Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction

Continuing the Salem Press tradition of Critical Survey series, Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction, Revised Edition provides detailed analyses of the lives and writings of major contributors to the fascinating literary subgenre of mystery and detective fiction. This greatly expanded five-volume set is the first full revision of a work that originally appeared in 1988.

This new edition updates or replaces all the original articles and adds entirely new articles on 118 more authors, raising the total to 368 articles. It also adds 38 entirely new overview essays and 4 new appendixes. Covered here are such well-known mystery writers as Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dorothy Sayers. New to this edition are such venerable writers as Louisa May Alcott, Edward Stratemeyer, and Margaret Truman. Popular contemporary writers, such as Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, John Dunning, John Grisham, Thomas Harris, Rolando Hinojosa, Scott Turow, J.K. Rowling, and Stuart Woods and also included.