By Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann covers influences and inspirations in crime writing with references to a stellar cast of crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Dashiell Hammett, Albert Camus, Borges, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and Ted Lewis. Hoffmann examines why crime literature may provide stronger consolation for readers than philosophy. In so doing, he demonstrates the truth of Wittgenstein's claim that more wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in philosophical essays. Josef Hoffmann's combination of knowledge, academic acuity, and enthusiasm makes this a must-have book for any crime fiction aficionado—with or without a philosophical nature.

Harpenden, Herts, UK: No Exit Press, 2013. 192p.

From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction

By Susan Rowland

From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell is the first book to consider seriously the hugely popular and influential works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Nag Marsh, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine. Providing studies of 42 key novels, this volume introduces these authors for students and the general reader in the context of their lives, and of critical debates on gender, colonialism, psychoanalysis, the Gothic, and feminism. It includes interviews with P.D. James and Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.
Palgrave macmillan, 2000. 232p.

By Christiana Gregoriou

This book explores the three aspects of deviance that contemporary crime fiction manipulates: linguistic, social, and generic. Gregoriou conducts case studies into crime series by James Patterson, Michael Connelly and Patricia Cornwell, and investigates the way in which these novelists correspondingly challenge those aforementioned conventions.

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 189p.