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TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION
by P.D. James
Pub. Date: December 01, 2009
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Format: Hardcover, 208pp
Sales Rank: 76,342
ISBN-13: 9780307592828
ISBN: 0307592820
About the book (from the publisher):
In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James—one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction at work today—gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it.
P. D. James examines the genre from top to bottom, beginning with the mysteries at the hearts of such novels as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and bringing us into the present with such writers as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell. Along the way she writes about Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie (“arch-breaker of rules”), Josephine Tey, Dashiell Hammett, and Peter Lovesey, among many others. She traces their lives into and out of their fiction, clarifies their individual styles, and gives us indelible portraits of the characters they’ve created, from Sherlock Holmes to Sara Paretsky’s sexually liberated female investigator, V. I. Warshawski. She compares British and American Golden Age mystery writing. She discusses detective fiction as social history, the stylistic components of the genre, her own process of writing, how critics have reacted over the years, and what she sees as a renewal of detective fiction—and of the detective hero—in recent years.
About the Author (from the publisher):
P. D. James is the author of 18 books, most of which have been filmed for television. Before her retirement in 1979, she served in the forensics and criminal justice departments of Great Britain’s Home Office, and she has been a magistrate and a governor of the BBC. The recipient of many prizes and honours, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. In 2000 she celebrated her 80th birthday and published her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest.
Click here to visit the author's website.
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10 comments:
Sounds like a great book for a fan or a writer.
Here's my WoW
Oh, too cool! Thanks for posting this one.
Here's mine.
Great book! Sounds very good.
Thanks for the post.
Here's mine:
http://jadorehappyendings.blogspot.com/2009/10/waiting-on-wednesday-4.html
oh, I am going to have to put that one on my wish list...
This sounds really interesting. Thanks for sharing it - I'll be on the lookout for it.
Sounds interesting and totally different from P. D. James' other work.
One of my friends is a PD James fan - I really need to read one someday!
Very cool cover.
This looks like a great book. I have only read one Of James' books, but the one I did read was excellent. I think this is something I will be adding this to my collection. Thanks!
Sounds awesome! PD James is pretty great from what I understand.
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