What do you think?
Rate this book
Cultural History of Literature (Politiy)
Detective Fiction
Detective Fiction is a clear and compelling 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.
Undergraduate students of Detective and Crime Fiction and of genre fiction in general, will find this book essential reading.
‘Cool, savvy, and utterly compelling: every page of Charles J. Rzepka’s magnificent history of detective fiction displays the forensic panache of the true connoisseur of murder. Commanding an unrivalled breadth of reference and depth of insight, the book is a must-read for everyone interested in detective fiction.’
Nicholas Roe , University of St Andrews
‘In this sustained analysis of the emergence and development of detective fiction in England and America, Charles Rzepka has produced both a compelling cultural history and a skilful demonstration of what Poe aptly called “the moral activity which disentangles”. It will become an indispensable guide to serious students of detective literature.’
Ronald R. Thomas , University of Puget Sound
Undergraduate students of Detective and Crime Fiction and of genre fiction in general, will find this book essential reading.
‘Cool, savvy, and utterly compelling: every page of Charles J. Rzepka’s magnificent history of detective fiction displays the forensic panache of the true connoisseur of murder. Commanding an unrivalled breadth of reference and depth of insight, the book is a must-read for everyone interested in detective fiction.’
Nicholas Roe , University of St Andrews
‘In this sustained analysis of the emergence and development of detective fiction in England and America, Charles Rzepka has produced both a compelling cultural history and a skilful demonstration of what Poe aptly called “the moral activity which disentangles”. It will become an indispensable guide to serious students of detective literature.’
Ronald R. Thomas , University of Puget Sound
- GenresNonfictionCrimeHistory
280 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Read
December 12, 2020As stated in the Introduction, this book is primarily aimed at undergraduates just entering into the academic study of detective fiction. I chose to read it because I was looking specifically for a cultural history of the genre; I needed something perhaps a bit more challenging, but I found it really interesting nonetheless.
December 27, 2019
As someone obsessed with detective fiction, I was seeking more of an academic understanding of the genre when I started this book. And it was exactly what I was looking for.
From Poe to Doyle, then Chandler/Hammett to today, this text provides a nice undergraduate-level genre study.
If you’re considering reading this, though, I’d make sure to pair it with a reading list to match each chapter. So helpful, to have a fresh understanding of the works discussed.
From Poe to Doyle, then Chandler/Hammett to today, this text provides a nice undergraduate-level genre study.
If you’re considering reading this, though, I’d make sure to pair it with a reading list to match each chapter. So helpful, to have a fresh understanding of the works discussed.
February 27, 2017
Author Rzepka teaches English at Boston University, but one of his specialties is also detective fiction. In addition to this book, he's published several articles on subjects from Elmore Leonard to Charlie Chan, and most of his works-in-progress are related to detective fiction, including a biographical essay on Earl Derr Biggers (creator of Charlie Chan); an essay on the theme of "nostos" in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories; another on the detective fiction of Todd Downing (part-Choctaw writer, editor, and translator; and two book length studies: of the coterminous rise of formal detective fiction and the development of the lyric from Romanticism to Modernism (working title Lyrical Forensics), and the origins of ethnic and multicultural detective literature in the interwar period, 1920-1940, titled Two-Faced.
Yes, this is more of a scholarly look at the history of detective fiction—focusing primarily on the UK and America up to the latter part of the 20th century—but it's also entertaining. Thomas Paul (Modernism/Modernity) even went so far as to call it "cool, savvy, and utterly compelling." What is most interesting to me is the premise, i.e., he cultural context in which Rzepka places both authors and readers as the genre and society evolve together. As Rzepka points out, it's not surprising that the publication in 1841 of what is considered the first modern detective story, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morge" coincided with the growing tension between religion and the physical sciences, where path-breaking discoveries were giving rise ultimately to modern forensics.
Another cause-and-effect in the genre's history took place in England where English sympathizers with the American Revolution were beginning to agitate for reforms in the "old corruption" of rule and law enforcement by the landed classes. One such sympathizer, William Godwin (1756-1836) went on to write the book Caleb Williams (1794, a Forgotten Book in its own right), considered one of the first English detective novels, which featured a murder, cover-up, and framing and execution of two innocent people by a wealthy landowner. Rzepka adds, "Godwin intended to show how, given the current political situation, absolute power corrupts turning the former into outright bullies or conscience-tormented hypocrites and the latter into obsequious toadies or celebrity-obsessed curiosity-seekers." (Sound familiar? Some things never change.) Caleb Williams was a portent of things to come in other ways: "the terror and mystery of crime; the obsessive nature of suspicion; the paranoid thrills of flight, pursuit, arrest, and escape; and the daring use of incognito and disguise."
Rzepka has studies on Holmes, the Golden Age of Detection, and the rise of hard-boiled fiction in America, all tightly woven into the fabric of their particular time and place in history. The book isn't exactly "light" reading, but having read it once, I look forward to revisiting it again in the not-too-distant future and hopefully absorb more of the details I missed the first time around. Such nonfiction books are often quite neglected in general (although personally I enjoy them), but this particular nonfiction title is definitely recommended.
Yes, this is more of a scholarly look at the history of detective fiction—focusing primarily on the UK and America up to the latter part of the 20th century—but it's also entertaining. Thomas Paul (Modernism/Modernity) even went so far as to call it "cool, savvy, and utterly compelling." What is most interesting to me is the premise, i.e., he cultural context in which Rzepka places both authors and readers as the genre and society evolve together. As Rzepka points out, it's not surprising that the publication in 1841 of what is considered the first modern detective story, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morge" coincided with the growing tension between religion and the physical sciences, where path-breaking discoveries were giving rise ultimately to modern forensics.
Another cause-and-effect in the genre's history took place in England where English sympathizers with the American Revolution were beginning to agitate for reforms in the "old corruption" of rule and law enforcement by the landed classes. One such sympathizer, William Godwin (1756-1836) went on to write the book Caleb Williams (1794, a Forgotten Book in its own right), considered one of the first English detective novels, which featured a murder, cover-up, and framing and execution of two innocent people by a wealthy landowner. Rzepka adds, "Godwin intended to show how, given the current political situation, absolute power corrupts turning the former into outright bullies or conscience-tormented hypocrites and the latter into obsequious toadies or celebrity-obsessed curiosity-seekers." (Sound familiar? Some things never change.) Caleb Williams was a portent of things to come in other ways: "the terror and mystery of crime; the obsessive nature of suspicion; the paranoid thrills of flight, pursuit, arrest, and escape; and the daring use of incognito and disguise."
Rzepka has studies on Holmes, the Golden Age of Detection, and the rise of hard-boiled fiction in America, all tightly woven into the fabric of their particular time and place in history. The book isn't exactly "light" reading, but having read it once, I look forward to revisiting it again in the not-too-distant future and hopefully absorb more of the details I missed the first time around. Such nonfiction books are often quite neglected in general (although personally I enjoy them), but this particular nonfiction title is definitely recommended.
January 18, 2017
Rzepka's look through the historic rise of detective fiction, accompanied by his close readings of several influential texts on the development of the genre as we know it today, is fairly thorough and a solid read. It isn't quite as critical as I'd like it to be, but as a primer on some of the central ideas in detective fiction and a guidebook to finding more information about the genre, it works quite well. It has a few bits I think are vital to any critical conversation about stories of detection in general, and this, in tandem with some other notable works on detective fiction, means it could be at home in a classroom studying genre fiction via cultural studies.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews