From mysterious origins, through the Victorian sleuths and the "Golden Age" of the genre (the 1920s through the 1940s), and to the present day, detective fiction, mysteries, and spy thrillers have consistently topped best-seller lists around the world. Professor M. Lee Alexander provides listeners with a lively discussion of groundbreaking authors from Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and modern writers such as Nevada Barr and Jonathan Kellerman.
Lecture 1 Mysterious Origins
Lecture 2 Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and the Victorian Era
Lecture 3 The Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie and the Golden Age
Lecture 4 Gifted Amateurs: Academics to Zoologists
Lecture 5 Private Investigators and Hard-Boiled Heroes
Lecture 6 Cops, Capers, and Police Procedurals
Lecture 7 Spies Among Us: Espionage and Techno-Thrillers
Lecture 8 In the Teeth of the Evidence: Lawyers and Legal Eagles
Lecture 9 Medicine for Murder: The Medical Mystery
Lecture 10 Probing the Past: Historical Detective Fiction
Lecture 11 Women of Mystery: Beyond Female Intuition
Lecture 12 International Intrigue: Detective Fiction Goes Global
Lecture 13 Investigating Identity: Ethnic Sleuths
Lecture 14 Regional Sleuths and Future Trends in Detective Fiction