Detective Stories + CD

This collection of short stories illustrates the development of the English detective genre. It begins with Conan Doyle’s god-like master sleuth Sherlock Holmes: Holmes’ powers of observation, rationality and scientific deduction represent the Victorian world triumphing over ’mysterious’ forces aiming at the destruction of society. Next comes the Golden Age of crime fiction: here, the ideological element disappears and the detective story becomes an intellectual game. Finally comes the modern period: modernity sees the challenge of traditional values. The spotlight isturned on the criminal, an anti-hero living in a world which is no longer to be regulated, as in Victorian times, but which is to be analysed and understood.