Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction is an illuminating and challenging critical study of this ever-popular genre. It covers writers ranging from Agatha Christie to Raymond Chandler to Dick Francis to Sara Paretsky. The book investigates issues of gender, the body and sexuality in these popular crime fictions. This book provides: the first substantial critical work on twentieth-century crime from a gender perspective; in-depth textual analysis often missing from studies of popular fiction; the framework within which crime fiction might be studied; and analysis of key canonical crime writers set alongside both radical innovators and best-selling populists of the genre.