Crime fiction is one of the most popular literary genres and has been for more than a century. At the heart of almost all forms of mysteries—from the Golden Age puzzler to the contemporary police procedural, from American hardboiled fiction to the Japanese timetable mystery—is the investigator. He—or, increasingly, she—can be a private eye, a police officer, or a general busybody. But whatever forms these investigators take, they are the key element of crime fiction. Criminals and their crimes come and go, while our attention is captured by these fascinating characters who exist at the intersection of so many different literary and social roles. 100 Greatest Literary Detectives offers a selection of the most influential, important, and intriguing fictional sleuths—amateur or professional—from around the world. From Sherlock Holmes to Harry Hole, Kinsey Millhone to Kiyoshi Mitarai, the detectives profiled here give readers a broader picture of one of fiction’s most popular genres. Each entry summarizes the distinctive features of notable investigators and their approaches to crime, provides a brief outline of major features of their fictional careers, and makes a case for their importance based on literary-historical impact, novelty, uniqueness, aesthetic quality, or cultural resonance. The characters profiled here include Lew Archer, Martin Beck, Father Brown, Brother Cadfael, Adam Dalgliesh, Mike Hammer, Miss Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, Kay Scarpetta, Sam Spade, Phillip Trent, V. I. Warshawski, Lord Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, and many others. Readers will find some of their favorite detectives here, learn more about their literary and cultural significance, and discover other great sleuths—old and new, local and international—in this engaging volume. 100 Greatest Literary Detectives provides a fascinating look into some of the most intriguing fictional characters of all time.

Read professional, fair reviews by practicing academic, public, and school librarians and subject-area specialists that will enable you to make the best choices from among the latest reference resources. This newest edition of American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) provides librarians with insightful, critical reviews of print and electronic reference resources released or updated in 2017-2018, as well as some from 2019 that were received in time for review in the publication. By using this invaluable guide to consider both the positive and negative aspects of each resource, librarians can make informed decisions about which new reference resources are most appropriate for their collections and their patrons' needs. Collection development librarians who are working with limited budgets—as is the case in practically every library today—will be able to maximize the benefit from their monetary resources by selecting what they need most for their collection, while bypassing materials that bring limited value to their specific environment.

Literature has always recorded a history of patriarchy, sexual violence, and resistance. Academics have been using literature to expose and critique this violence and domination for half a century. But the continued potency of #MeToo after its 2017 explosion adds new urgency and wider awareness about these issues, while revealing new ways in which rape culture shapes our everyday lives. This intersectional guide helps readers, students, teachers, and scholars face and challenge our culture of sexual violence by confronting it through the study of literature. #MeToo and Literary Studies gathers essays on literature from Ovid to Carmen Maria Machado, by academics working across the United States and around the world, who offer clear ways of using our reading, teaching, and critical practices to address rape culture and sexual violence. It also examines the promise and limitations of the #MeToo movement itself, speaking to the productive use of social media as well as to the voices that the movement has so far muted. In uniting diverse voices to enable the #MeToo movement to reshape literary studies, this book is also committed to the idea that the way we read and write about literature can make real change in the world.

This book focuses on how readers can be 'manipulated' during their experience of reading fictional texts and how they are incited to perceive, process and interpret certain textual patterns. Offering fine-grained stylistic analysis of diverse genres, including crime fiction, short stories, poetry and novels, the book deciphers various linguistic, pragmatic and multimodal techniques. These are skilfully used by authors to achieve specific effects through a subtle manipulation of deixis, metalepsis, dialogue, metaphors, endings, inferences or rhetorical, narratorial and typographical control. Exploring contemporary texts such as The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Remains of the Day and We Need to Talk About Kevin, chapters delve into how readers are pragmatically positioned or cognitively (mis)directed as the author guides their attention and influences their judgment. They also show how readers' responses can, conversely, bring about a certain form of manipulation as readers challenge the positions the texts invite them to occupy.

The primary aim of Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction is to introduce the emerging cross-disciplinary area of study that combines the fields of crime fiction studies and criminology. The study of crime fiction as a genre has a long history within literary studies, and is becoming increasingly prominent in twenty-first-century scholarship. Less attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which elements of criminology, or the systematic study of crime and criminal behaviour from a wide range of perspectives, have influenced the production and reception of crime narratives. Similarly, not enough attention has been paid to the ways in which crime fiction as a genre can inform and enliven the study of criminology. Written largely for undergraduate and graduate students, but also for scholars of crime fiction and criminology interested in thinking across disciplinary boundaries, Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction provides full coverage of the backgrounds of the related fields of crime fiction studies and criminology, and explores the many ways they are reciprocally illuminating. The four main chapters in Section 1 (Orient You) familiarize readers with the history and contours of the broad fields within which Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction operates. It introduces the history of crime and criminology, as well the history of crime fiction and the academic field dedicated to its study. In its final chapter it looks at the ways these areas of study can be conceptually interrelated. Section 2 of the book (Equip You) is dedicated to examining aspects of criminological theory in relation to various forms of crime fiction. It highlights a range of the most relevant theories, paradigms, and problematics of criminology that appear in, shed light on, or can be effectively illuminated through reference to crime fiction. Its five chapters deal with the definition of crime; explanations for crime and criminal behaviour; investigations into crime; the experience of crime; and, finally, punishments for crime. All of these areas are examined alongside examples of crime fiction drawn from across the genre’s history. Section 3 (Enable You) presents six case studies. Each of these reads a work of crime fiction alongside one or more criminological approaches. Each case study is supplemented with a set of questions addressing issues central to the study of crime in fiction.

This book represents the first extended consideration of contemporary crime fiction as a European phenomenon. Understanding crime fiction in its broadest sense, as a transmedia practice, and offering unique insights into this practice in specific European countries and as a genuinely transcontinental endeavour, this book argues that the distinctiveness of the form can be found in its related historical and political inquiries. It asks how the genre’s excavation of Europe’s history of violence and protest in the twentieth century is informed by contemporary political questions. It also considers how the genre’s progressive reimagining of new identities forged at the crossroads of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality is offset by its bleaker assessment of the corrosive effects of entrenched social inequalities, political corruption, and state violence. The result is a rich, vibrant collection that shows how crime fiction can help us better understand the complex relationship between Europe’s past, present, and future. Seven chapters are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This volume explores how the concepts of space and gaze are tied in with social constructions of gender relations. It discusses the gendered body, the queer gaze, the relationship between body and memory, the memory of war, monstrosity, and also domestic and hybrid spaces as key concepts. The arguments within the book connect core theoretical issues of gender and space to well-known literary texts and contexts, like the poems of Sylvia Plath and the novels of Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison and Cormack McCarthy. The collection will be of interest to university students and instructors alike, as an extended introduction to critical and theoretical discourses on gender and space.

The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology is the first comprehensive examination of crime fiction and ecocriticism. Across 33 innovative chapters from leading international scholars, this Handbook considers an emergent field of contemporary crime narratives that are actively responding to a diverse assemblage of global environmental concerns, whilst also opening up ‘classic’ crime fictions and writers to new ecocritical perspectives. Rigorously engaged with cutting-edge critical trends, it places the familiar staples of crime fiction scholarship – from thematic to formal approaches – in conversation with a number of urgent ecological theories and ideas, covering subjects such as environmental security, environmental justice, slow violence, ecofeminism and animal studies. The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology is an essential introduction to this new and dynamic research field for both students and scholars alike.

THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.