Italian Crime Fiction - ed. Guliana Pieri

This collection of essays on Italian crime fiction is a welcome breath of fresh air after so much Anglo-American detective fiction. When the publishing house Mondadori began introducing English and American detective novels through its famous Giallo series, many Italian intellectuals looked down on the genre as little more than popular entertainment. Italian writers soon began producing their own crime novels, although most of the early works were largely imitations of their foreign counterparts.

Everything changed with Giorgio Scerbanenco and his four Milan novels featuring Dr. Duca Lamberti. Unfortunately, many Italian crime novels have yet to be translated into English. Scerbanenco transformed Milan into the quintessential noir city of Italian crime fiction while confronting the country's shameful Fascist past and its lingering social consequences.

For many years, crime fiction continued to be regarded with suspicion by Italy's literary establishment until several major mainstream writers embraced the genre. These included Umberto Eco with The Name of the Rose, Leonardo Sciascia with The Day of the Owl, Carlo Emilio Gadda with That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, and Antonio Tabucchi with The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro.

The 1980s saw the emergence of the so-called Bologna School, represented by writers such as Loriano Macchiavelli and Carlo Lucarelli, whose novels explored corruption and political tensions in Bologna. A separate chapter is devoted to Andrea Camilleri, whose Inspector Montalbano series and evocative Sicilian setting made him one of Italy's most successful crime writers.

Overall, this is an informative and engaging volume that traces the development of Italian crime fiction from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in exploring one of the richest and most distinctive traditions in European crime fiction.

Maurizio Ascari - A Counter-History Of Crime Fiction

As a child, I was a great fan of the comics Dylan Dog, Marty Mystère, and Nick Raider. While Dylan Dog investigated nightmares and often blended horror with crime stories, Marty Mystère dealt with the fantastic in its broadest sense, and Nick Raider represented the classic police detective. Later, I discovered horror literature, and writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft became some of my favorites.

For that reason, I was immediately drawn to Maurizio Ascari's A Counter-History of Crime Fiction, published in the respected Crime Files series. Ascari argues that crime fiction did not emerge suddenly or in isolation, but developed out of a variety of earlier traditions, including medieval concepts of crime and punishment, Gothic literature, sensationalism, melodrama, Victorian spiritualism, mesmerism, and other cultural and literary influences that predated the modern detective story.

I found the sections on Cesare Lombroso's theories of the "born criminal" and the influence of Max Nordau's Degeneration particularly fascinating, as they demonstrate how nineteenth-century scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas shaped literary representations of criminals and criminal investigation.

While reading Ascari, I was frequently reminded of the film Angel Heart, which brilliantly combines horror and the hard-boiled tradition, as well as the comic Dylan Dog, whose stories often demonstrate that the boundary between horror and crime fiction is far less rigid than it might initially appear.

A Counter-History of Crime Fiction is not a conventional history of the detective novel. Instead, it serves as a reminder that crime fiction emerged from a complex mixture of literary and cultural traditions, and that this is precisely what makes the genre far richer and more diverse than is often assumed.

The Routledge Companion To Crime Fiction

This extensive study of around 400 pages in large format is intended for scholars of crime fiction, and it is often quite dry and demanding to read. It takes a transnational approach and looks more toward the future than the past, which is not necessarily my personal preference, but it is still interesting reading. This is especially true when it cites passages from other studies such as John Scaggs’ Crime Fiction, Heather Worthington’s Key Concepts in Crime Fiction, Maurizio Ascari’s A Counter-History of Crime Fiction, and Dennis Porter’s The Pursuit of Crime.

The chapter on crime fiction and graphic novels was somewhat disappointing, as I expected it to present comics such as Alack Sinner and Sam Pezzo. The chapters that suited me best were Genre, Crime Histories and Prehistories, Crime Fiction in the Marketplace, and perhaps also Plotting and Clues, maybe because they deal precisely with what a crime fiction study should focus on: criminal fiction itself.

Noir Thriller - Lee Horsley

As in her Companion to Crime Fiction, Lee Horsley’s Noir Thriller Crime Files division of Palgrave MacMillan is a deep dive into the world of noir, exploring its literature and film through a mix of historical, cultural, and stylistic perspectives. Horsley treats noir not just as a genre, but as a viewpoint—dark, morally complex, and rooted in the harsh realities of urban life.

The book is structured chronologically: it starts with early noir during the Great Depression Hammett, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy), moves through the Golden Age (1945–1970), covers the post-1970 era—including cyberpunk noir like Gibson’s Neuromancer—and ends with a short chapter on contemporary noir in the 2000s. My favorite part is the 1945–1970 section, where she highlights some of the most influential works that shaped the genre (Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, David Goodis).

What works:

• Horsley gives a fresh perspective on the fatal woman in noir films, showing how cinematic portrayals often demonized women, while literary noir offered more nuanced and complex characters.

• The discussion of cyberpunk noir and questions of what it means to be human adds a modern, philosophical layer that’s really engaging.

Critiques:

• Sometimes her focus on extra-literary factors—like politics or social context—can distract from the stories themselves.

• The book covers so many works that a casual reader might feel overwhelmed, losing some of their personal connection to the novels.

• She mostly focuses on American and British noir, leaving out contributions from Europe, Japan, and other regions.

• One notable oversight: she labels Frankenstein as a science fiction novel, when it is more accurately a horror classic—a small but telling example of where her categorization feels off.

Overall, Noir Thriller is an excellent resource for serious noir fans. Its academic tone might not appeal to everyone, but for readers like me who love the genre, it offers insights, context, and new ways to think about classic and modern noir alike.

The Crime Novel : A Deviant Genre - Tony Hilfer

In this book Tony Hilfer explains the crime novel as a genre of its own, contrary to classic detective novel in England and hard-boiled variation in America, where there is a detective who investigate a crime and upon completion restore social order, whereas in crime novel that kind don't exists, we follow the path of the criminal, morality is often relative, and justice fails. In subsequent chapters author gives us an example of either a killer, a victim, a gulty bystander and someone falsely accused. Works by authors such as Patrick Hamilton, Shelly Smith, Cornell Woolrich, Marie Belloc Lowndes, John Franklin Bardin and James M. Cain are analyzed in each chapter. Final chapter is dedicated to Georges Simenon, Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar and Jim Thompson. Written in user friendly language, this book is fun to read and lovers of crime fiction will surely enjoy it.

A Companion To Crime Fiction - Charles J. Rzepka

This is very informative and insightful book on crime fiction, from the 19th century to 21st century. Great explanation how crime fiction evolved from real life crime cases, good section on golden age of detective story, nice chapter on hard-boiled writers, and on roman noir. There is also very good section on metaphysical detective story that I personally found very intruiging, and chapter about true crime. But section on film and comic books is rather limited, and there are some of my favorite authors who are not listed at all, but I guess that is the case for  these kind of books, a little for everything and nothing for something. But although it's written in somewhat dry, scholarly tone, I found it very interesting and can recommend it for those little bit more interested in crime fiction aside for reading crime novels. 

Woody Haut - Neon Noir : Contemporary American Crime Fiction

This is detailed and very informative piece of theory and criticism on crime fiction from political angle, mostly about modern noir writers and how politics influenced them and their work, and how their work reflected that on society.

History of crime fiction

Crime fiction is itself pure literature, It follows certain patterns and rules. First detective novel was written by Wilkie Collins, notorious opium eater, and it was called Moonstone. But no matter what some people say it is not pure detective novel, it is best compared to Brothers Karamazov. Crime itself took place throughout history but became recently regulated in England as an offence. First major inovator in crime genre was famous horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, whose short stories were influenced by Eugene Francois Vidocq. Soon afterwards came Arthur Conan Doyle with his interesting stories about Sherlock Holmes, unusual man who likes to sniff coke and play musing instrument until murder happens.

Maurice Leblanc took oportunity and created inverted Sherlock Holmes, called Herlock Sholmes, to avoid trouble with Artur Conan Doyle. Gaston Leroux, also frenchman, wrote outstanding novel called Phantom of the Opera which was filmed numerous times. With the rise of British crime fiction frenchmens began writing their own crime stories. Notable one was called Fantomas, master criminal written by Marcel Allain.

Detective fiction flourished in 30'and 40' and beyond with the creation of detective club, some kind of organization for crime writers. One of them got title Queen of Crime. It was Agatha  Christie who wrote dozens of novels. Literary critic Edmund Wilson panned the genre in his essay 'Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd'. 

This period was called Golden Age of detective fiction and composed of many talented writers such as Josephine Tey, Edmund Crispin, Nicholas Blake and many others. Their stories were called cozy mysteries. One of them, G.K. Chesterton wrote an essay 'In defence of the detective story' where he argued that crime story is one of the oldest narratives and compared it to fairy tale.

Somewhere the same time in America rose new kind of crime fiction, called hard-boiled. Writers from that era published stories in pulp magazines such as Black Mask, and one stood out. It was Dashiell Hammett with his violent attitude. Soon followed Raymond Chandler, Cornel Wollrich, David Goodis, James M. Cain, James Ross, Jim Thompson, Ed McBain and perhaps most brilliant of all Ross McDonald. These novels were pretty rough and some of them got the label roman noir.

Italian author Umberto Eco said that crime fiction is most metaphysical of all genres.