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British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia
 
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British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia (Hardcover)

by Barry Forshaw (Author, Editor)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 750 pages
  • Publisher: Greenwood World Publishing (30 Dec 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1846450225
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846450228
  • Product Dimensions: 26 x 18.8 x 6.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 398,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #42 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Mystery > Reference

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Product Description

Product Description

This is a substantial, wide-ranging A-Z reference of British crime writing - including crime fiction, true and historical crime. From Sherlock Holmes to Inspector Morse, via Father Brown, Miss Marple and the Sweeney, British crime writing has thrilled the world. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive, in-depth A-Z encyclopedia to cover the astonishing riches of the whole tradition. Classic authors of the Golden Age of British Crime, such as Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie, rub shoulders with hot new writers like Martina Cole and Christopher Brookmyre, and established stars mingle with the most promising tyros. The great detectives who solve the elegant riddles of country house murders feature alongside the rawest recruits on the mean streets of Edinburgh, gangland London - and Aberystwyth.In addition, there are articles on all sub-genres of British crime writing - thrillers, espionage, historical crime, clerical crime, crime in academe, noir (and tart noir), literary crime and true crime. Key British film and TV film scripts are also included, and entries on specific subjects are complemented by essays on key themes such as 'Crime Fiction and Sexuality' and 'Social Comment in Crime Fiction'. As an extra treat, many of the articles are written by the crime writers themselves, such as Val McDermid, Lauren Henderson and Laura Wilson. This title exerts strong popular appeal to a general readership; it uniquely combines both historical and fictional crime; and is the most substantial reference resource on the subject.


About the Author

Barry Forshaw is the editor of Crime Time magazine; he is the crime fiction reviewer for The Independent, The Express, Publishing News, and The Times and author of The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Guide to UK Crime Writers, 24 Feb 2009
Barry Forshaw's two-volume British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia runs to two volumes and a total of 867 pages. Rather than the usual cold lists of titles (after all, the Crime Fiction Bibliography compiled by Allen Hubin already lists just about everything you could possibly describe as a crime novel), this new encyclopedia opts for some 500 or so essays, some short, some long, on the highlights of British crime fiction.

The book is bang up to date with entries for a number of authors who have made a name for themselves in the past decade plus a number of literary writers, some of whose key work falls into the crime category (Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, Iain Sinclair). You will find all the names you associate with the Golden Age of crime writing (Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham), spy and espionage (Ambler, Le Carre, even Stella Rimington), thrillers (MacLean, Badley, Lyall, but sadly no Duncan Kyle), and detective--from the days of Conan Doyle to the gritty modern Rebus police procedurals of Ian Rankin.

But it doesn't stop there. The book also includes a number of themed essays taking in everything from the gothic and penny dreadful to the British connections of Raymond Chandler. A random dipping into the pages of book reveals essays on "The Godfathers of British Crime Fiction", an essay of Jane Marple, a lengthy piece on G. K. Chesterton and an entry for Martyn Waites and his burned-out journalist Stephen Larkin. The book is littered with reviews of magazines, films and TV shows, overviews of the works of anthologists and true crime writers... it's a book that can be picked up and browsed or read from cover to cover. Either way, you'll stumble across half a dozen new things: again, a random sampling turned up the fact that Jasper Fforde began his writing career whilst working as a focus puller on blockbuster movies (amongst them the film that reinvented James Bond, GoldenEye).

For me, the joy of a book like this is to revisit authors I've not read for years. Even as I'm writing this, I've been stopped in my tracks stumbling across entries for Victor Canning, Jack Higgins and Hammond Innes. Inevitably, some of the entries are a little sparse: I think there's a lot more to be said about James Hadley Chase and Peter O'Donnell, for instance; but that's probably because what is there inspires a desire to learn more. The cast of writers includes quite a few professional crime writers--Robert Barnard, Lauren Henderson, Maxim Jakubowski, Russell James, Jessica Mann,Val McDiarmid, Margaret Murphy, Nicholas Royle, Andrew Taylor, Mark Timlin--as well as some very knowledgeable bibliographers and critics, amongst them Mike Ashley, Geoff Bradley (C.A.D.S.), Mike Stotter (Shots) and editor Barry Forshaw (Crime Time).

If you're into crime fiction in any way, this deserves to be on your shelves alongside Steinbrunner & Penzler's Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detective Fiction.

British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, edited by Barry Forshaw. Greenwood World Publishing ISBN 978-1846450228, January 2009.

Bear Alley
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