Detective Novel

Abstract

The detective novel emerged from the U.S., France, and Great Britain in the mid‐nineteenth century out of a number of generic forerunners—some of long standing, others of more recent invention. As a popular form derived from the short stories of the American Edgar Allan Poe featuring the first fictional amateur detective, the Parisian C. Auguste Dupin, who first appeared in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), its development in the English‐speaking world throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century coincided with the rise of the short story and was intimately connected to the growth of mass‐circulation magazines, especially in connection with the international success of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (seeserialization). It also contributed to the streamlining of the sprawling three‐volume novels of the Victorian era into more compact, single‐volume narratives. In the twentieth century the development of inexpensive mass circulation (pulp) paperbacks further expanded the market for detective novels (seepublishing). While stage, film, and television adaptations have generally replaced the audience once served by the various forms of short fiction, the demand for the detective novel has grown into a global phenomenon, and detective shows of one variety or another are a staple of television worldwide (seeadaptation). The dissemination of the detective genre can be traced through translations of English‐language classics, and by the early twenty‐first century virtually every major nation and language with developed publishing industries enjoys a popular detective series in translation and produced by indigenous writers.