Offering an illuminating, challenging critical study of this genre, this book covers writers ranging from Agatha Christie to Raymond Chandler, Dick Francis to Sara Paretsky, while investigating issues of gender, the body and sexuality in these popular crime fictions. The book provides the first substantial critical work on twentieth-century crime from a gender perspective, as well as in-depth textual analysis often missing from studies of popular fiction. It also discusses the framework within which crime fiction might be studied, and offers analysis of key canonical crime writers set alongside both radical innovators and best-selling populists of the genre.