Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Four recent works seek to define the success of detective fiction, especially in its Golden Age (1920s-1940s), through examinations of its most memorable characters. Indeed, asSisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths and The Boy Detectives acknowledge, children’s detective series have become synonymous with their most popular protagonists, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, at the expense of other notable yet largely forgotten child detectives. Likewise, a recent study of adult detective fiction of the Golden Age, Making the Detective Story American, focuses as much on the characterization of its most famous investigators--the Continental Op, Sam Spade, Charlie Chan, and Philo Vance--as it does on biographical and historical background or plot development. On the other side of the pond, although Agatha Christie wrote more than sixty detective novels and hundreds of short stories, those books featuring her famous detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple are among her most enduring; Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks reveals how much Christie relied upon her characters, rather than plot twists, as inspiration. Although they cover slightly different topics, all four works argue that characterization is more important than plot.
Repository Citation
Walker, Beth. "Review of Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths; The Boy Detectives; Making the Detective Story American; and, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 3, 2011, pp. 1–6. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss3/9