In Reference to Crime Fiction

 

I came across some interesting recent and upcoming nonfiction books, a mix of niche reference to specific cultures and subgenres that look intriguing. Many are priced high enough that it's obvious they're destined to be library and textbook denizens (note the professor/authors and university presses) as opposed to off-the-shelf books, but if you're a fan of these particular subjects or need insights into Italian or Russian mysteries, you can seek these out.

  Pimping Fictions by Justin D. Gifford, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. "Lush sex and stark violence colored Black and served up raw by a great Negro writer," promised the cover of Run Man Run, Chester Himes' pioneering novel in the black crime fiction tradition. In Pimping Fictions, Justin Gifford provides a hard-boiled investigation of hundreds of pulpy paperbacks written by Himes, Donald Goines, and Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck), among many others. Gifford draws from an impressive array of archival materials to provide a first-of-its-kind literary and cultural history of this distinctive genre.

Russian Pulp:  The Detektiv and the Russian Way of Crime by Anthony Olcott, Associate Professor of Russian at Colgate University and author of the Edgar-nominated Murder at the Red October. Using the detektiv and its counterpart—the many mysteries and thrillers set in Russia but written by Westerners—as evidence, Russian Pulp demonstrates that Russians and Westerners view the basic issues of crime, guilt, justice, law, and redemption in such fundamentally different ways as to make each people incomprehensible to the other.

 

The Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction: A Bloody Journey by Barbara Pezzotti, who teaches Italian language and culture in New Zealand. By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country.

Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961 by Curtis Evans, an independent scholar and book dealer. In 1972, in an attempt to elevate the stature of the "crime novel," influential crime writer and critic Julian Symons cast numerous Golden Age detective fiction writers into literary perdition as "Humdrums," condemning their focus on puzzle plots over stylish writing and explorations of character, setting and theme. By championing the intrinsic merit of these mystery writers, this book shows that reintegrating the "Humdrums" into mystery genre studies provides a fuller understanding of the Golden Age of detective fiction and its aftermath.

 

 

 

In Reference to Crime Fiction

 

I came across some interesting recent and upcoming nonfiction books, a mix of niche reference to specific cultures and subgenres that look intriguing. Many are priced high enough that it's obvious they're destined to be library and textbook denizens (note the professor/authors and university presses) as opposed to off-the-shelf books, but if you're a fan of these particular subjects or need insights into Italian or Russian mysteries, you can seek these out.

  Pimping Fictions by Justin D. Gifford, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. "Lush sex and stark violence colored Black and served up raw by a great Negro writer," promised the cover of Run Man Run, Chester Himes' pioneering novel in the black crime fiction tradition. In Pimping Fictions, Justin Gifford provides a hard-boiled investigation of hundreds of pulpy paperbacks written by Himes, Donald Goines, and Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck), among many others. Gifford draws from an impressive array of archival materials to provide a first-of-its-kind literary and cultural history of this distinctive genre.

Russian Pulp:  The Detektiv and the Russian Way of Crime by Anthony Olcott, Associate Professor of Russian at Colgate University and author of the Edgar-nominated Murder at the Red October. Using the detektiv and its counterpart—the many mysteries and thrillers set in Russia but written by Westerners—as evidence, Russian Pulp demonstrates that Russians and Westerners view the basic issues of crime, guilt, justice, law, and redemption in such fundamentally different ways as to make each people incomprehensible to the other.

 

The Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction: A Bloody Journey by Barbara Pezzotti, who teaches Italian language and culture in New Zealand. By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country.

Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961 by Curtis Evans, an independent scholar and book dealer. In 1972, in an attempt to elevate the stature of the "crime novel," influential crime writer and critic Julian Symons cast numerous Golden Age detective fiction writers into literary perdition as "Humdrums," condemning their focus on puzzle plots over stylish writing and explorations of character, setting and theme. By championing the intrinsic merit of these mystery writers, this book shows that reintegrating the "Humdrums" into mystery genre studies provides a fuller understanding of the Golden Age of detective fiction and its aftermath.

 

 

An Overview or Two (or Three)

 

Last week, I noted some recent and upcoming nonfiction books about niche subjects in crime fiction. This week, I thought I'd point out some new crime fiction overviews that look interesting for both casual readers and those of you who are more into the academic side of things. 

Crime Fiction From Poe to the Present: A Historical and Critical Introduction to Crime Fiction from Edgar Allan Poe's First Detective Story to the Present Day by Martin Priestman, Professor of English at Roehampton University London. This book gives a historical and critical introduction to the genre of crime fiction, from Edgar Allan Poe's first detective story The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 to the present day. It concentrates chiefly on three branches of crime fiction: the classic detective whodunit, the thriller in which the protagonist is opposed either to a powerful conspiracy or to society at large, and the hardboiled private-eye story, or detective thriller, which mixes aspects of the other two.

The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, edited by Catherine Ross Nickerson. From the execution sermons of the Colonial era to television programs like The Wire and The Sopranos, crime writing has played an important role in American culture. Its ability to register fear, desire and anxiety has made it a popular genre with a wide audience. These new essays, written for students as well as readers of crime fiction, demonstrate the very best in contemporary scholarship and challenge long-established notions of the development of the detective novel. 

The Crime Fiction Handbook (Blackwell Literature Handbooks) by Peter Messent, Emeritus Professor of Modern American Literature at the University of Nottingham. The Crime Fiction Handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the origins, development, and cultural significance of the crime fiction genre, focusing mainly on its American, British, and Scandinavian forms. The book’s first main section presents an overview of the subject, addressing the politics of crime fiction and exploring some of its main variants  – classical and hard-boiled detective fiction, the private eye and the police novel, fictions of transgression.