Reference and Research Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (Reference Sources in the Humanities)
Another outstanding guide to genre fiction from someone who has authored many (e.g., The Annotated Index to the Thrill Book), this work focuses on separately published English-language reference sources documenting and describing the primary and secondary literatures of mystery and detective fiction, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, companions, bibliographies, indexes, directories, handbooks, and a few, highly selective web sites and electronic databases. While detective and mystery fiction may range widely, including everything from science to religious fiction, Bleiler chooses to limit the scope to the commonly understood genre, excluding works devoted to classical thrillers, adventure and espionage stories, gangster tales, historical novels, Westerns, and true-crime stories. The book is arranged in chapters by reference type and then alphabetically by reference, with each entry containing standard bibliographic information: author or editor, title, place and year of publication, publisher, pagination, series title, index, edition or revision notes, and ISBN and LC numbers. Annotations furnish descriptions of intent, organization, and content along with perceptively critical evaluations varying in length from a single short paragraph to one page. A worthwhile addition to the literature; recommended for public and academic libraries.AMarilyn Rosenthal, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NYCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.