorough sketch of the genre’s origins, its complex evolutions, and its flexibility in response to cultural shifts. The author also includes a 20-page select bibliography.
A broad and absorbing overview of one of the most popular and enduring genres of fiction.

Kirkus Reviews

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators

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