History of crime fiction
Encyclopedia
Crime fiction
is a typically 19th- and 20th-century genre, dominated by British
and American
writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre.
, with specialist writers and a devoted readership, in the 19th century. Earlier novels and stories were typically devoid of systematic attempts at detection: There was no detective
, whether amateur
or professional
, trying to figure out how and by whom a particular crime was committed; there were no police
trying to solve a case; neither was there any discussion of motive
s, alibis, the modus operandi
, or any of the other elements which make up the modern crime writing.
in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy, locked chest along the Tigris
river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid
, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier
, Ja'far ibn Yahya
, to solve the crime and find the murderer within three days, or be executed if he fails his assignment. Suspense
is generated through multiple plot twist
s that occur as the story progesses. This may thus be considered an archetype for detective fiction
.
The main difference between Ja'far in "" and later fictional detectives such as Miss Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot
, however, is that Ja'far has no actual desire to solve the case. The whodunit
mystery is solved by the murderer himself confessing his crime, which in turn leads to another assignment in which Ja'far has to find the culprit who instigated the murder within three days or else be executed. Ja'far again fails to find the culprit before the deadline, but as a result of his chance discovery of a key item, he eventually manages to solve the case through reasoning, in order to prevent his own execution.
Chinese Crime Fiction
such as Bao Gong An
(Chinese:包公案) and the 18th century novel Di Gong An (Chinese:狄公案). The latter was translated into English as Dee Goong An (Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee) by Dutch sinologist Robert Van Gulik
, who then used the style and characters to write an original Judge Dee
series.
The hero of these novels is typically a traditional judge or similar official based on historical personages such as Judge Bao (Bao Qingtian
) or Judge Dee (Di Renjie
). Although the historical characters may have lived in an earlier period (such as the Song
or Tang
dynasty) the novels are often set in the later Ming
or Manchu
period.
These novels differ from the Western genre in several points as described by van Gulik:
Van Gulik chose Di Gong An to translate because it was in his view closer to the Western tradition and more likely to appeal to non-Chinese readers.
s The Rector of Veilbye
(1829), Philip Meadows Taylor
's Confessions of a Thug
(1839) and Maurits Christopher Hansen's Mordet paa Maskinbygger Roolfsen (1839).
An example of an early crime/revenge story is the American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe
's (1809–1849) tale "The Cask of Amontillado
", published in 1846. Poe created the first fictional detective (a word unknown at the time) in the character of C. Auguste Dupin, as the central character of some of his short stories (which he called "tales of ratiocination"). In the words of William L. De Andrea
(Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 1994), he
in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue
". Here, the reader is presented with a puzzle and encouraged to solve it before finishing the story and being told the solution.
These stories are so called because they involve a crime—normally a murder—which takes place in a "locked room." In the simplest case this is literally a hermetically sealed chamber which, to all appearances, no one could have entered or left at the time of the crime. More generally, it is any crime situation where—again, to all appearances—someone must have entered or left the scene of the crime, yet it was not possible for anyone to have done so. (For example, one such Agatha Christie mystery (And Then There Were None
) takes place on a small island during a storm; another on a train stalled in the mountains and surrounded by new-fallen, unmarked snow.) One of the most famous locked room mysteries was The Hollow Man
. The resolution of such a story might involve showing how the room was not really "locked"; or that it was not necessary for anyone else to have come or gone; that the murderer is still hiding in the room; or that the person to "discover" the murder when the room was unlocked in fact committed it just then.
(1859–1930) gave fresh impetus to the emerging form of the detective story by creating Sherlock Holmes
, resident at 221B Baker Street, London
—probably the most famous of fictional detectives and the first one to have clients, to be hired to solve a case. Holmes's art of detection consists in logical deduction
based on minute details that escape everyone else's notice, and the careful and systematic elimination of all clues that in the course of his investigation turn out to lead nowhere. Conan Doyle also introduced Dr.John H. Watson, a physician
who acts as Holmes's assistant and who also shares Holmes's flat in Baker Street with him. In the words of William L De Andrea,
Many of the great fictional detectives have their Watson: Agatha Christie
's Hercule Poirot
, for example, is often accompanied by Captain Arthur Hastings. Hastings, however, appeared only intermittently in those Poirot novels and stories written after 1925 and only once in those written after 1937.
(See also Sherlock Holmes
, Dr. Watson, tin and mel for further explication.)
" of detective fiction
. Most of its authors were British—Agatha Christie
(1890–1976), Dorothy L. Sayers
(1893–1957), and many more; some of them were American, but with a British touch. By that time certain conventions and clichés had been established which limited any surprises on the part of the reader to the twists and turns within the plot and of course to the identity of the murderer. The majority of novels of that era were whodunnits, and several authors excelled, after successfully leading their readers on the wrong track, in convincingly revealing to them the least likely suspect as the real villain of the story. What is more, they had a predilection for certain casts of characters and certain settings, with the secluded English country-house at the top of the list.
A typical plot of the Golden Age mystery followed these lines:
school of crime writing (certain works in the field are also referred to as noir fiction). Writers like Dashiell Hammett
(1894–1961), Raymond Chandler
(1888–1959), Jonathan Latimer
(1906–1983), Mickey Spillane
(1918–2006), and many others decided on an altogether different, innovative approach to crime fiction.
This created whole new stereotypes of crime fiction writing. The typical American investigator in these novels, was modelled thus:
He works alone. He is between 35 and 45 years or so, and both a loner and a tough guy. His usual diet consists of fried eggs, black coffee and cigarette
s. He hangs out at shady all-night bars. He is a heavy drinker but always aware of his surroundings and able to fight back when attacked. He always "wears" a gun. He shoots criminals or takes a beating if it helps him solve a case. He is always poor. Cases that at first seem straightforward, often turn out to be quite complicated, forcing him to embark on an odyssey
through the urban landscape. He is involved with organized crime and other lowlifes on the "mean streets" of , preferably Los Angeles
, San Francisco, New York
, or Chicago
. A hard-boiled private eye has an ambivalent attitude towards the police. It is his ambition to save America and rid it of its mean elements all by himself.
As Raymond Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe
—immortalized by actor Humphrey Bogart
in the movie adaptation (1946) of the novel The Big Sleep
(1939)—admits to his client, General Sternwood, he finds it rather tiresome, as an individualist, to fit into the extensive set of rules and regulations for police detectives:
Hard-boiled crime fiction just uses a different set of clichés and stereotypes. Generally, it does include a murder mystery. However, the atmosphere created by hard-boiled writers and the settings they chose for their novels are different from English country-house murders or mysteries surrounding rich old ladies elegantly bumped off on a cruise ship, with a detective happening to be on board. Ian Ousby writes,
Another author who enjoyed writing about the sleazy side of life in the U.S.A. is Jonathan Latimer
. In his novel Solomon's Vineyard (1941), private eye Karl Craven aims to rescue a young heiress from the clutches of a weird cult. Apart from being an action-packed thriller, the novel contains open references to the detective's sex drive and allusions to, and a brief description of, kinky sexual practices. The novel was considered "too hot" for Latimer's American publishers and was not published until 1950 in a heavily Bowdlerized version. The unexpurgated novel came out in Britain during the Second World War.
s. H. C. McNeile
(Sapper)s Bulldog Drummond
from World War I
, Mickey Spillane
's Mike Hammer
and many others from World War II
, and John D. MacDonald
's Travis McGee
from the Korean War
. In Bulldog Drummond's first appearance he is a bored ex-serviceman seeking adventure, Spillane's Mike Hammer
avenges an old buddy who saved his life on Guadalcanal
. The frequent exposure to death and hardship often leads to a cynical and callous attitude as well as a character trait known today as post-traumatic stress characterizes many hardboiled protagonists.
' history of the genre). Starting with writers like Francis Iles, who has been described as "the father of the psychological suspense novel as we know it today," more and more authors laid the emphasis on character rather than plot. Up to the present, lots of authors have tried their hand at writing novels where the identity of the criminal is known to the reader right from the start. The suspense is created by the author having the reader share the perpetrator's thoughts—up to a point, that is—and having them guess what is going to happen next (for example, another murder, or a potential victim making a fatal mistake), and if the criminal will be brought to justice in the end. For example, Simon Brett
's A Shock to the System
(1984) and Stephen Dobyns
' Boy in the Water (1999) both reveal the murderer's identity quite early in the narrative. A Shock to the System is about a hitherto law-abiding business manager's revenge which is triggered by his being passed over for promotion, and the intricate plan he thinks up to get back at his rivals. Boy in the Water is the psychological study of a man who, severely abused as a child, is trying to get back at the world at large now that he has the physical and mental abilities to do so. As a consequence of his childhood trauma
, the killer randomly picks out his victims, first terrifying them and eventually murdering them. But Boy in the Water also traces the mental states of a group of people who happen to get in touch with the lunatic, and their reactions to him.
, whose unsuspecting and innocent protagonists are often caught in a network of espionage
, betrayal and violence and whose only wish is to get home safely as soon as possible. Spy thrillers continue to fascinate readers even if the Cold War
period is over now. Another development is the courtroom novel which, as opposed to courtroom drama, also includes many scenes which are not set in the courtroom itself but which basically revolves around the trial
of the protagonist, who claims to be innocent but cannot (yet) prove it. Quite a number of U.S. lawyers have given up their jobs and started writing novels full-time, among them Scott Turow
, who began his career with the publication of Presumed Innocent
(1987) (the phrase in the title having been taken from the age-old legal principle that any defendant must be considered as not guilty until s/he is finally convicted). But there are also authors who specialise in historical mysteries—novels which are set in the days of the Roman Empire, in medieval England, the United States of the 1930s and 40s, or whenever (see historical whodunnit
) -- and even in mysteries set in the future. Remarkable examples can be found in any number of Philip K. Dick
's stories or novels.
has also left its mark on the genre of crime fiction. Numerous private eyes—professionals as well as amateurs—are now women, some of them lesbian
s. Tally McGinnis, for example, is the young gay heroine of a series of novels by U.S. author Nancy Sanra (born 1944). Sanra's Tally McGinnis mysteries, such as No Escape
(1998), which is set in San Francisco, are quite traditional in other respects. Other female novelists include Sara Paretsky
(born 1947), whose private detective V.I. Warshawski roams the streets of Chicago
linking crimes to their perpetrators, who always seem to want to kill her for her efforts. In Britain, Scottish-born Val McDermid
created lesbian journalist-cum-sleuth Lindsay Gordon, and Joan Smith
(born 1953) has gained popularity as the author of a series of Loretta Lawson novels. Lawson is a university teacher and an amateur sleuth. In Full Stop (1995), she stops over at New York and is quickly devoured by the city.
's (1920–2008) police procedural
Last Seen Wearing ...
(1952) is an early example of this type of crime fiction. As opposed to hard-boiled crime writing, which is set in the mean streets of a big city, Last Seen Wearing ... carefully and minutely chronicles the work of the police, including all the boring but necessary legwork, in a small American college town where, in the dead of winter, an attractive student disappears. In contrast to armchair detectives such as Dr. Gideon Fell or Hercule Poirot, Chief of Police Frank W. Ford and his men never hold back information from the reader. By way of elimination, they exclude all the suspects who could not possibly have committed the crime and eventually arrive at the correct conclusion, a solution which comes as a surprise to most of them but which, due to their painstaking research, is infallible. The novel certainly is a whodunnit, but all the conventions of the cosy British variety are abandoned. A lot of reasoning has to be done by the police though, including the careful examination and re-examination of all the evidence available. Waugh's police novel lacks "action" in the form of dangerous situations from which the characters can only make a narrow escape, but the book is nonetheless a page-turner of a novel, with all the suspense for the readers created through their being able to witness each and every step the police take in order to solve the crime.
Another example is American writer Faye Kellerman
(born 1952), who wrote a series of novels featuring Peter Decker and his daughter by his first marriage, Cindy, who both work for the Los Angeles
Police Department. Local colour is provided by the author, especially through Peter Decker's Jewish background. In Stalker
(2000), 25 year-old Cindy herself becomes the victim of a stalker
, who repeatedly frightens her and also tries to do her bodily harm
. Apart from her personal predicament, Cindy is assigned to clear up a series of murders that have been committed in the Los Angeles area. Again, the work of the police is chronicled in detail, but it would not be fiction if outrageous things did not intervene.
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
is a typically 19th- and 20th-century genre, dominated by British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre.
Crime fiction in history
Crime Fiction came to be recognised as a distinct literary genreGenre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
, with specialist writers and a devoted readership, in the 19th century. Earlier novels and stories were typically devoid of systematic attempts at detection: There was no detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
, whether amateur
Amateur
An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....
or professional
Professional
A professional is a person who is paid to undertake a specialised set of tasks and to complete them for a fee. The traditional professions were doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and commissioned military officers. Today, the term is applied to estate agents, surveyors , environmental scientists,...
, trying to figure out how and by whom a particular crime was committed; there were no police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
trying to solve a case; neither was there any discussion of motive
Motive (law)
A motive, in law, especially criminal law, is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action. Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at...
s, alibis, the modus operandi
Modus operandi
Modus operandi is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode of operation". The term is used to describe someone's habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning...
, or any of the other elements which make up the modern crime writing.
Early Arabic crime stories
The earliest known example of a crime story was "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by ScheherazadeScheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy, locked chest along the Tigris
Tigris
The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid
Harun al-Rashid
Hārūn al-Rashīd was the fifth Arab Abbasid Caliph in Iraq. He was born in Rey, Iran, close to modern Tehran. His birth date remains a point of discussion, though, as various sources give the dates from 763 to 766)....
, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier
Vizier
A vizier or in Arabic script ; ; sometimes spelled vazir, vizir, vasir, wazir, vesir, or vezir) is a high-ranking political advisor or minister in a Muslim government....
, Ja'far ibn Yahya
Ja'far ibn Yahya
Ja'far bin Yahya Barmaki, Jafar al-Barmaki was the son of a Persian Vizier of the Arab Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, from whom he inherited that position. He was a member of the influential Barmakids family...
, to solve the crime and find the murderer within three days, or be executed if he fails his assignment. Suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
is generated through multiple plot twist
Plot twist
A plot twist is a change in the expected direction or outcome of the plot of a film, television series, video game, novel, comic or other fictional work. It is a common practice in narration used to keep the interest of an audience, usually surprising them with a revelation...
s that occur as the story progesses. This may thus be considered an archetype for detective fiction
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
.
The main difference between Ja'far in "" and later fictional detectives such as Miss Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
, however, is that Ja'far has no actual desire to solve the case. The whodunit
Whodunit
A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...
mystery is solved by the murderer himself confessing his crime, which in turn leads to another assignment in which Ja'far has to find the culprit who instigated the murder within three days or else be executed. Ja'far again fails to find the culprit before the deadline, but as a result of his chance discovery of a key item, he eventually manages to solve the case through reasoning, in order to prevent his own execution.
Early Chinese crime stories
Other early crime stories include the Ming DynastyMing Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
Chinese Crime Fiction
Chinese Crime Fiction
In the Song dynasty, the growth of commerce and urban society created a demand for many new forms of popular entertainment. "Stories about criminal cases" were among the new types of vernacular fiction that developed from the Song to the Ming periods. Written in colloquial rather than literary...
such as Bao Gong An
Bao Gong An
-Plot summary:The Judge Bao Zheng unveiled the evil doings by reasoning, with the help of his assistant. He has dark brown skin and a moon-shaped scar on his forehead. He has four bodyguards and one personal expert.-External links:*...
(Chinese:包公案) and the 18th century novel Di Gong An (Chinese:狄公案). The latter was translated into English as Dee Goong An (Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee) by Dutch sinologist Robert Van Gulik
Robert van Gulik
Robert Hans van Gulik was a highly educated orientalist, diplomat, musician , and writer, best known for the Judge Dee mysteries, the protagonist of which he borrowed from the 18th-century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An.-Life:Robert van Gulik was the son of a medical officer in the Dutch...
, who then used the style and characters to write an original Judge Dee
Judge Dee
Judge Dee is a semi-fictional character based on the historical figure Di Renjie , magistrate and statesman of the Tang court. The character first appeared in the 18th century Chinese detective novel Di Gong An...
series.
The hero of these novels is typically a traditional judge or similar official based on historical personages such as Judge Bao (Bao Qingtian
Bao Qingtian
Bao Zheng was a much-praised official who served during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Northern Song Dynasty in ancient China. Culturally, Bao Zheng today is respected as the symbol of justice in China...
) or Judge Dee (Di Renjie
Di Renjie
Dí Rénjié , courtesy name Huaiying , formally Duke Wenhui of Liang , was an official of the Chinese Tang Dynasty and Wu Zetian's Zhou Dynasty, twice serving as chancellor during her reign...
). Although the historical characters may have lived in an earlier period (such as the Song
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
or Tang
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
dynasty) the novels are often set in the later Ming
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
or Manchu
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
period.
These novels differ from the Western genre in several points as described by van Gulik:
- the detective is the local magistrate who is usually involved in several unrelated cases simultaneously;
- the criminal is introduced at the very start of the story and his crime and reasons are carefully explained, thus constituting an inverted detective storyInverted detective storyAn inverted detective story, also known as a "howdhecatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery...
rather than a "puzzle"; - the stories have a supernatural element with ghosts telling people about their death and even accusing the criminal;
- the stories were filled with digressions into philosophy, the complete texts of official documents, and much more, making for very long books;
- the novels tended to have a huge cast of characters, typically in the hundreds, all described as to their relation to the various main actors in the story;
- little time is spent on the details of how the crime was committed but a great deal on the torture and execution of the criminals, even including their further torments in one of the various hells for the damned.
Van Gulik chose Di Gong An to translate because it was in his view closer to the Western tradition and more likely to appeal to non-Chinese readers.
Description of crimes and detectives
Forerunners of today's crime fiction include the ghost story, the horror story, and the revenge story. Early examples of crime stories includes Steen Steensen BlicherSteen Steensen Blicher
Steen Steensen Blicher was an author and poet born in Vium near Viborg, Denmark.- Biography :Blicher was the son of a literarily inclined Jutlandic parson whose family was distantly related to Martin Luther....
s The Rector of Veilbye
The Rector of Veilbye
The Rector of Veilbye , is a crime mystery written in 1829 by Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher. The novella is based upon a true murder case from 1626 in Vejlby, Denmark which Blicher knew partly from Erik Pontoppidan's Danish Church History , and partly through oral tradition...
(1829), Philip Meadows Taylor
Philip Meadows Taylor
Colonel Philip Meadows Taylor CSI , an Anglo-Indian administrator and novelist, was born in Liverpool, England....
's Confessions of a Thug
Confessions of a Thug (novel)
Confessions of a Thug is an English novel written by Philip Meadows Taylor in 1839 based on the Thuggee cult in British India. Ameer Ali, the anti-hero protagonist of Confessions of a Thug, was said to be based on a real Thug called Syeed Amir Ali , whom the author was acquainted with.Confessions...
(1839) and Maurits Christopher Hansen's Mordet paa Maskinbygger Roolfsen (1839).
An example of an early crime/revenge story is the American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's (1809–1849) tale "The Cask of Amontillado
The Cask of Amontillado
"The Cask of Amontillado" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book....
", published in 1846. Poe created the first fictional detective (a word unknown at the time) in the character of C. Auguste Dupin, as the central character of some of his short stories (which he called "tales of ratiocination"). In the words of William L. De Andrea
William L. DeAndrea
William L. DeAndrea was an American mystery writer and columnist. He won three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, the first for his first novel, Killed in the Ratings. The majority of his novels made up several series. The Matt Cobb mysteries drew on DeAndrea's experience working...
(Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 1994), he
"Locked room" mysteries
One of the early developments started by Poe was the so-called locked room mysteryLocked room mystery
The locked room mystery is a sub-genre of detective fiction in which a crime—almost always murder—is committed under apparently impossible circumstances. The crime in question typically involves a crime scene that no intruder could have entered or left, e.g., a locked room...
in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been claimed as the first detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". Two works that share some similarities predate Poe's stories, including Das...
". Here, the reader is presented with a puzzle and encouraged to solve it before finishing the story and being told the solution.
These stories are so called because they involve a crime—normally a murder—which takes place in a "locked room." In the simplest case this is literally a hermetically sealed chamber which, to all appearances, no one could have entered or left at the time of the crime. More generally, it is any crime situation where—again, to all appearances—someone must have entered or left the scene of the crime, yet it was not possible for anyone to have done so. (For example, one such Agatha Christie mystery (And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
) takes place on a small island during a storm; another on a train stalled in the mountains and surrounded by new-fallen, unmarked snow.) One of the most famous locked room mysteries was The Hollow Man
The Hollow Man (1935 novel)
The Hollow Man is a famous locked room mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr , published in 1935. It was published in the US under the title The Three Coffins, and in 1981 was selected as the best locked room mystery of all time by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.-Plot...
. The resolution of such a story might involve showing how the room was not really "locked"; or that it was not necessary for anyone else to have come or gone; that the murderer is still hiding in the room; or that the person to "discover" the murder when the room was unlocked in fact committed it just then.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson mysteries
In 1887, Scotsman Sir Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
(1859–1930) gave fresh impetus to the emerging form of the detective story by creating Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
, resident at 221B Baker Street, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
—probably the most famous of fictional detectives and the first one to have clients, to be hired to solve a case. Holmes's art of detection consists in logical deduction
Deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning, also called deductive logic, is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments. Deductive arguments are attempts to show that a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises or hypothesis...
based on minute details that escape everyone else's notice, and the careful and systematic elimination of all clues that in the course of his investigation turn out to lead nowhere. Conan Doyle also introduced Dr.John H. Watson, a physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
who acts as Holmes's assistant and who also shares Holmes's flat in Baker Street with him. In the words of William L De Andrea,
Many of the great fictional detectives have their Watson: Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
's Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
, for example, is often accompanied by Captain Arthur Hastings. Hastings, however, appeared only intermittently in those Poirot novels and stories written after 1925 and only once in those written after 1937.
(See also Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
, Dr. Watson, tin and mel for further explication.)
The Golden Age—Development by later writers
The 1920s and 30s are commonly known as the "Golden AgeGolden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
" of detective fiction
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
. Most of its authors were British—Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
(1890–1976), Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
(1893–1957), and many more; some of them were American, but with a British touch. By that time certain conventions and clichés had been established which limited any surprises on the part of the reader to the twists and turns within the plot and of course to the identity of the murderer. The majority of novels of that era were whodunnits, and several authors excelled, after successfully leading their readers on the wrong track, in convincingly revealing to them the least likely suspect as the real villain of the story. What is more, they had a predilection for certain casts of characters and certain settings, with the secluded English country-house at the top of the list.
A typical plot of the Golden Age mystery followed these lines:
- A body, preferably that of a stranger, is found in the library by a maid who has just come in to dust the furniture.
- As it happens, a few guests have just arrived for a weekend in the country—people who may or may not know each other. They typically include such stock characterStock characterA Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...
s as a handsome young gentleman and his beautiful and rich fiancée, an actress with past glory and an alcoholic husband, a clumsy aspiring young author, a retired colonel, a quiet middle-aged man no one knows anything about who is supposedly the host's old friend, but behaves suspsiciously and a famous detective. - The police are either unavailable or incompetent to lead the investigation for the time being.
Hard boiled American crime fiction writing
A U.S. reaction to the cosy conventionality of British murder mysteries was the American hard-boiledHardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
school of crime writing (certain works in the field are also referred to as noir fiction). Writers like Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
(1894–1961), Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
(1888–1959), Jonathan Latimer
Jonathan Latimer
Jonathan Wyatt Latimer was an American crime writer-Life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, he attended the Mesa Ranch School in Arizona from 1922-1925 and later studied at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1929...
(1906–1983), Mickey Spillane
Mickey Spillane
Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...
(1918–2006), and many others decided on an altogether different, innovative approach to crime fiction.
This created whole new stereotypes of crime fiction writing. The typical American investigator in these novels, was modelled thus:
He works alone. He is between 35 and 45 years or so, and both a loner and a tough guy. His usual diet consists of fried eggs, black coffee and cigarette
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
s. He hangs out at shady all-night bars. He is a heavy drinker but always aware of his surroundings and able to fight back when attacked. He always "wears" a gun. He shoots criminals or takes a beating if it helps him solve a case. He is always poor. Cases that at first seem straightforward, often turn out to be quite complicated, forcing him to embark on an odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
through the urban landscape. He is involved with organized crime and other lowlifes on the "mean streets" of , preferably Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, San Francisco, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, or Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. A hard-boiled private eye has an ambivalent attitude towards the police. It is his ambition to save America and rid it of its mean elements all by himself.
As Raymond Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
—immortalized by actor Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
in the movie adaptation (1946) of the novel The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978...
(1939)—admits to his client, General Sternwood, he finds it rather tiresome, as an individualist, to fit into the extensive set of rules and regulations for police detectives:
Hard-boiled crime fiction just uses a different set of clichés and stereotypes. Generally, it does include a murder mystery. However, the atmosphere created by hard-boiled writers and the settings they chose for their novels are different from English country-house murders or mysteries surrounding rich old ladies elegantly bumped off on a cruise ship, with a detective happening to be on board. Ian Ousby writes,
Another author who enjoyed writing about the sleazy side of life in the U.S.A. is Jonathan Latimer
Jonathan Latimer
Jonathan Wyatt Latimer was an American crime writer-Life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, he attended the Mesa Ranch School in Arizona from 1922-1925 and later studied at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1929...
. In his novel Solomon's Vineyard (1941), private eye Karl Craven aims to rescue a young heiress from the clutches of a weird cult. Apart from being an action-packed thriller, the novel contains open references to the detective's sex drive and allusions to, and a brief description of, kinky sexual practices. The novel was considered "too hot" for Latimer's American publishers and was not published until 1950 in a heavily Bowdlerized version. The unexpurgated novel came out in Britain during the Second World War.
The military veteran as hardboiled protagonist
Several hardboiled heroes have been war veteranVeteran
A veteran is a person who has had long service or experience in a particular occupation or field; " A veteran of ..."...
s. H. C. McNeile
H. C. McNeile
Cyril McNeile MC was a British author, who published under the pen name Sapper.He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the Interwar period; his principal character was Bulldog Drummond.-Biography:Cyril McNeile was born in 1888 at Bodmin in Cornwall...
(Sapper)s Bulldog Drummond
Bulldog Drummond
Bulldog Drummond is a British fictional character, created by "Sapper", a pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile , and the hero of a series of novels published from 1920 to 1954.- Drummond :...
from World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Mickey Spillane
Mickey Spillane
Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...
's Mike Hammer
Mike Hammer
Michael "Mike" Hammer is a fictional detective created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book I, the Jury .-Description:...
and many others from World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald
John Dann MacDonald was an American crime and suspense novelist and short story writer.MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida...
's Travis McGee
Travis McGee
Travis McGee is a fictional character, created by prolific American mystery writer John D. MacDonald. Unlike most detectives in crime fiction, McGee is neither a police officer nor a licensed private investigator; instead, he is a self-described "salvage consultant" who recovers others' property...
from the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. In Bulldog Drummond's first appearance he is a bored ex-serviceman seeking adventure, Spillane's Mike Hammer
Mike Hammer
Michael "Mike" Hammer is a fictional detective created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book I, the Jury .-Description:...
avenges an old buddy who saved his life on Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal is a tropical island in the South-Western Pacific. The largest island in the Solomons, it was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568...
. The frequent exposure to death and hardship often leads to a cynical and callous attitude as well as a character trait known today as post-traumatic stress characterizes many hardboiled protagonists.
A shift from plot-driven themes to character analysis
Over the decades, the detective story metamorphosed into the crime novel (see also the title of Julian SymonsJulian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
' history of the genre). Starting with writers like Francis Iles, who has been described as "the father of the psychological suspense novel as we know it today," more and more authors laid the emphasis on character rather than plot. Up to the present, lots of authors have tried their hand at writing novels where the identity of the criminal is known to the reader right from the start. The suspense is created by the author having the reader share the perpetrator's thoughts—up to a point, that is—and having them guess what is going to happen next (for example, another murder, or a potential victim making a fatal mistake), and if the criminal will be brought to justice in the end. For example, Simon Brett
Simon Brett
Simon Brett is a prolific writer of whodunnits. The son of a chartered surveyor, he was educated at Dulwich College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he got a first-class honours degree in English...
's A Shock to the System
A Shock to the System
A Shock to the System is a U.S. comedy crime thriller film directed by Jan Egleson, starring Michael Caine, Swoosie Kurtz, Elizabeth McGovern, and Peter Riegert...
(1984) and Stephen Dobyns
Stephen Dobyns
Stephen J. Dobyns is an American poet and novelist born in Orange, New Jersey, and residing in Westerly, RI.-Life:Was born on February 19, 1941 in Orange, New Jersey to Lester L., a minister, and Barbara Johnston...
' Boy in the Water (1999) both reveal the murderer's identity quite early in the narrative. A Shock to the System is about a hitherto law-abiding business manager's revenge which is triggered by his being passed over for promotion, and the intricate plan he thinks up to get back at his rivals. Boy in the Water is the psychological study of a man who, severely abused as a child, is trying to get back at the world at large now that he has the physical and mental abilities to do so. As a consequence of his childhood trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
, the killer randomly picks out his victims, first terrifying them and eventually murdering them. But Boy in the Water also traces the mental states of a group of people who happen to get in touch with the lunatic, and their reactions to him.
Crime fiction in specific themes
Apart from the emergence of the psychological thriller and the continuation of older traditions such as the whodunnit and the private eye novel, several new trends can be recognised. One of the first masters of the spy novel was Eric AmblerEric Ambler
Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. Ambler also used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.-Life:...
, whose unsuspecting and innocent protagonists are often caught in a network of espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
, betrayal and violence and whose only wish is to get home safely as soon as possible. Spy thrillers continue to fascinate readers even if the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
period is over now. Another development is the courtroom novel which, as opposed to courtroom drama, also includes many scenes which are not set in the courtroom itself but which basically revolves around the trial
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...
of the protagonist, who claims to be innocent but cannot (yet) prove it. Quite a number of U.S. lawyers have given up their jobs and started writing novels full-time, among them Scott Turow
Scott Turow
Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...
, who began his career with the publication of Presumed Innocent
Presumed Innocent
Presumed Innocent, published in 1987, is Scott Turow's first novel, which tells the story of a prosecutor charged with the murder of his colleague, an attractive and intelligent prosecutor, Carolyn Polhemus. It is told in the first person by the accused, Rǒzat "Rusty" Sabich...
(1987) (the phrase in the title having been taken from the age-old legal principle that any defendant must be considered as not guilty until s/he is finally convicted). But there are also authors who specialise in historical mysteries—novels which are set in the days of the Roman Empire, in medieval England, the United States of the 1930s and 40s, or whenever (see historical whodunnit
Historical whodunnit
The historical whodunnit is a sub-genre of historical fiction which bears elements of the classical mystery novel, in which the central plot involves a crime and the setting has some historical significance. One of the big areas of debate within the community of fans is what makes a given setting...
) -- and even in mysteries set in the future. Remarkable examples can be found in any number of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's stories or novels.
LGBT crime fiction
LGBTLGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
has also left its mark on the genre of crime fiction. Numerous private eyes—professionals as well as amateurs—are now women, some of them lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
s. Tally McGinnis, for example, is the young gay heroine of a series of novels by U.S. author Nancy Sanra (born 1944). Sanra's Tally McGinnis mysteries, such as No Escape
No Escape
No Escape, released in some territories as Escape from Absolom is a 1994 action/science fiction film shot in Queensland starring Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, Stuart Wilson and Kevin Dillon....
(1998), which is set in San Francisco, are quite traditional in other respects. Other female novelists include Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky is a modern American author of detective fiction.-Life and career:Paretsky was born in Ames, Iowa and raised in Kansas, graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in political science. She did community service work on the south side of Chicago in 1966 and returned in...
(born 1947), whose private detective V.I. Warshawski roams the streets of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
linking crimes to their perpetrators, who always seem to want to kill her for her efforts. In Britain, Scottish-born Val McDermid
Val McDermid
Val McDermid is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of suspense novels starring her most famous creation, Dr. Tony Hill.-Biography:...
created lesbian journalist-cum-sleuth Lindsay Gordon, and Joan Smith
Joan Smith (novelist and journalist)
Joan Alison Smith is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN.-Life and work:...
(born 1953) has gained popularity as the author of a series of Loretta Lawson novels. Lawson is a university teacher and an amateur sleuth. In Full Stop (1995), she stops over at New York and is quickly devoured by the city.
Police investigation themes
By far the richest field of activity though has been the police novel. U.S. (male) writer Hillary WaughHillary Waugh
Hillary Baldwin Waugh was a pioneering American mystery novelist. In 1989, Waugh was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.-Career:...
's (1920–2008) police procedural
Police procedural
The police procedural is a subgenre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several...
Last Seen Wearing ...
Last Seen Wearing ... (Hillary Waugh novel)
Last Seen Wearing ... is a U.S. detective novel by Hillary Waugh frequently referred to as the police procedural par excellence...
(1952) is an early example of this type of crime fiction. As opposed to hard-boiled crime writing, which is set in the mean streets of a big city, Last Seen Wearing ... carefully and minutely chronicles the work of the police, including all the boring but necessary legwork, in a small American college town where, in the dead of winter, an attractive student disappears. In contrast to armchair detectives such as Dr. Gideon Fell or Hercule Poirot, Chief of Police Frank W. Ford and his men never hold back information from the reader. By way of elimination, they exclude all the suspects who could not possibly have committed the crime and eventually arrive at the correct conclusion, a solution which comes as a surprise to most of them but which, due to their painstaking research, is infallible. The novel certainly is a whodunnit, but all the conventions of the cosy British variety are abandoned. A lot of reasoning has to be done by the police though, including the careful examination and re-examination of all the evidence available. Waugh's police novel lacks "action" in the form of dangerous situations from which the characters can only make a narrow escape, but the book is nonetheless a page-turner of a novel, with all the suspense for the readers created through their being able to witness each and every step the police take in order to solve the crime.
Another example is American writer Faye Kellerman
Faye Kellerman
Faye Kellerman is an American author of mystery novels, in particular the "Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus" series, as well as three non-series books, The Quality of Mercy, Moon Music and Straight into Darkness.-Early life:...
(born 1952), who wrote a series of novels featuring Peter Decker and his daughter by his first marriage, Cindy, who both work for the Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
Police Department. Local colour is provided by the author, especially through Peter Decker's Jewish background. In Stalker
Stalker (novel)
Stalker is a novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky based on an early draft screenplay for the movie Stalker that in turn is based on a part of their book Roadside Picnic. The novel is quite short and perhaps better described as a Novelette....
(2000), 25 year-old Cindy herself becomes the victim of a stalker
Stalking
Stalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted and obsessive attention by an individual or group to another person. Stalking behaviors are related to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person and/or monitoring them via the internet...
, who repeatedly frightens her and also tries to do her bodily harm
Bodily harm
Bodily harm is a legal term of art used in the definition of both statutory and common law offences in Australia, Canada, England and Wales and other common law jurisdictions. It is a synonym for injury or bodily injury and similar expressions, though it may be used with a precise and limited...
. Apart from her personal predicament, Cindy is assigned to clear up a series of murders that have been committed in the Los Angeles area. Again, the work of the police is chronicled in detail, but it would not be fiction if outrageous things did not intervene.