History of crime fiction

The focus of the story shifts to the caliph's demand to find a slave blamed for having an affair with the woman, instigating her husband's crime of passion, but again no investigation is conducted.

The history of Hindi crime stories remains very rich and evolving as a part of Indian literature, through general socio-political changes and increased interest in psychological and social complexities.

Thereafter, another author of some significance in popularizing Hindi detective fiction was Chandan Bachchi whose novels such as Talash-o-Khoj and Sayar Aur Chhupa Rustam are good examples of the genre.

The mid-20th century saw Surender Mohan Pathak into the scene, who gained legendary popularity and is credited to have remodeled modern Hindi crime fiction with his pieces, structurally and stylistically attaining shocking—page-turning—narratives and elaborate characterizations.

[4] In the words of William L. De Andrea (Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 1994), he was the first to create a character whose interest for the reader lay primarily (even solely) on his ability to find hidden truths.

(For example, one such Agatha Christie mystery (And Then There Were None) takes place on a small island during a storm; another is on a train stalled in the mountains and surrounded by new-fallen, unmarked snow.)

Holmes's art of detection consists in logical deduction based on minute details that escape everyone else's notice, and the careful and systematic elimination of all clues that in the course of his investigation turn out to lead nowhere.

Most of novels of that era were whodunnits, and several authors excelled, after successfully leading their readers on the wrong track, in convincingly revealing to them the least likely suspect as the real villain of the story.

Writers Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), Jonathan Latimer (1906–1983), Mickey Spillane (1918–2006), and many others decided on an altogether different, innovative approach to crime fiction.

As Raymond Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe—immortalized by actor Humphrey Bogart in the movie adaptation (1946) of the novel The Big Sleep (1939)—admits to his client, General Sternwood, he finds it rather tiresome, as an individualist, to fit into the extensive set of rules and regulations for police detectives: "Tell me about yourself, Mr. Marlowe.

Ian Ousby writes, Hardboiled fiction would have happened anyway, even if Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers [...] had not written the way they did or Knox had not formulated his rules.

At the same time, the pulp magazines were already exploiting a ready market for adventure stories—what Ronald Knox would have called "shockers"—which made heroes of cowboys, soldiers, explorers, and masked avengers.

It took no great leap of imagination for them to tackle modern crime and detection, fresh from the newspaper headlines of the day, and create heroes with the same vigour [...].Another author who enjoyed writing about the sleazy side of life in the US is Jonathan Latimer.

Large, mainstream book companies published crime fiction during World War II, presaging a similar entry into the science-fiction market in the 1950s.

The frequent exposure to death and hardship often leads to a cynical and callous attitude, as well as a character trait known today as post-traumatic stress characterizes many hardboiled protagonists.

Starting with writers like Francis Iles, who has been described as "the father of the psychological suspense novel as we know it today," more and more authors laid the emphasis on character rather than plot.

The suspense is created by the author having the reader share the perpetrator's thoughts—up to a point, that is—and having them guess what is going to happen next (for example, another murder, or a potential victim making a fatal mistake), and if the criminal will be brought to justice in the end.

A Shock to the System is about a hitherto law-abiding business manager's revenge which is triggered by his being passed over for promotion, and the intricate plan he thinks up to get back at his rivals.

One of the first masters of the spy novel was Eric Ambler, whose unsuspecting and innocent protagonists are often caught in a network of espionage, betrayal and violence and whose only wish is to get home safely as soon as possible.

Quite a number of U.S. lawyers have given up their jobs and started writing novels full-time, among them Scott Turow, who began his career with the publication of Presumed Innocent (1987) (the phrase in the title having been taken from the age-old legal principle that any defendant must be considered as not guilty until s/he is finally convicted).

As opposed to hard-boiled crime writing, which is set in the mean streets of a big city, Last Seen Wearing ... carefully and minutely chronicles the work of the police, including all the boring but necessary legwork, in a small American college town where, in the dead of winter, an attractive student disappears.

In contrast to armchair detectives such as Dr. Gideon Fell or Hercule Poirot, Chief of Police Frank W. Ford and his men never hold back information from the reader.

By way of elimination, they exclude all the suspects who could not possibly have committed the crime and eventually arrive at the correct conclusion, a solution which comes as a surprise to most of them but which, due to their painstaking research, is infallible.

Another example is American writer Faye Kellerman (born 1952), who wrote a series of novels featuring Peter Decker and his daughter by his first marriage, Cindy, who both work for the Los Angeles Police Department.