Mystery and imagination : Edgar Allan Poe and the first detective stories --
Guilty secrets : sensation novels --
Detective fever : Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and early detective fiction --
Poacher turned gamekeeper : the French revolution : Vidocq, Gaboriau and their worldwide influence --
The great detective : Sherlock Holmes --
Rogues' gallery : raffles and other villains --
The nature of evil : G. K. Chesterton and faith and sin in detective fiction --
Plot minds : Marie Belloc Lowndes and Edwardian-era detective fiction --
The science of detection : R. Austin Freeman and scientific mysteries --
Had-I-But-Known : Mary Roberts Rinehart and 'women in jeopardy' novels --
War and peace : the first world war and detective fiction --
Treacherous impulses : early spy fiction --
The mistress of deception : Agatha Christie --
American tragedy : Van Dine and the American golden age --
Superfluous women : queens of crime --
Challenging the reader : detection and game-playing --
Locked rooms : 'impossible crime' mysteries --
The long arm of the law : early police stories --
Blood-simple : Dashiell Hammett --
Murder and its motives : true crime --
Twists of fate : Francis Iles and ironic crime fiction --
The sound of mystery : radio mysteries --
In lonely rooms : Raymond Chandler --
Brothers in crime : Patrick and Bruce Hamilton --
Cracks in the wall : Georges Simenon and European crime fiction --
Sensation in court : legal mysteries --
California dreaming : crime writers and Hollywood --
Carnival of crime : mystery and macabre --
Waking nightmares : noir fiction --
Dagger of the mind : casebook novels --
Whose body? : Whowasdunins : mysteries about the victim's identity --
Private wounds : transitioning from the golden age --
Out of this world : traditional detective fiction evolves in the United States --
Perfect murders : crime and the end of empire --
Mind games : post-war psychological suspense --
Deep water : Patricia Highsmith --
Forking paths : Borges and postmodernism --
Bloody murder : Julian Symons and crime fiction criticism --
People with ghosts : post-war private investigators and the legacy of Vietnam --
Killing jokes : comedy and crime --
Literary agents : post-war spy fiction --
Nerve : adventure novels and thrillers --
Outsider in Amsterdam : Dutch crime --
Whodunwhat? : theatrical murder --
Black and blue : British police fiction --
Home discomforts : domestic suspense --
Mystery games : East Asian detective fiction --
Early graves : difference and diversity --
A suitable job for a woman : women writing about private investigators --
A feeling for snow : Scandinavian crime writing --
Fatal inversions : Ruth Rendell and modern psychological suspense --
Dark places : American police fiction --
Long shadows : historical crime --
A taste for death : P. D. James and the truth about human character and experience.