The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women

A study of detective fiction written by American women between the American Civil War and World War II. Refuting the iea that no American detective fiction of sustance was produced between the times of Edgar Allan Poe and Dashiell Hammett, the text shows how these women writers blended Gothic elements into domestic fiction to create a unique subgenre that she labels domestic detective fiction . It focuses on the narrative qualities of the domestic novel tradition and the ways in which it reflected ideologies of domesticity and gender. Also included are a discussion of various rewritings of the Lizzie Borden scandal in this tradition and an afterword on the relation of domestic detective fiction to the hard-boiled style.