Barry Forshaw, ed. 2016. Crime Uncovered: Detective // Fiona Peters and Rebecca Stewart, eds. 2016. Crime Uncovered: Antihero

Abstract

These two books from Intellect's Crime Uncovered series are appropriately noir in appearance, both on the outside, with a dark grey cover, and inside where an even darker hue indicates a change of chapter.1 The editors, too, are steeped in the turbid tint of crime fiction. Barry Forshaw, editor of Detective, is a journalist and broadcaster and the author of various books and articles on crime fiction. He is also editor of the website Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk), a useful resource for obtaining up to date information on publications and events in the crime fiction world. Fiona Peters and Rebecca Stewart, the editors of Antihero, are both lecturers at Bath Spa University where they ran the well-known (in crime fiction circles, at least) conferences Captivating Criminality between 2012 and 2015. Both volumes follow the same format. A brief introduction is followed by a series of short "case studies," which make up the bulk of the volume, followed by interviews with authors, and ending with a small number of more general "reports," or articles. Each of these chapters is written by a different contributor, for whom brief bionotes are provided in the final pages of the volume. Particularly useful are the references given after each of the chapters in which the critical sources, novels, stories, television series and websites related to the detective or antihero in question are listed. Unfortunately, though, neither of the books contains an index. Nevertheless, given the popularity of crime fiction and the extraordinary longevity of the genre both in printed form and on the screen, any new reference or critical work, particularly when it deals with the latest offerings, as is the case here, is extremely welcome.