First published 1996
Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert gather thirty three stories that chart how American writers transformed detective fiction from Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 creation into something uniquely American. The collection moves from elegant locked room puzzles to the hard boiled realism of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, who dragged crime from drawing rooms onto mean streets. World War I, Prohibition, organized crime, and the Great Depression reshaped the genre completely. The anthology features major writers like Erle Stanley Gardner, Ross Macdonald, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, and Sue Grafton alongside surprises like William Faulkner and Bret Harte. Readers meet diverse detectives from armchair sleuth Nero Wolfe to six foot tall taxi driving private investigator Carlotta Carlyle. The editors show how American crime fiction became as varied and democratic as America itself, exploring every corner of the nation through regional tales, pulp fiction, and feminist perspectives.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, american, crime, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, diverse-characters
Period: Great Depression, Prohibition, World War I
704 pages · Hardcover · Oxford University Press