Mystery & Detective

'A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse'- THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR'A riveting portrait'- GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR***'Worsley's sparkling biography brings a fresh eye to Christie's life and work, firmly busting the myth...

Shortlisted for the BMA Book Awards and Macavity Awards 2016 Fourteen novels. Fourteen poisons. Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's all made-up ... Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books;...

** Shortlisted for the @CrimeFest H.R.F. Keating Award **'A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse'- THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR'A riveting portrait' - GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR***'Christie lovers should read this biography...

Crime fiction has been one of the most popular genres since the 19th century, but has roots in works as varied as Sophocles, Herodotus, and Shakespeare. In this Very Short Introduction Richard Bradford explores the history of the genre, by considering...

'There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life.' In Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet a popular cultural phenomenon is born. We meet two of the most famous characters in modern literary history: the...

Agatha Christie's Complete Secret Notebooks brings together for the first time Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making, two volumes that explore the fascinating contents of her 73 notebooks. This includes illustrations, deleted extracts, unused ideas,...

From the very first book publication in 1920 to the recent film release of Death on the Nile, this investigation into Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot celebrates a century of probably the world's favourite fictional detective. ...

Learn about the world's greatest detective in The Sherlock Holmes Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Sherlock Holmes in this overview guide to the...

Over the course of a fifty-year career, Donald Westlake published nearly one hundred books, including not one - but two - long-running series, starring the hard-hitting Parker and the hapless John Dortmunder. In the six years since his death, Westlake's...

THE TELEGRAPH'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR 2024 EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE H.R.F KEATING AWARD FOE BEST BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL BOOK "As gripping and twisted as a James Ellroy novel." - Ian Rankin "A masterpiece of...

P. D. James's extraordinary memoir of her early life and time starting out as a novelist, as well as diaries recording her in old age.In this intriguing and very personal book, part diary, part memoir, P. D. James considers the twelve months of her life...

Questing was Sherlock Holmes’s business. He famously adopted the latest forensic techniques, channelled the Victorian passion for enquiry, kept abreast of the key scientific breakthroughs of his age, and conducted his investigations in an enigmatic and...

H.R.F Keating, author of The Perfect Murder and mystery reviewer for the Times of London, offers a concise commentary on the finest mystery books ever written. From Poe's tales of mystery and imagination to P. D. James's A Taste for Death , Keating...

Winner of the 2019 H.R.F. Keating Award for best biography or critical book related to crime fiction! A lavish full-colour celebration of the 2000 books by more than 250 authors published by the iconic Crime Club between 1930 and 1994. ...

Narrative innovation is typically seen as the domain of the avant-garde. However, techniques such as nonlinear timelines, multiple points of view, and unreliable narration have long been part of American popular culture. How did forms and styles once...

A gripping mystery about a woman trying to find out the truth behind the death of her best friend and introducing a brilliant detective duo - perfect for fans of Peter James, Angela Marsons and James Oswald. A DEAD GIRLA vulnerable young woman, fresh...

A dazzling collection of rare art and documents illuminate the life of Sherlock Holmes beyond the page. As one of the most beloved characters in the English language, Sherlock Holmes sometimes seems to have a life of his own, one that leaps beyond the...

An innovative and best-selling addition to contemporary peninsular literature, crime fiction by Spanish women re-writes the norms for this particular genre as established by male authors inside Spain, and revises and re-fashions paradigms for the...

From the very first book publication in 1920 to the upcoming film release of Death on the Nile, this investigation into Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot celebrates a century of probably the world's favourite fictional detective. ...

Why do Agatha Christie's novels continue to inspire each generation? The answer is the quality and range of her puzzles: her rich and varied structures of deception. Christie broke the mould of detective fiction and rewrote the implicit rules of the...

From the birth of crime writing with Wilkie Collins and Dostoevsky, through Conan Doyle to the golden age of crime, with the rise of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, P. D. James brings a lifetime of reading and writing crime fiction to...

Barry Forshaw is acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction from European countries, but his principal area of expertise is in the British crime arena. After the success of earlier entries in the series, Nordic Noir and Euro Noir, he returns to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780879721886Author George N. DoveFormat PaperbackPage Count 282Imprint Bowling Green University Popular Press,USPublisher University of Wisconsin Press

Are you a lover of crime fiction looking for new discoveries or hoping to rediscover old favourites? Then look no further. There are few contemporary crime fiction guides that cover everything from the golden age to current bestselling writers from...

The legendary Georges Simenon was the most successful and influential writer of crime fiction in a language other than English; Andre Gide called him 'the greatest French novelist of our times'. Celebrated crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw's informed...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780804168885Author Raymond ChandlerFormat PaperbackPage Count 480Imprint Bantam Books IncPublisher Random House USA Inc

Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the "Queens of Crime." Alongside writers like Agatha Christie, she perfected the whodunnit, but also used the genre to explore social, ethical, and emotional matters. Her characters, particularly Lord Peter Wimsey and his...

WINNER OF THE HRF KEATING AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION CRIME BOOK 2018An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an...

Arthur Conan Doyle famously killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893, in the short story 'The Final Problem', but was tempted to bring him back to life ten years later, in the thirteen tales that comprise The Return of Sherlock Holmes. While the outcry...

A revealing and witty new examination of how Agatha Christie became the world's most successful and popular female playwright, including details of never-before-published scripts and stories. Agatha Christie is revered worldwide for her books...

Georges Simenon's 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Chief Inspector Jules Maigret provide us with a great deal of information about the French police detective-but only in small, episodic doses. As readers become acquainted with Maigret one detail...

Winner of the 2013 Agatha, Anthony and the Macavity Awards for Best Crime Non-Fiction.With so many mystery novels to choose from and so many new titles appearing each year, where should the reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780804170482Author Raymond ChandlerFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Alfred A. KnopfPublisher Alfred A. KnopfWeight(grams) 232gDimensions(mm) 203mm *...

Reading for Life is an anthology of poems and of extracts from prose fiction, related to a series of case-histories of individuals carefully reading, discussing their reading lives, and thinking about the relation of literature to their existence. It...

Before the 1969 Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ life was dominated by the negative image of "the closet"--the metaphorical space where that which was deemed "queer" was hidden from a hostile public view. Literary studies of queer themes and characters in crime...

Historical Dictionary of Sherlock Holmes contains a variety of information about Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, as both narratives and also cultural phenomena. The volume will help readers look deeper into those stories and the meanings of...

The first Sherlock Holmes adventure appeared in 1888, but today the detective is more popular than ever-witness the upcoming release of "Sherlock Holmes", starring Robert Downey Jr. as the legendary Victorian sleuth and Jude Law as his faithful...

The Judge Dee Novels provides a comprehensive survey of Robert van Gulik's series of novels (1949-1968) featuring the Tang dynasty magistrate, Judge Dee. In addition to providing a synopsis of each of the Judge Dee stories (with commentaries on the...

Crime and Thriller Writing: A Writers' & Artists' Companion is an essential guide to writing in these exciting genres. PART 1 explores the nature and history of the genre and helpsyou get started with ideas, planning and research. PART 2 includes...

Euro Noir by Britain's leading crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw (author of Nordic Noir) examines the astonishing success of European fiction and drama. This is often edgier, grittier and more compelling than some of its British or American equivalents,...