A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational (Crime Files)

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 9
Introduction......Page 11
1 Revising the Canon of Crime and Detection......Page 18
From detective to crime fiction......Page 22
Blurring the boundaries......Page 25
A glance at the present......Page 28
Part I: Supernatural and Gothic......Page 32
2 Detection before Detection......Page 34
Dreams and detection......Page 36
Ghosts, politics and revenge......Page 38
'Providential fictions'......Page 43
Crime literature between tragedy and comedy......Page 48
The Newgate Calendars......Page 51
Towards the 'professional case'......Page 54
The aesthetics of murder......Page 56
3 Persecution and Omniscience......Page 58
The enlightened ideal of 'secular omniscience'......Page 59
The dark side of omniscience......Page 62
Preternatural powers......Page 63
Probability vs chance......Page 67
Secret societies, the city and the sublime......Page 69
4 Victorian Ghosts and Revengers......Page 72
A 'ghost story' of crime and detection......Page 73
Dreams, dead witnesses and daring women......Page 75
The return of the revenger......Page 80
5 Pseudo-Sciences and the Occult......Page 83
Mesmerism, murder and mystery......Page 86
Mesmeric villains......Page 89
The 'other' Doyle......Page 92
Towards psychic detection......Page 94
Professionals of the occult......Page 99
Fabricated apparitions......Page 104
Part II: Sensational......Page 108
Narrative metamorphoses......Page 110
Citizens of Cosmopolis......Page 113
An American and Paris......Page 115
The strange case of Wilkie Collins and M. Forgues......Page 120
M. Gaboriau and the 'unknown public'......Page 123
A metropolitan genesis......Page 124
Between romance and journalism......Page 127
The sensation recipe......Page 131
Women as sensation writers and readers......Page 133
Sensationalism, degeneration and modernity......Page 134
Sensational canons......Page 135
A prophecy......Page 139
From amateur to professional detective......Page 141
Parodies and adaptations......Page 144
8 London as a 'Heart of Darkness'......Page 150
Exotic colonies......Page 152
The explorer......Page 154
The ethnologist......Page 156
The missionary......Page 157
The city disease......Page 158
Before the apocalypse......Page 160
9 The Rhetoric of Atavism and Degeneration......Page 162
Lombroso's anarchists and saints......Page 165
Between genius and madness......Page 166
The shady apostle of degeneration......Page 167
Decadent detectives......Page 169
The Sherlock Holmes 'myth'......Page 173
Nightmares and orthodoxy......Page 176
Britain under threat......Page 178
Towards a conservative view of detection......Page 182
The role of anthologies......Page 184
Detection and modernism......Page 187
Reading in the age of Cultural Studies......Page 189
Notes......Page 192
Bibliography......Page 214
B......Page 230
C......Page 231
D......Page 232
F......Page 233
H......Page 234
M......Page 235
P......Page 236
R......Page 237
T......Page 238
Z......Page 239