Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
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.
Lindsey Davis is an English historical novelist, best known as the author of the Falco series of historical crime stories set in ancient Rome and its empire. She is a recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger award.
Laurie R. King is an American author best known for her detective fiction.
Mary Doria Russell is an American novelist.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom by William Collins, Sons and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company. It is the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective.
Michael Joseph Connelly is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is the bestselling author of 31 novels and one work of non-fiction, with over 74 million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into 40 languages. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly's 1997 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer starred Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is an organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City.
Caroline Graham is an English playwright, screenwriter and novelist.
Robert Wilson is a British crime writer currently resident in Portugal. He is the son of an RAF fighter pilot, and has a degree in English from Oxford. Wilson is the author of the Bruce Medway series, set in and around Benin, West Africa, and the Javier Falcón series, set largely in Seville, Spain. He is also the author of the espionage novel The Company of Strangers and A Small Death In Lisbon, which consists of a historically split narrative, and won the CWA Gold Dagger in 1999. He was shortlisted for the same award again in 2003 for The Blind Man of Seville, the first in the Javier Falcón series. The second novel in the series, The Silent and the Damned, won the 2006 Gumshoe Award for Best European Crime Novel, presented by Mystery Ink.
Craig Russell, also known as Christopher Galt, is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and author of The Devil Aspect. His Hamburg-set thriller series featuring detective Jan Fabel has been translated into 23 languages. Russell speaks fluent German and has a special interest in post-war German history. His books, particularly The Devil Aspect and the Fabel series, tend to include historical or mythological themes.
Michael Schmidt OBE FRSL is a Mexican-British poet, author, scholar and publisher.
Jack Alexander Huston is a British actor. He appeared as Richard Harrow in the HBO television drama series Boardwalk Empire. He also had a supporting role in the 2013 film American Hustle, portrayed the eponymous Ben-Hur in the 2016 historical drama, and appeared as one of the main characters in the fourth season of the FX anthology series Fargo (2020).
Frederic Lindsay was a Scottish crime writer, who was born in Glasgow and lived in Edinburgh. He was a full-time writer from 1979 and previously worked as a lecturer, teacher and library assistant. He was active in a number of literary organisations including the Society of Authors, International PEN and the Scottish Arts Council. In addition to novels he also wrote for TV, radio and the theatre. Two of his novels have been made into films.
Kenneth Martin Edwards is a British crime novelist, whose work has won awards in the UK and the United States. As a crime fiction critic and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.
The Ned Kelly Awards are Australia's leading literary awards for crime writing in both the crime fiction and true crime genres. They were established in 1996 by the Crime Writers Association of Australia to reward excellence in the field of crime writing within Australia.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
The CWA Historical Dagger is an annual award given by the British Crime Writers' Association to the author of the best historical crime novel of the year. Established in 1999, it is presented to a novel "with a crime theme and a historical background of any period up to 35 years before the current year".
Hamlet, Revenge! is a 1937 detective novel by Michael Innes, his second novel. It centres on the investigation into the murder of the Lord Chancellor of England during an amateur production of Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which he plays Polonius, and other crimes which follow at the seat of the Duke of Horton, Scamnum Court.
Michael Farris Smith is an American writer from Mississippi. As of 2021, Smith has published six novels: The Hands of Strangers (2011), Rivers (2013), Desperation Road (2017), The Fighter (2018), Blackwood (2020), and Nick (2021).
