Many women I know are fans of detective fiction and I wanted to learn more about the genre. Professor Alexander provides a separate 30 minute lecture for each detective category discussing the first authors to develop the sub category of fiction.
I appreciated the evolution of women's roles over time. Starting out as a domestic or the victim and evolving through the femme fatale in the hard boiled detective to becoming a hard boiled regional sleuth in the Janet Evanovich series. The methods they use to solve crimes also evolved from relying on relationship knowledge and intuition to doing a cold methodical analysis of the facts and piecing together the puzzle.
Most of the successful authors had a separate careers that gave them special knowledge to write accurately about the subject. Agatha Christie worked extensively with pharmaceuticals, John Grisham was a lawyer, Ian Fleming was a spy. The day job allowed these people to create much more realistic fiction.
A trip to the local library allowed me to listen to this book. For a fee you can also listen to an online audio download of Detective Fiction a Modern Scholar Lecture by M. Lee Alexander. M. Lee Alexander is a professor of English literature at the college of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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