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 serious crime, generally 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 multiple 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.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1920.
Robert William Goddard is an English novelist.
Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California; they are perhaps his most popular works. In 2020, Mosley received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first Black man to receive the honor.
Robert Brown Parker was an American writer, primarily of fiction within the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies was also produced based on the character. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors as influencing their own work and reviving and changing the detective genre, including Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane.
James Lee Burke is an American author, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won Edgar Awards for Black Cherry Blues (1990) and Cimarron Rose (1998), and has also been presented with the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin and then Tommy Lee Jones.
Lacey Fosburgh was an American journalist, author, and academic best known for her controversial book, Closing Time: The True Story of the Goodbar Murder (1977).
Dana Stabenow is an American author of science fiction, mystery/crime fiction, suspense/thriller, and historical adventure novels.
Otto Penzler is a German-born American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Dorothy B. Hughes was an American crime writer, literary critic, and historian. Hughes wrote fourteen crime and detective novels, primarily in the hardboiled and noir styles, and is best known for the novels In a Lonely Place (1947) and Ride the Pink Horse (1946).
Peter Blauner is an American author, journalist, and television producer.
Lee Goldberg is an American author, screenwriter, publisher and producer known for his bestselling novels Lost Hills and True Fiction and his work on a wide variety of TV crime series, including Diagnosis: Murder, A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Hunter, Spenser: For Hire, Martial Law, She-Wolf of London, SeaQuest, 1-800-Missing, The Glades and Monk.
Richard Orson Lockridge was an American writer of detective fiction. Richard Lockridge with his wife Frances created one of the most famous American mystery series, Mr. and Mrs. North.
Steve Hamilton is a mystery writer who is known for the Alex McKnight series. Apart from his Alex McKnight books, Hamilton has written Night Work and The Lock Artist. His works have won the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Barry Award.
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.
Stuart M. Kaminsky was an American mystery writer and film professor. He is known for three long-running series of mystery novels featuring the protagonists Toby Peters, a private detective in 1940s Hollywood (1977-2004); Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector (1981-2010); and veteran Chicago police officer Abe Lieberman (1990-2007). There is also a fourth series featuring a Sarasota, Florida, process server named Lew Fonesca (1999-2009).
David Housewright is an Edgar Award-winning author of crime fiction and past President of the Private Eye Writers of America best known for his Holland Taylor and Rushmore McKenzie detective novels. Housewright won the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America as well as a nomination from the PWA for his first novel "Penance." He has also earned three Minnesota Book Awards. Most of his novels take place in and around the greater St. Paul and Minneapolis area of Minnesota, USA and have been favorably compared to Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Robert B. Parker.
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.
Craig McDonald is a novelist/journalist and the author of the Hector Lassiter series, the Chris Lyon Series, the novel El Gavilan, and two collections of interviews with fiction writers, Art in the Blood (2006) and Rogue Males (2009). He also edited the anthology, Borderland Noir (2015).
Dick Lehr is an American author, journalist and a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is known for co-authoring The New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil’s Deal, and its sequel, Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss with fellow journalist Gerard O'Neill.
