Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene.
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres, including detective fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder cases. From 1929 to 1971, Dannay and Lee wrote around forty novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character.
The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder, is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
Black Mask was a pulp magazine first published in April 1920 by the journalist H. L. Mencken and the drama critic George Jean Nathan. It is most well-known today for launching the hardboiled crime subgenre of mystery fiction, publishing now-classic works by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich, Paul Cain, Carroll John Daly, and others.
Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.
Laura Lippman is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels. Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.
Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He is known for a series of crime novels featuring the investigator Amos Walker.
Otto Penzler is an American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Peter Blauner is an American author, journalist, and television producer.
Julie Smith is an American mystery writer, the author of nineteen novels and several short stories. She received the 1991 Edgar Award for Best Novel for her sixth book, New Orleans Mourning (1990).
Kelli Stanley is an American author of mystery-thrillers. The majority of her published fiction is written in the genres of historical crime fiction and noir. Her best known work, the Miranda Corbie series, is set in San Francisco, her adoptive hometown.
Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American writer and producer of television.
"Fourth of July Picnic" is a Nero Wolfe mystery novella by Rex Stout, first published as "The Labor Union Murder" in the July 9, 1957, issue of Look magazine. It first appeared in book form in the short-story collection And Four to Go, published by the Viking Press in 1958.
Vicki Due Hendricks is an American author of crime fiction, erotica, and a variety of short stories.
"Blood Will Tell" is a Nero Wolfe mystery novella by Rex Stout, first published in the December 1963 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It first appeared in book form in the short-story collection Trio for Blunt Instruments, published by the Viking Press in 1964.
Wallace Stroby is an American crime fiction author and journalist. He is the author of eight novels, four of which feature Crissa Stone, a female professional thief.
Reed Farrel Coleman is an American writer of crime fiction and a poet.
Bouchercon is an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honour of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher; also the inspiration for the Anthony Awards, which have been issued at the convention since 1986. This page details Bouchercon XLVII and the 2016 Anthony Awards ceremony.
John Peyton Cooke is an American novelist. He is most notable as a short story writer known for thrillers, often with gay male protagonists and including themes of male homosexuality and psychological suspense.
