A Companion to Crime Fiction presents the definitive guide to this popular genre from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present day

• A collection of forty-seven newly commissioned essays from a team of leading scholars across the globe make this Companion the definitive guide to crime fiction
• Follows the development of the genre from its origins in the eighteenth century through to its phenomenal present day popularity
• Features  full-length critical essays on the most significant authors and film-makers, from Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett to Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese exploring the ways in which they have shaped and influenced the field
• Includes extensive references to the most up-to-date scholarship, and a comprehensive bibliography

Charles J. Rzepka is Professor of English at Boston University, where he teaches and writes on British Romanticism, popular culture, and detective and crime fiction. His publications include The Self as Mind (1986), Sacramental Commodities (1995), Detective Fiction (2005), Essays, Inventions, Interventions (2010), and most recently, Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard (2013; pbk 2017).

Lee Horsley is a retired Reader in Literature and Culture at Lancaster University, where she taught two specialist crime courses. Her publications include Political Fiction and the Historical Imagination (1990), Fictions of Power in English Literature 1900-1950 (1995), Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (2005), and an expanded paperback edition of the 2001 publication The Noir Thriller (2009).