Description
Book SynopsisA fascinating look at the contemporary American crime novel in all its variety and complexity
Trade Review'A wonderfully perverse book' -- Times Higher Education Supplement
'The collection assembles a wide variety of both types of lawman and law-woman, including racist, misogynistic cops, Navajo police (one with traditional religious interests), feminists PIs, and Western detectives – along with assorted lawyers and FBI agents... What does unite the contributors, apart from their ability to write accessible yet sophisticated prose, is their professionalism' -- Ralph Willett, Borderlines: Studies in American Culture
'This welcome collection of essays will be of use to almost anyone interested in the field and its contemporary state' -- Jopi Nyman, European Association for American Studies
Table of Contents1. Introduction: From Private Eye to Police Procedural – The Logic of Contemporary Crime Fiction by Peter Messent
2. Criminal Suits: Style and Surveillance, Strategy and Tactics in Elmore Leonard by Barry Taylor
3. Black Noir: Race and Urban Space in Walter Mosley's Detective Fiction by Liam Kennedy
4. V. I. Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone and Kay Scarpetta: The Creation of a Feminist Detective Hero by Sabine Vanacker
5. The Lesbian Thriller: Transgressive Investigations by Paulina Palmer
6. Policing the Margins: Barbara Wilson's Gaudi Afternoon and Troubles in Transylvania by Christopher Gair
7. Reading the Signs: Detection and Anthropology in the Work of Tony Hillerman by David Murray
8. The Last Good Place; James Crumley, the West and the Detective Novel by John Harvey
9. James Ellroy, Los Angeles and the Spectacular Crisis of Masculinity by Josh Cohen
10. Law Crimes: The Legal Fictions of John Grisham and Scott Turow by Nick Heffernan
11. Watching the Detectives: Body Images, Sexual Politics and Ideology in Contemporary Crime Film by Brian Jarvis
Selected
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
