Includes bibliographical references (p. [151]-165) and index.

A Chronology Of Crime -- Early Crime Narratives -- Crime Stories As Cautionary Tales -- Crime Fiction And Policing -- The Golden Age To The Present -- Mystery And Detective Fiction -- Retracing The Steps: The Origins Of Mystery Fiction -- Reasoning Machines: The Figure Of The Amateur Detective -- Escalating Crimes: From Purloined Letters To Murder -- Maintaining Social Order And The Status Quo -- Settings And Sub-Genres -- The Hard-Boiled Mode -- Murder For A Reason: Origins And Development -- A Shop-Soiled Galahad: The Private Eye Hero -- Last Chances And New Beginnings: The Myth Of The Frontier -- Mean Streets And Rats' Alleys: Modernity And The City -- Fallen Angels: Appropriation Of The Hard-Boiled Mode -- The Police Procedural -- Thin Blue Lines: Fiction As Ideological State Apparatus -- Private Eye To Public Eye: The Development Of The Procedural -- Textual Investigations: Characteristics Of The Procedural -- Social Placebo: The Magic Bullet Of Procedural Reassurance -- Arrested Developments: Appropriations Of The Procedural -- The Crime Thriller -- Outlining The Crime Thriller -- The Noir Thriller -- The Anti-Conspiracy Thriller -- Historical Crime Fiction -- Writing History And Interpreting The Past -- Crime, History, And Realism -- The Case Of The Name Of The Rose -- Postmodernism And The Anti-Detective Novel.