Author of award-winning reader's guides for mystery series, Detecting Women (3 editions) and Detecting Men. The first title will feature more than 500 contemporary authors with fictional characters from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the US, UK, and Canada. The second title will feature more than 400 authors of fictional private investigator series in the US, UK and Canada. Each will have multiple indexes, mystery awards and author biographies. For mystery readers, booksellers and librarians. Extensive author promotion. Select trade and consumer advertising.
The enormous explosion of crime fiction over the last decade means that more people are looking for a good mystery than ever before. This dictionary of fictional detectives helps readers learn about the series in which their favorite detectives are featured. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on roughly 150 fictional detectives, which provide information about the works in which the detective appears, the locales in which the detective operates, the detective's investigative methods, and other important information. Helpful bibliographical citations direct the reader to other interesting works. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography; various appendices; and an extensive index. The enormous explosion of crime fiction over the last decade means that more people are looking for a good mystery than ever before. Many of the most popular mystery books appear in series, and these series feature carefully developed detectives.
The hard-bitten PI with a bottle of bourbon in his desk drawer--it's an image as old as the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction itself. Alcohol has long been an important element of detective fiction, but it is no mere prop. Rather, the treatment of alcohol within the works informs and illustrates the detective's moral code, and casts light upon the society's attitudes towards drink. This examination of the role of alcohol in hard-boiled detective fiction begins with the genre's birth, in an era strongly influenced and affected by prohibition, and follows both the genre's development and its relation to our changing understanding of and attitudes towards alcohol and alcoholism. It discusses the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Robert B. Parker, Lawrence Block, Marcia Muller, Karen Kijewski and Sue Grafton. There are bibliographies of both the primary and critical texts, and an index of authors and works.
For the first time in one place, Roger M. Sobin has compiled a list of nominees and award winners of virtually every mystery award ever presented. He has also included many of the “best of” lists by more than fifty of the most important contributors to the genre.; Mr. Sobin spent more than two decades gathering the data and lists in this volume, much of that time he used to recheck the accuracy of the material he had collected. Several of the “best of” lists appear here for the first time in book form. Several others have been unavailable for a number of years.; Of special note, are Anthony Boucher’s “Best Picks for the Year.” Boucher, one of the major mystery reviewers of all time, reviewed for The San Francisco Chronicle, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The New York Times. From these resources Mr. Sobin created “Boucher’s Best” and “Important Lists to Consider,” lists that provide insight into important writing in the field from 1942 through Boucher’s death in 1968.? This is a great resource for all mystery readers and collectors.; ; Winner of the 2008 Macavity Awards for Best Mystery Nonfiction.
The silent film era was known in part for its cliffhanger serials and air of suspense that kept audiences returning to theaters week after week. Icons such as Douglas Fairbanks, Laurel and Hardy, Lon Chaney and Harry Houdini were among those who graced the dark and shadowy screen. This reference guide to silent films with mystery and detective content lists more than 1,500 titles in one of entertainment's most popular and enduring genres. While most of the films examined are from North America, mystery films from around the world are included.
Since the late 1970s, a subgenre of crime fiction, written by women and featuring a professional woman investigator, has exploded on the popular fiction market. Priscilla L. Walton and Manina Jones focus on this recent proliferation of women writers of detective fiction, providing the first book-length study of the historical and societal changes that fueled this popularity, along with insightful and entertaining readings of the texts themselves. Walton and Jones place the genre within its aesthetic, social, and economic contexts, reading it as an index of cultural beliefs. Addressing the ways that Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, and others work through the conventions of the "hard-boiled" genre made popular by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane, the authors show how the male hard-boiled tradition has been challenged and transformed. Issues of child, spousal, and sexual abuse are more likely to surface in women's detective novels, the authors show, and female sleuths face many of the same dilemmas as those who read about them—everyday problems with relationships, parenting, and money. Detective Agency also integrates interviews with authors and publishers, reader surveys, publication data, and analysis of internet discussion groups to present a fascinating picture of the "industry" of women's detective fiction. Authors of these works are powerful players in the publishing system as well as agents of cultural intervention, Walton and Jones claim. They conclude by examining the rise of female detectives in television and film.
