Detective Fiction (review)

Detective fiction, one of the most popular genres of the twentieth century, emerged as a topic of scholarly inquiry in the 1970s with the emergence of popular culture as a field of study. Early histories of the genre were largely concerned with mapping this diverse field and attempted to provide a concrete historical lineage for the genre. More recently, work in the field has provided complex models in which to understand the function of detective fiction—see, for example, such work as Sally Munt's Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel (1994), Gill Plain's Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body (2001), and Andrew Maunder and Grace Moore's excellent Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation (2004). These works seek to locate the genre firmly within cultural histories. There has also been a growing number of undergraduate modules offered on this genre. As a result of the increase in student demand, the field is now being populated, once again, by histories of the genre. But these new histories have benefited from the scholarly work of the past twenty years. Rzepka's Detective Fiction is one of these new histories, alongside Lee Horsley's Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (2005) and John Scaggs's Crime Fiction (2005).

Rzepka's volume is clearly intended for the undergraduate student and, more generally, for those interested in detective fiction who do not have access to the more sustained critical work in the field. The book is divided into three sections: "Narratives of Detection," which provides an overview of theoretical approaches to the genre; "The Rise of Detection," which charts the historical development of the genre from The Newgate Calendar to the golden age of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers in the interwar years; and, "American Century," which continues the historical narrative through until the end of the twentieth century. The book is unevenly divided into the two historical overviews, with more attention given to the rise of detective fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is evident in the book's "case studies": of the four case studies in the volume, three—Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sayers—belong to the first part of his history of the genre. This imbalance provides a slightly odd flavour to the book. Raymond Chandler, the fourth case study, has certainly had an undeniable impact on the genre, but I would have liked more on other authors. The penultimate chapter romps through post-war developments in some twenty pages. The absence of an extended discussion of the works of Ian Rankin or Patricia Cornwell, for example, is curious, although the book does end with a brief discussion of Dan Brown. It should be noted that there are some errors throughout that are distracting—it is, for example, St. Mary Mead where Miss Marple reigns supreme, not St. Mary Meade.

Detective Fiction takes a broad-strokes approach to theory and history. The strongest of the chapters is the first, "What is Detective Fiction?," which provides an overview of the difficulties in precisely defining this genre. The summary of the work of such critics as Peter Brooks, Gérard Genette, and Tzvetan Todorov will be the most helpful for students although more time could have been spent on summarizing other arguments—a discussion of the work of Franco Moretti, for example, is missing from most of the discussion. A similar lack of depth in the discussion occurs in the second chapter, "Detection and the Historical Sciences," which seeks to map "the main cultural trends shaping the origin of detective fiction in modern times" (4). These trends include geology, paleontology, and psychoanalysis. Rzepka's discussion needs considerable developing in order that the connection with detective fiction can be made. The chapter that results touches on a series of relevant movements and notions in the nineteenth century—such as the crowd, phrenology, and positivism—but I would have liked to have seen these discussions extended at length. For example, the discussion of psychoanalysis and...