American Detective Fiction

Why has American Detective Fiction proved so enduringly popular? This penetrating study traces a genre which has dominated the top of bestseller lists throughout the latter half of the twentieth century back to its roots in the nineteenth century in the shape of Poe's brief series of short stories featuring the erudite sleuth, Auguste Dupin, and Anna Katherine Green's hugely influential but until recently, critically neglected novel, The Levenworth Case (1878). Detective Fiction, with its necessary focus on characters and events which undermine or challenge the social order has, in all its various literary incarnations, offered a powerful reflection of prevalent contemporary anxieties. Consequently, this book will discuss and analyse a wide selection of texts through the particular historical, social and literary contexts in which they were produced, in order to illustrate the ways in which Detective Fiction has dealt with issues of race, class, gender and place which are at the very heart of American culture.