Abstract
This entry recounts the development of leading popular genres of crime fiction and critical understandings of their portrayals of subjectivity and legal authority. It reviews the origins of crime literature in execution and trial journalism and describes anxieties about violence, punishment, and injustice expressed in gothic, reform, sensation and naturalist novels. It recalls the formal conventions and conservative assumptions of classic detective stories and novels in the early twentieth century, and traces the emergence of a rival, less reverent hard-boiled style, its relation to film, police procedurals, crime thrillers, and spy thrillers and its inclusion of Black authors portraying Black characters. It observes the relation of crime genres to literary fiction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature |
| Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. |
| Pages | 132-136 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781803925912 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781803925905 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2025 |
Keywords
- Crime literature
- Criminal justice
- Detective fiction
- Homicide
- Novel
- Police
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