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.