Talk:History of crime fiction

[Untitled]
This article was created wholly out of material from crime fiction when that article was refactored. A short introduction was created in crime fiction to point here. :ChrisG 01:05, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

LGBT crime stories
There is not enough informaction to warrant it. "Some detectives are women, some of them lesbians" is not significant enough IMHO, need more work and examples of fiction, it's importance, portrayal etc. Right now it seems out of place, just tacked on forcefully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.67.201.162 (talk) 09:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

First detective story
The Norwegian teacher and author Maurits Christopher Hansen (1794–1842) wrote a "criminal anecdote", Mordet paa Maskinbygger Roolfsen, as early as 1839. I haven't read it personally, but several Norwegian sources (like ) claim it's the first real crime fiction story. Methinks that should be mentioned in the article. –contrapuncti 13:00, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Paragraph "Crime fiction in history" needs work
IMHO the important introductory paragraph "Crime fiction in history" is misleading or simply wrong in several respects.

"It was only after 1900, that novels and stories depicting crime and its consequences came to be recognised as a distinct literary genre, and spawned specialist writers. The earlier novels and stories were typically devoid of systematic attempts at detection: There was no private detective, whether amateur or professional, trying to figure out how and by whom a particular crime was committed; there were no police trying to solve a case; neither was there any discussion of motives, alibis, or the modus operandi, or any of the other elements which make up the crime novels of subsequent ages."

(1) "No systematic attempts at detection" -- While I am no hardcore Holmesian, it seems to me that the work of Sherlock Holmes is strongly characterized by such attempts.

(2) "No private detectives in fiction before 1900" -- From Sherlock Holmes: "... made his first published appearance in 1887. ... Sherlock Holmes described himself as a "consulting detective", an expert who is brought into cases that have proven too difficult for other (typically official) investigators". -- Although the exact phrase "private detective" is not used here, Holmes perfectly fits the definition. http://www.bartleby.com/61/89/P0568900.html

(3) "No police trying to solve a case" -- The way in which the relationships between the police and Poe's C. Auguste Dupin (see entry on The Purloined Letter) and Sherlock Holmes ("Law enforcement officers with whom Holmes has worked include George Lestrade, Tobias Gregson, Stanley Hopkins, and Athelney Jones, all four of Scotland Yard, and Francois Le Villard of the French police. Holmes usually baffles the police with his far more efficient and effective methods, showing himself to be a vastly superior detective.") vary between cooperation and competition are an important underpinning of these earlier stories.

(4) "neither was there any discussion of motives, alibis, or the modus operandi " -- I believe that such discussion is frequently found in the Sherlock Holmes stories, while on the other hand Raymond Chandler's uber-hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe makes a point of emphasizing that many crimes have no discernable "MO" (in the sense of "long-term pattern of behavior"), but are random acts of passion or even simply inexplicable from a rational point of view.

Kickass article — but.....
This is a comprehensive and fairly thorough history of the development of Crime Fiction and its subgenres, and I have found it hugely helpful. Two things detract from the otherwise impeccable professionalism of the article:

-No conclusion: no summary, no wrapup, nothin. It just - stops. It's decidedly unsatisfying and makes it look as though the author got bored and quit.

-The personal language/bias: You mentioned Donna Leon in the last paragraph, about Police Investigation themes. You then disqualify her from this category and call her works boring as batshit and imply you cant possibly fathom why the Germans find her so popular. If you think she's terrible, pick a better example. Random isnt always best. I suggest you pick something that elucidates your points.

I'm hardly qualified to either offer a better alternative or add a conclusion, though, so if anyone who knows their subject matter notices this, it'd be a great help. This page is frequented by extension English students Australia-wide. There's about twenty thousand of us a year, so rest assured your work will be avidly plagiarized.

Hard boiled section - tolerable essay, bad encyclopedia entry
The hard boiled section is written with enthusiasm and interest, but it's a bit sophomoric and off-target in places. There's rambling bits and some real puzzlers (a half paragraph on The Jungle and the lack of safety measures in the meat-packing industry, with a toss-off reference to Bovine spongiform encephalopathy?) that bloat the entry.

The bulleted list that starts off the section read like a how-to list and the breezy use of absolutes like "always wears a gun", "invariably asks for a downpayment", "turns out to be a heavy drinker"--true nine times out of ten, maybe, but not incontrovertible truths about the genre--really take the legitimacy of the article down several notches.

The quotes are good and, as I said, there's a lot of energy behind the entry. But it reads more like an essay or term paper to me than an overview of the hard boiled genre.

70.174.133.17 15:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC) DUe to the lack of citations this reeks of POV and Original research. NEeds to be fixed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.64.153 (talk) 05:12, 14 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. This in not an encyclopedic section, but rather an impressionistic essay, with little that is referenced or verifiable.  &mdash; Gaff  ταλκ 20:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Whole paragrapgh about America vs Britain that isn't explored or related to anything else. Someone please fix. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.143.252.36 (talk) 01:54, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a real need for an additional section on Scandinavian Crime which has really come into it's own over the last decade and especially over the last couple of years with writers such as Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo, Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, etc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.98.53 (talk) 10:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Early crime fiction?
Crime fiction has been around at least since Sophocles' Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE), and is central to the history of literature. Examples include The Decameron (c. 1352), Hamlet (c. 1600), Moll Flanders (1722), Oliver Twist (1838), Crime and Punishment (1866), Thérèse Raquin (1867), The Trial (written 1914-15), and The Stranger (1942). Although not a professional detective, since he is a king, Oedipus is trying to find a killer and starts an investigation. "Crime fiction" is usually defined too narrowly, probably because critics still find a need to separate "highbrow" from "lowbrow" literature. Many writers, however, lack this need. Nobel Prize-winner Camus was influenced by James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice) when he wrote The Stranger; Umberto Eco has obvioulsy incorporated Sherlock Holmes into The Name of the Rose. If only fiction where the main character is a detective (police or private investigator) is "crime fiction", then a part of modern "crime fiction" isn't really "crime fiction" at all (Patricia Highsmith, Jim Thompson). And there are police investigators in Crime and Punishment and The Stranger. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky wrote for the commercial market, and probably had no desire to distance themselves from their audience through defining their work as something different from popular genres. There is no other way to define "crime fiction" than as "fiction in which crime features more or less prominently". And there is no reason to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.206.27.131 (talk) 10:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You will need some reliable secondary sources to back up that claim if you want that information in the article. Also, technically speaking, Ciceros murder trial speeches are a lot closer to living up to the modern definition of "crime fiction" than any of the examples you listed (although I wouldn't in any way claim that they should be categorised as such). Most of the titles you list seems merely to be "literature in which crime features more or less prominently", and that is of course not enough to qualify them as "crime fiction". --Saddhiyama (talk) 12:08, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Suzanna and the Elders in the Apocrypha is more convincing as an early mystery story than the Arab or Chinese ones mentioned, I believe. Jim Lacey (talk) 20:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

a name needs verification in source docs
In this article, I would like to know whether the name "Sturr" is correct. It may be "Surr". The text reads: "Early examples of crime stories include Thomas Skinner Sturr's anonymous Richmond, or stories in the life of a Bow Street officer (1827)..."

Googling Thomas Skinner Sturr brings up many results but they seem to be copy-paste from this Wikipedia article.

Googling Thomas Skinner Surr brings up results that include wikisource, UPenn, and others that seem more authoritative.

If someone who knows how to verify this type of info could do so and make the correction (if necessary), that would be great. If the correct name is Surr, then it might also be worthwhile to mention that the name Sturr is incorrect (since it has been copied from wiki all over the web). I am not confident that I would do this correctly (this is my first comment on wiki) and I do not know what sources to check.

Thank you! RMW 2600:8801:1300:634:60DC:AB30:7041:126B (talk) 15:02, 7 July 2022 (UTC)