April 2, 2018
This anthology of 100 critical profiles of fictional detectives rounds up the usual suspects and introduces some less familiar figures who will surely provoke discussion among crime connoisseurs. Warning that it would be impossible to include every reader’s favorite gumshoe, editor Sandberg includes essays on an eclectic selection of crime-solvers from the past two centuries. Along with Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, there is coverage of Brother William of Baskerville, the 14th-century monk sleuth in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. In addition to Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, both iconic hardboiled detectives, there are Philip K. Dick’s Bob Arctor (from A Scanner Darkly) and China Miéville’s Inspector Tyador Borlú (from The City and the City), both crossovers from speculative fiction. Among essays on Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, and Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, there is also one on Daniel Quinn, the failed detective of Paul Auster’s metafictional New York Trilogy. The book’s contributors, mostly academics, cite chapter and verse from novels and stories to provide cogent and involving studies, driving home Sandberg’s central point that crime fiction favors character as much as plot.
April 1, 2018
Editor Sandberg (English literature, Univ. of Oulu, Finland; Virginia Woolf: Experiments in Character) begins his erudite introduction by writing, "If you love crime fiction, you will hate this book," because you are bound to believe it should contain a few detectives it doesn't (and, presumably, exclude others). Nevertheless, he and his collaborators--most of them academics, with a few independent authors and unaffiliated scholars--have assembled an impressive selection of detectives, arranged alphabetically by surname. There are plenty of police officers, private investigators, and dilettantes but also lawyers, professors, and a supernatural sleuth. Each entry mixes in at least a little biographical information about the author, but the emphasis of this accessible, scholarly work is on the detectives: their methods, place in culture and mystery fiction, and how they illuminate aspects of society or time period. The book is heavily annotated, with an index and notes on the contributors. VERDICT This title should please most lovers of crime fiction. After all, one of the reasons for a "best of" book is to give readers the opportunity to argue about the chosen subjects; the other reason is to find new areas to explore. This volume does both.--Robert Mixner, Bartholomew Cty. P.L., Columbus, IN
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