Making the Detective Story American

J.K. Van Dover taught in the English Department of Lincoln University for 38 years; he has also taught as a Fulbright Professor of American Literature in Germany, China, Austria, and Slovakia. He has published extensively on detective fiction.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments      Preface      1. Introduction: The Detective and the 1920s      2. He Used to Be a Highbrow: Intellect, Taste, and the Detection of Crime in the 1920s      3. No Chinaman: Ethnicity and the Detective in the 1920s      4. Ripped from the Headlines: Translating Sensational Crime Fact into Popular Crime Fiction in the 1920s      5. Enterprising, Flippant, Hard: Young American Women in Detective Fiction of the 1920s      Appendix A: Three Brief BiographiesOh Yes, There Was a Man Named Earl Derr Biggers      Willard Wright (S.S. Van Dine)      Dashiell Hammett      Appendix B: Mystery and Detection Bestsellers, 1925–1935      Appendix C: Films Based on the Works of Earl Derr Biggers, S.S. Van Dine, and Dashiell Hammett      Chapter Notes      Bibliography      Index

“For style, scholarship, and analysis, Van Dover has long been one of the best academic writers on detective fiction...significant”—Mystery Scene.