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This excellent book is a must-read for all serious fans of crime fiction.
Charting the history of the genre, it’s both highly educational and hugely entertaining.
With a foreword by Ian Rankin, each chapter goes on to chronicle a different sub-genre from classic mysteries, through noir and pulp, and visiting with cops, PIs, amateurs and serial killers along the way. It delves into psychological thrillers and criminal protagonists, and takes a peek at organized crime, espionage, and the worlds of historical and translated books.
Highly recommended.
Steph Broadribb 
I spent a chilly Sunday yesterday by the fire – short of new reading material I picked out some of my (many) books, among them The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (2007 edn). I’ve been reading crime and detective fiction since I found the key to the book-case, and later let loose in the local library. At 17 I started work and found Foyles: my own collection includes Allingham, Brand, Carr, Christie, Crispin, Hamilton, Highsmith, Rendell/Vine, Sayers, Tey, Westlake. But two names are unaccountably missing from the ‘Rough Guide: Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart) and Gladys Mitchell. Given that I cannot afford the £££s needed to complete my collection of the latter, she at least is clearly popular – how could these two have been left out? Of all my detection books, Innes, Mitchell, Allingham, Crispin and Highsmith are the ones I most often re-read – Innes and Crispin in particular for elegant writing and ingenious plots (and quotable lines: ‘I know you, you’re the New College buttery-boy …’
Maybe later editions of the Rough Guide have these authors included?
Marian Anderson
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