In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world's most popular form of fiction.

Widely known as the crime fiction writer whose work led to the movies Get Shorty and Out of Sight, Elmore Leonard had a special knack for creating "cool" characters. In Being Cool, Charles J. Rzepka looks at what makes the dope-dealers, bookies, grifters, financial advisors, talent agents, shady attorneys, hookers, models, and crooked cops of Leonard's world cool. They may be nefarious, but they are also confident, skilled, and composed and cope without...

Whether you are a fan of Matt Scudder or Bernie Rhodenbarr, whether you know Lawrence Block as the best living writer about New York or the most versatile of crime novelists, this is the book you have been waiting for. Block talks to mystery connoisseur Ernie Bulow about his apprenticeship writing for pulp magazines and working at a leading literary agency, about his love of New York and his fondness for travel. He gives brief, tantalizing glimpses...

"Crime fiction expert Susanna Lee tracks the evolution of the hard-boiled character type over time and media in the United States. She shows how crime fiction rose in popularity at times of national conflict. Readers and viewers crave the sort of grit and independence that the hard-boiled detective offers when reality may leave them feeling they lack control over their own lives. This is a study of literature and film and also a work of cultural studies"--...

"Narrative innovation is often thought to be the domain of the avant-garde or the experimental. However, manipulations of viewpoint and timelines and other unconventional techniques, have been part of popular American culture and storytelling since at least the 1940s. How did different forms and styles once regarded as "difficult," become mainstream and familiar to audiences? As David Bordwell demonstrates in Perplexing Plots, popular narratives have...