American Crime Fiction

"With this book, Peter Swirski confirms his reputation as one of the most passionate, perceptive and entertaining analysts of popular/nobrow culture and its relation to American society. After reading it, you will never look upon crime fiction and American culture in the same way." (Arthur Asa Berger, Professor Emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts, San Francisco State University, USA and author of "Media, Myth and Society") "Those who have not yet discovered Peter Swirski-one of our most challenging, entertaining, insightful, and gloriously outrageous cultural critics-should grab American Crime Fiction, his latest exploration of what he calls "nobrow" literature. Every page of this delightful excursion through landmark "beachbooks for intellectuals" makes us take new perspectives on many of our favorite unexamined assumptions about culture." (H. Bruce Franklin, John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies, Emeritus, Rutgers University-Newark, USA) "Readable, insightful, and thought-provoking, with American Crime Fiction Peter Swirski has given us one of the very best critical studies of popular fiction and the culture of everyday life. Anyone interested in understanding crime fiction, popular fiction, or popular culture in general must read this book. It is a treasure!" (Gary Hoppenstand, Professor of American Studies, Michigan State University, USA) "American Crime Fiction goes a long way toward erasing the artificial distinctions with which we have ring-fenced creative content. If you enjoy a particular work, including Peter Swirski's, then enjoy it without guilt, without insecurity, without worrying about what the Times or the Man Booker committee might think." (Aaron Schwabach, Professor of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, USA)

Peter Swirski looks at American crime fiction as an artform that expresses and reflects the social and aesthetic values of its authors and readers. As such he documents the manifold ways in which such authorship and readership are a matter of informed literary choice and not of cultural brainwashing or declining literary standards. Asking, in effect, a series of questions about the nature of genre fiction as art, successive chapters look at American crime writers whose careers throw light on the hazards and rewards of nobrow traffic between popular forms and highbrow aesthetics: Dashiell Hammett, John Grisham, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Ed McBain, Nelson DeMille, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.