Varieties of Crime Fiction

Leading critic S.T. Joshi reviews 13 mystery and crime writers:

I. The Golden Age

Dorothy L. Sayers: Lords and Servants

John Dickson Carr: Puzzlemeister

Margery Allingham: Murder, Gangs, and Spies

Philip MacDonald: Expanding the “Cosy” Mystery

II. The Hard-Boiled School

Dashiell Hammett: Sam Spade and Others

Raymond Chandler: Mean Streets

Ross Macdonald: Family Affairs

III. The Psychological Mystery

Margaret Millar: Scars of the Psyche

Patricia Highsmith: Guilt and Innocence

L. P. Davies: The Workings of the Mind

IV. Some Contemporaries

P. D. James: The Empress’s New Clothes

Ruth Rendell: The Psychology of Murder

Sue Grafton: Hard-Boiled Female