A broad and absorbing overview of one of the most popular and enduring genres of fiction.
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.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-00-819242-6
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Harper360
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
