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The history of murder mysteries and crime novels and the development of modern police forces. American hard-boiled detective fiction from writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, characterized by loner first-person narrators, edgy and urban slang, and crime-filled neighborhoods. How Chandler's use of similes mirrors the puzzle of the plots. The background of the Depression and the mingling of social classes during the genre's golden age. The British polite tradition in the work of writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, its genteel amateur detectives and peaceful upper-class English settings. Women mystery writers and the growing use of women private investigators in the late twentieth century. The novels of Marcia Muller, Barbara Neely, and J. M. Redman and their critique of the loner ethic developed by male writers.
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