Fiction, Crime, and Empire

Fiction, Crime, and Empire PDF

Author: Jon Thompson

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780252062803

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Reading fiction from high and low culture together, Fiction, Crime, and Empire skillfully sheds light on how crime fiction responded to the British and American experiences of empire, and how forms such as the detective novel, spy thrillers, and conspiracy fiction articulate powerful cultural responses to imperialism. Poe's Dupin stories, for example, are seen as embodying a highly critical vision of the social forces that were then transforming the United States into a modern, democratic industrialized nation; a century later, Le Carré employs the conventions of espionage fiction to critique the exhausted and morally compromised values of British imperialism. By exploring these works through the organizing figure of crime during and after the age of high imperialism, Thompson challenges and modifies commonplace definitions of modernism, postmodernism, and popular or mass culture.

Crime and Empire

Crime and Empire PDF

Author: Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9780199261055

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In Crime and Empire, Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee examines a wide range of nineteenth-century British fictions about crime in India--from writers such as Wilkie Collins, Walter Scott, and Conan Doyle to historical, parliamentary, and medical narratives.

Empire of Sin

Empire of Sin PDF

Author: Gary Krist

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2014-10-28

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0770437079

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From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans’ other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City Empire of Sin re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans’ thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city’s elite “better half” against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.

The Detective as Historian

The Detective as Historian PDF

Author: Ray B. Browne

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2013-02

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0879728817

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Readers of detective stories are turning more toward historical crime fiction to learn both what everyday life was like in past societies and how society coped with those who broke the laws and restrictions of the times. The crime fiction treated here ranges from ancient Egypt through classical Greece and Rome; from medieval and renaissance China and Europe through nineteenth-century England and America. Topics include: Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael; Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose; Susanna Gregory’s Doctor Matthew Bartholomew; Peter Heck’s Mark Twain as detective; Anne Perry and her Victorian-era world; Caleb Carr’s works; and Elizabeth Peter’s Egyptologist-adventurer tales.

The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction PDF

Author: Mike Ashley

Publisher: Running Press

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780762442676

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Ever since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle delighted readers with the fictional genius detective, Sherlock Holmes, crime fiction has been plumbed by mystery writers everywhere. This volume of 12 stories spans crime from the Bronze Age to World War II, and will appeal to the current readers of The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures and Best British Mysteries.

The Devil in the Marshalsea

The Devil in the Marshalsea PDF

Author: Antonia Hodgson

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0544176677

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The first thrilling historical crime novel starring Thomas Hawkins, a rakish scoundel with a heart of gold, set in the darkest debtors' prison in Georgian London, where people fall dead as quickly as they fall in love and no one is as they seem.

Empire of Lies

Empire of Lies PDF

Author: Andrew Klavan

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2009-07-06

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0156034824

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A pious family man is pulled back into his sordid past—and into a race to stop a terrorist plot—in this thriller by an Edgar Award–winning author. Sustained by a deep religious faith, Jason Harrow has built a stable family and become a pillar of principle and patriotism. Then the phone rings, and his past is on the other end of the line. A woman with whom he once shared a life of violence and desire claims her daughter is missing—and Jason is the one man who can find her. Returning to New York City from the Midwest, Jason finds himself entangled in a murderous conspiracy that bizarrely links his private passions to the turmoil of a world at war. Hunted by terrorists and the police, Jason has only hours to unravel an ex-lover’s lies and face the unbearable truth: In order to prevent a savage attack on his country, he’s going to have to risk his decency, his sanity—and his life. “The most original novelist of crime and suspense since Cornell Woolrich.” —Stephen King “Klavan’s writing is masterful, and his characters superbly drawn.” —Forbes “A wickedly satiric thriller with political overtones . . . [that] builds to an explosive climax.” —Publishers Weekly

Empire of Deception

Empire of Deception PDF

Author: Dean Jobb

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1616204966

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“A rollicking tale that is one part The Sting, one part The Great Gatsby, and one part The Devil in the White City.” —Karen Abbott, author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy In a time of unregulated madness, nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. It was the perfect place for a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz to entice hundreds of people to invest as much as $30 million--upwards of $400 million today--in phantom timberland and nonexistent oil wells in Panama. It was an ingenious deceit, one that out-Ponzied Charles Ponzi himself. In this rip-roaring tale of greed, financial corruption, dirty politics, over-the-top and under-the-radar deceit, illicit sex, and a brilliant and wildly charming con man on the town and then on the lam, Empire of Deception proves that the American dream of easy wealth is truly a timeless commodity. “Captivating . . . Dean Jobb tells the story of Leo Koretz, a legendary con artist of Madoffian audacity, with terrific energy and narrative brio.” —Gary Krist, author of Empire of Sin “A brilliantly researched tale of greed, ambition, and our desperate need to believe in magic, it’s history that captures America as it really was--and always will be. A great read.” —Douglas Perry, author of Eliot Ness “Reads like a Gatsby-Ponzi mashup . . . Kudos to Jobb for unearthing this overlooked story and bringing to life a charming, witty, naughty, iconic American crook.” —Neal Thompson, author of A Curious Man “The granddaddy of all con men, Leo Koretz gives Jobb the opportunity to exhibit his impressive research and storytelling skills . . . A highly readable, entertaining story.” —Kirkus Reviews

Detecting the Nation

Detecting the Nation PDF

Author: Caroline Reitz

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 0814209823

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In Detecting the Nation, Reitz argues that detective fiction was essential both to public acceptance of the newly organized police force in early Victorian Britain and to acclimating the population to the larger venture of the British Empire. In doing so, Reitz challenges literary-historical assumptions that detective fiction is a minor domestic genre that reinforces a distinction between metropolitan center and imperial periphery. Rather, Reitz argues, nineteenth-century detective fiction helped transform the concept of an island kingdom to that of a sprawling empire; detective fiction placed imperialism at the center of English identity by recasting what had been the suspiciously un-English figure of the turn-of-the-century detective as the very embodiment of both English principles and imperial authority. She supports this claim through reading such masters of the genre as Godwin, Dickens, Collins, and Doyle in relation to narratives of crime and empire such as James Mill's History of British India, narratives about Thuggee, and selected writings of Kipling and Buchan. Detective fiction and writings more specifically related to the imperial project, such as political tracts and adventure stories, were inextricably interrelated during this time.

Empire of Evil

Empire of Evil PDF

Author: Sterling Noel

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06-14

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781612874609

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Armchair Fiction presents large, deluxe editions of classic mystery-crime novels. Sterling Noel's "Empire of Evil" is one of the best mystery-crime thrillers dealing with the Mafia that you'll ever come across. It was the bloody path to murder. This is the story of Daniel Andradi, a bright young executive in America's most terrible industry-crime. This is the rise of a Mafioso, don of the Brotherhood of Evil, wielder of power beyond your wildest dreams. This is fiction, but within it there is truth more horrible than fancy could invent. The corner bookie, the neighborhood streetwalker, the friendly local dope-pusher?these are the day laborers in the union of corruption. From them, up through the paid-for politicians and local gang-bosses, the chain of command reaches toward? THE MAFIA. Read the roster of Apalachin, read the names in your headlines?then read this explosive, behind-the-scenes novel and you'll never again doubt that crime is the biggest organized business in the country?yesterday and today!