Many readers wrongly consider Raymond Chandler’s novels to be mere detective stories. The subtle nuances that mimic harsh reality in the plotlines and characterizations, however, help elevate Chandler’s work beyond the genre. This gritty realism could, in part, be a… Read More ›
A mystery, a thriller, and a low-keyed romance, this novel takes the form of a puzzle. Life follows its uneventful course at The Franchise, a somewhat decayed estate inherited by a mother and daughter, Mrs. Sharpe and Miss Marion Sharpe,… Read More ›
This novel of mystery and detective fiction features a first-person narrator, Faith Severn, who is the niece of the hanged murderess, Vera Hillyard, twin to Faith’s father, John Longley. The story is set after World War II but looks back… Read More ›
In this example of mystery and detective fiction, the author introduces her recurring investigator, Inspector Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard, who returns for many more subsequent adventures. In his first appearance, he is faced with a crime that at first… Read More ›
Wilkie Collins first published The Woman in White as a serial in All the Year Round between November 1859 and August 1860. Collins was praised by critics for the care he took with both plotting and character development. When the… Read More ›
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of Four, to little fanfare. A Study in Scarlet, Doyle’s first novel to feature the superdetective and his friend and chronicler, Dr. Watson, appeared in 1887. However, the… Read More ›
Wilkie Collins is best known for his works The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone, both of which reflected aspects of Collins’s own experience. By the time The Moonstone appeared serially between January and August 1868 in the periodical… Read More ›
A man is murdered on the island paradise of Porquerelles, located off the southern French coast in the Mediterranean Sea, in this novel by the Belgium-born author Georges Simenon (1903–89). Maigret, the famous detective, is notifi ed, and decides to… Read More ›
Although Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett is the first novel written by Georges Simenon (1903–89) in the highly popular detective Maigret series, most of the hallmarks of the series as a whole are apparent in this work. The tall, burly,… Read More ›
A detective story first published in the Strand Magazine in February 1893 and subsequently in the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894). Holmes is consulted by Mr. Grant Munro, on the subject of his wife’s mysterious behavior. Munro met… Read More ›
A detective fiction novella first published by Arthur Conan Doyle in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, and published subsequently as a separate edition by Ward, Lock and Company in 1888, A Study in Scarlet marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. The… Read More ›
Coming after two novellas featuring Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four), “A Scandal in Bohemia,” a short detective story, first appeared in the Strand magazine in July 1891. It recounts the case of the king… Read More ›
First published in the New York Ledger in three parts in 1859, this story is one of the few by Charles Dickens that is widely regarded as Detective Fiction. It is narrated by Mr. Sampson, the retired chief manager of… Read More ›
First published in Charles Dickens’s magazine Household Words (July 19 and 26, 1856), the story was included in Wilkie Collins’s short story collection The Queen of Hearts (1859) as “Brother Owen’s Story of Anne Rodway.” The narrative is composed of… Read More ›
While still a 23- year-old medical student, before creating the wildly popular character of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle published “The Captain of the Pole-Star.” Conan Doyle’s tale is a ghost story set aboard an arctic expedition, narrated by John… Read More ›
A number of Wilkie Collins’s contributions to Charles Dickens’s Household Words were reprinted in a short story collection titled After Dark (1856) published in two volumes by Smith Elder. The stories included “The Traveller’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed,”… Read More ›
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous “tales of ratiocination” whose emphasis on deductive reasoning became the basis for the modern detective story, The Purloined Letter features Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, the archetype of the modern fictional detective who always outwits… Read More ›
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is an extension of his gothic tales as well as the first detective fiction, although the word detective had not been coined yet. This story, along with “The Mystery of Marie… Read More ›
In spite of his desire to be acknowledged as a writer of “serious” literature, Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) is destined to be remembered as the creator of a fictional character who has taken on… Read More ›
Arthur Conan Doyle’s (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) epitaph “STEEL TRUE/BLADE STRAIGHT” can also serve as an introduction to the themes of his novels, both those that feature actual medieval settings and those that center on Sherlock Holmes…. Read More ›
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