LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Detective Fiction
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The essays and bibliographies, drawn from Salem Press's Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction (1988) have been substantially updated for this 2-volume set. The authors were selected because of their enduring effect on this field. All of the writers are known primarily for their work in the genre and most of them have made significant contributions to mystery and detective fiction.
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Minnesota-based playwright Patrick Coyle writes, directs, and stars in the feature film Detective Fiction, adapted from the stage play of the same name. Jack Hannan (Coyle) is a technical writer and a recovering alcoholic. Court-ordered to stay sober, Jack begins to work on a 1940s-style detective novel. He meets Leslie (Sarah Agnew) in his AA group and fantasizes about her, only to find out she is nothing like his imagined femme fatale character. Meanwhile, Jack's estranged wife, Jennifer (Mo Collins), has left her job as a psychologist to go back to school. Ignored by her husband, she meets a younger man Elliott (Brent Doyle) and begins an affair.
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Detective fiction began with Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in Rue Morgue" in 1841. African-American authors entered the field early, according to Crawford, with Pauline Hopkins' novel Hagar's Daughter, serialized in 1900.
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In most detective fiction, the major crime is against a person because a) it more personally engages the fears and sensibilities of the reader, and b) it naturally produces a general cry for an investigation. Murder is a most useful crime in detective fiction because it destroys the victim, forcing society, and, by extension, the reader, to seek the offender and to reconstruct the crime. The act of murder ... creates a villain who is desperately searching for a way out of the web of disaster he has produced. The stakes are obviously quite high. Furthermore, in good detective fiction, the deadly game is played out by two adversaries who are equally clever, relentless, and seemingly untouchable. In thematic terms, the two players become the symbols of good and evil, morality and immorality, law and lawlessness, in modern society.
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Modestly engaging "Detective Fiction" illustrates a cuckolded husband's efforts to channel his anger through a creative outlet. In turning his 1994 play into his first feature film, Minneapolis-based actor-writer-director Patrick Coyle never really gets past the literal-minded and earthbound conception of his piece. But solid thesping and sympathy developed for a couple anxious to work out of a marriage-threatening crisis give grown-up audiences something to grab onto. Title... apt, suggests pulpy thrills that aren't attempted, much less delivered, and while supportive reviews might float a small theatrical launch, wider viewership looks to lie down the line on cable and homevid.
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By Marc Matz " Noir detective fiction and cyberpunk make beautiful music together in Marc Matz's first novel, Nocturne for a Dangerous Man. Gavilan Robie, the hero, is first cousin to legendary PIs Travis McGee and Dave Robicheaux. Mostly he recovers missing art. But sometimes he "tries to recover people who are lost and need, badly, to be found." For him, these jobs are "the equivalent of having a stiff drink to take the edge off an endless hangover"; he's addicted to staking his life on his ability to beat the odds. Robie's world has survived multiple man-made natural disasters: climate change, rising seas, unstoppable plagues, and famine. Now Siv Matthiessen, brilliant executive for a multinational corporation, has been seized by ecoterrorists.
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Detective Fiction