The American Police Novel: A History

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McFarland, Sep 17, 2015 - Literary Criticism - 303 pages

The American police novel emerged soon after World War II and by the end of the century it was one of the most important forms of American crime fiction. The vogue for either Holmesian genius or the plucky amateur detective dominated mystery fiction until mid-century; the police hero offered a way to make the traditional mystery story contemporary. The police novel reflects sociology and history, and addresses issues tied to the police force, such as corruption, management, and brutality. Since the police novel reflects current events, the changing natures of crime, court procedures, and legislation have an impact on its plots and messages. An examination of the police novel covers both the evolution of a genre of fiction and American culture in general.

This work traces the emergence of the police officer as hero and the police novel as a significant popular genre, from the cameo appearances of police in detective novels of the 1930s and 1940s through the serial killer and forensic novels of the 1990s. It follows the ways in which professional writers and police officers turned writers view the police individually and collectively. The work chronicles the ways in which changes in the law and society have affected the actions of the police and shows how the protagonists of police novels have changed in gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, and age over the years. The major writers examined begin with Julian Hawthorne in the nineteenth century, and include such writers as S.S. van Dine, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed McBain, Chester Himes, MacKinley Kantor, Hillary Waugh, Dorothy Uhnak, Joseph Wambaugh, Bob Leuci, W.E.B. Griffin, and Carol O'Connor.

 

Contents

Preface
1
One The Road to the Police Novel
5
Two The 1950s and 1960s
41
Three The 1970s
83
Four The 1980s
121
Five The 1990s
191
Six Afterthoughts
265
Bibliography
279
Index
291
Copyright

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Page 9 - Decency A newspaper cannot escape conviction of insincerity if while professing high moral purpose it supplies incentives to base conduct, such as are to be found in details of crime and vice, publication of which is not demonstrably for the general good.
Page 8 - Committee appointed at the Cooper Union meeting held in New York last August, after a commanding officer of the police force had been implicated in the murder of Rosenthal by the "gun men": "The corruption is so ingrained that the man of ordinary decent character entering the force and not possessed of extraordinary moral fiber may easily succumb.
Page 14 - The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody thought of only two minutes before he pulled it off.
Page 9 - Omit things that will offend nice people. Avoid coarseness and slang and a low tone. The most sensational news can be told if it is written properly.

About the author (2015)

The late LeRoy Lad Panek, professor emeritus of English at McDaniel College (and “One of the most readable, prolific, and perceptive academic scholars of mystery fiction”—Mystery Scene and Edgar Award winner), was the author of a number of books about detective fiction. He lived in Westminster, Maryland.

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