The Encyclopedia Of Murder And Mystery Bruce F Murphy by Bruce F. Murphy 9780312294144, 031229414X instant download after payment.

The world of mystery and crime fiction has been the subject of a numerous recent reference tomes, from Willetta Heisings excellent Detecting Women and Detecting Men to The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. The former books are notable for their comprehensive cataloging of contemporary writers, and the latter succeeds by its reliance on a diverse range of authorities. But Bruce Murphy’s The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery is much more a reader’s book. Murphy is himself a bibliophile to be reckoned with, as editor of Benets Readers Encyclopedia and writer for Critical Inquiry and the Paris Review. What he brings to his reference work, however, is not just the requisite expertise but also a sense of his audience, an attention to prose style, and a passion for mystery as a genre. He writes in his introduction: «The crime story is about consequences. In the mystery novel, infidelity leads to murder; in the 'serious' novel, more often than not it leads merely to divorce and the opportunities for characters to feel sorry for themselves."

Throughout, Murphy throws himself into controversy and immerses himself in the minutiae that has always drawn the attention of true mystery fans. Where else might one find, for example, a description of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple tales as requiring "willing suspension of disbelief, because St. Mary Meade seems to have a crime rate to rival Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. They are also oozing with charm and can be a bit treacly."