Choice 评论
This collection examines first novels in several mystery series to see how much of the detective and his/her milieu were there at the beginning. The 14 essays, most by members of the Mystery and Detective Fiction Caucus of the Popular Culture Association, cover a variety of crime and mystery writers, from Dorothy Sayers to James McClure. But the need to make the argument about how the first novel in a series connects to the ones that follow often leads to an analysis that is mostly summary, with only a few hurried bows toward contemporary literary theory or cultural studies. DeMarr (Indiana State Univ.) asserts that though "the collection ... makes no claim to represent all subgenres, [it] comments on a variety of twentieth century series types"; but her selection is skewed toward the early British tradition. Some of the series examined are still in progress (P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh, Colin Dexter's Morse); most stopped 20 or more years ago. And there are no examples of current series, like those by James Lee Burke or even Robert Parker, that will surely affect the direction of crime and mystery series. Each essay includes a brief selected bibliography. General; upper-division undergraduate; graduate; researchers.