Talking About Detective Fiction
by P. D. James · Vintage
Short history and analysis of the detective story from Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle through the Golden Age, the American hard-boiled school and modern crime fiction, with notes on setting, structure and the genre's conventions by a leading practitioner. Covers the 'conventions and sub-genres' part of the topic: why the classic whodunit works and how the traditions diverged.
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