ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between criminology and crime fiction. Both originated towards the end of the eighteenth century as part of a broader cultural response to modernity, and their areas of interest generally overlap. Cultural criminology, which blends ideas and approaches from cultural studies and criminology to explore the social construction of crime, is an important context here. However, this chapter argues that cultural criminology has generally neglected crime fiction as source of information. This omission is unfortunate, as crime fiction both frequently includes aspects of criminological thought and can offer test cases for thinking through criminological theories.
