Product Description
It’s only detective stories. You only read them and write them for fun,” crime writer Harriet Vane says to her husband, Lord Peter Wimsey. He replies, “You seem not to appreciate the importance of your special form. Detective stories contain a dream of justice. They project a vision of a world in which wrongs are righted…murderers are caught and hanged, and innocent victims are avenged and future murder is deterred.” —Jill Paton Walsh in Thrones, Dominations, the 12th Lord Peter Wimsey book, based on notes left by Dorothy L. Sayers
In this collection of reviews written over a span of several years, author and Chicago Tribune columnist Dick Adler explores the social implications of the genre he reviews and admires, and traces its evolution into one of today's most respected literary forms.
He is the co-author, with the late Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, of Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor’s Education on Death Row. Anthony Lewis in The New York Times Book Review called it “a compelling and important book,” and Jonathan Kirsch in The Los Angeles Times said, “Some of the most fascinating passages are the dozen or so case histories of the men and women themselves, the stuff of hard-boiled detective fiction come to life.”
In this collection of reviews written over a span of several years, author and Chicago Tribune columnist Dick Adler explores the social implications of the genre he reviews and admires, and traces its evolution into one of today's most respected literary forms.
He is the co-author, with the late Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, of Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor’s Education on Death Row. Anthony Lewis in The New York Times Book Review called it “a compelling and important book,” and Jonathan Kirsch in The Los Angeles Times said, “Some of the most fascinating passages are the dozen or so case histories of the men and women themselves, the stuff of hard-boiled detective fiction come to life.”
