American - Journalist | -
While every historical era has its unique appeal as a setting for tales of crime and detection, the 19th century is exceptional - it brought about so much change on social, political, geographical, and technological fronts that the mix proves to be an irresistible one to mystery writers.
Sarah Weinman
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How can quality crime fiction not be produced with available subject matters as the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the creation of organized police forces, the dawn of forensic science, and the rise and fall of Romanticism?
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Although we might think of Holmes as the Ur-sleuth, the seminal inspiration for many writers comes not from the chronicles of Baker Street but from the intricately plotted novels of Charles Dickens and his colleague Wilkie Collins, who in works like 'Bleak House' and 'The Moonstone' established the modern, character-driven mystery novel.
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America in the 1800s isn't quite the historical mystery hotbed as the same period in the country it bested in the War of Independence, but its unique spectacle of rapid social change and the lingering influence of its literary voices act in a parallel manner upon crime fiction chroniclers devoted to this side of the Atlantic.
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The 500 years following the fall of the Western Roman Empire were dubbed by the poet Petrarch 'dark.' Although the 14th-century Italian was referring to a literary decline, the term caught on to denote the seemingly backward turn the Western world took with regard to religious and technological developments.
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If you think the shifting tectonics of world history might make for a juicy crime fiction backdrop, the last decade or so has proved you right.
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Britain proves to be an ideal setting for many a medieval-minded crime novelist, regardless of century.
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Imagine a world, if you will, where crime does not exist. A startling proposition that seems outlandish, but our imaginations, of course, need not be bounded by the rules and restrictions imposed by realism. It would be a world, one might suppose, where equality reigned, where the thought of violence was so alien that it need not be practiced.
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Rereading 'Child 44' brought out the novel's meatier pleasures, its ability to create vivid characters in a world both alien to our own and chillingly recognizable.
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'Child 44' has no room for inconsequential choices because Stalinist Russia had no room for them, either.
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Joseph Wambaugh did not invent the police novel, but no one had seen anything like 'The New Centurions' when it was published in 1971. Here was a working, living, breathing cop with a decade of experience on the beat.
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Wambaugh's naturalistic portrait of the cop world turned 'Centurions' and 'The Blue Knight' (1972) into bestsellers, but his next two books made him relevant to a larger audience and to the next generation of crime writers.
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