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, Kogoro Akechi, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science principles and methods to support legal decision-making in matters of criminal and civil law.
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. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Laurie R. King is an American author best known for her detective fiction.
Joseph Bell FRCSE was a Scottish surgeon and lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is best known as an inspiration for the literary character, Sherlock Holmes.
William Anthony Parker White, better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher, was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett".
Arthur & George (2005) is the tenth novel by English author Julian Barnes which takes as its basis the true story of the "Great Wyrley Outrages".
James M. H. Lovegrove is a British writer of speculative fiction.
Michael Dirda is an American book critic, working for the Washington Post. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993.
Richard Gordon Heath Holmes, OBE, FRSL, FBA is a British author and academic best known for his biographical studies of major figures of British and French Romanticism.
Andrew Michael Duncan Lycett FRSL is an English biographer and journalist.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.
Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Trevor Henry Hall (1910–1991) was a British author, surveyor, and sceptic of paranormal phenomena. Hall made controversial claims regarding early members of the Society for Psychical Research. His books caused a heated controversy within the parapsychology community.
Daniel Stashower is an American author and editor of mystery fiction and historical nonfiction. He lives in Maryland.
America Is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture (ISBN 978-0-199-96991-3) is a book written by Erik Dussere and published by Oxford University Press on 1 November 2013 which later went on to win the Edgar Award for Best Critical / Biographical in 2014.
Alfred Wilks Drayson (1827–1901) was an English army officer, writer and astronomer. He was a personal friend of Arthur Conan Doyle, who dedicated to him the short story collection The Captain of the Polestar.
Lyndsay Faye is an American novelist and Sherlockian. She is known for her works of period fiction, which draw variously on mystery, historical fiction, and classical literature. Her 2012 debut novel, The Gods of Gotham was named "the year’s best mystery novel" by the American Library Association, and was nominated for the Edgar Award alongside Faye's 2016 Jane Eyre reimagining Jane Steele.
From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon is a non-fiction book by Mattias Boström which explores the history of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock fandom, originally published in 2017. It was nominated for an Edgar Award in the category of "Best Critical/Biographical" by the Mystery Writers of America. It won an Agatha Award for "Best Nonfiction" in 2018.
