Watching the Detectives: Reading Dime Novels and Hard-Boiled Detectives Stories in Context

This paper is an essay-length review of four books: The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction, Edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Hard-boiled: Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines, by Erin A. Smith, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, by Ronald R. Thomas and Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America (Revised Edition), by Michael Denning. Moreover, in the process of subjecting these four books to critical analysis, this paper asserts that pulp fiction, perhaps more than any other kind of literature, is inextricably linked to a specific time and place and argues, therefore, that a proper understanding and appreciation of dime novels and hard-boiled detective stories is contingent upon their cultural (re)contextualization.