Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book ultimately rejects the conventional presumptions that separate crime fiction from the mainstream of serious literary achievement and offers new perspectives designed to move American literary scholarship into a confrontation with vital genre issues. Nathaniel Hawthorne is fully aware of the communal nature of both crime and crime fiction. The power of most effective crime fiction in the United States depends as much on the creation of carefully rendered communities in specific locales as it does on the vivid characterization of detectives and criminals. The essay on Elmore Leonard, the late-twentieth-century master of crime fiction, emphasizes his relationship to literary traditions, particularly classical concepts of warfare and morality. Other essays offer new insights into the cultural contexts that shaped literary creation in the United States and resulted in crime fiction becoming intertwined with mainstream forms.