Reference Reviews

Doug's Student Reference Room

Critical Survey of Mystery & Detective Fiction. 2nd edition. Edited by Carl Rollyson. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, Inc., 2008. 5 vols. 2,080 pp. ISBN 978-1-58765-397-1 (set).

Critical Survey of Mystery & Detective Fiction Organized alphabetically by author, this five volume set features nearly 400 writers from classics like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to contemporary writers like Alexander McCall Smith and Janet Evanovich. The collection takes an expansive view of detective and mystery fiction, including legal thrillers, espionage, and even fantasy fiction like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, which is cleverly compared to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Each entry contains an overview of the author's contributions to the genre, a brief biography, analysis of major works, and a bibliography for additional research. Besides adding new authors and updating previous entries, this new edition includes an impressive collection of essays that examines the genre through a variety of lenses. "Past and Present Mystery and Detective Fiction" covers the genre's roots, its "golden age," literary aspects, and a wonderful discussion of pulp magazines that could supplement history units about the 1920s and 1930s. Another section discusses mystery fiction around the world, while "Subgenres of Mystery Fiction" includes essays on forensic mysteries, horror stories, spy novels, feminist and lesbian mysteries, and juvenile and young-adult mysteries. "The Detectives" is a focus on common character types like amateur sleuths, hard-boiled detectives, and Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and "Other Media" explores the genre in drama, film, radio, television, and graphic novels. There is a guide to online resources, a glossary of genre terms and techniques, and definitions of crime fiction jargon would be a great resource for a fiction-writing class. Indexes are arranged by geography, category, character, and subject. This collection is recommended as a useful supplement for schools that incorporate popular fiction into their curriculum.

— Doug Achterman