Böcker i Crime Files-serien

Why do true crime stories exert such popular fascination? Embracing a range of non-fiction accounts - true crime book and magazines, law and order television, popular journalism - it traces how they harness and explore current concerns about law and order, crime and punishment and personal vulnerability.

What is literary noir? How do British and American noir thrillers relate to their historical contexts? Lee Horsley's updated study of the genre, now available in paperback, ranges over hundreds of novels from the hard-boiled fiction of Hammett, Chandler and Cain to the game-players, voyeurs and consumers of contemporary thrillers and future noir.

This book takes a look at the evolution of crime fiction. Considering 'criminography' as a system of inter-related sub-genres, it explores the connections between modes of literature such as revenge tragedies, the gothic and anarchist fiction, while taking into account the influence of pseudo-sciences such as mesmerism and criminal anthropology.