Prologue: The Guilty Party -- What They Are and Why We Read Them -- The Two Strands: Godwin, Vidocq, Poe -- Dickens, Collins, Gaboriau: The Pattern Forms -- Interregnum -- The Case of Sherlock Holmes -- The Short Story: The First Golden Age -- The Rise of the Novel -- The Golden Age: The Twenties -- The Golden Age: The Thirties -- The American Revolution -- Simenon and Maigret -- "Mr. Queen, will you be good enough to explain your famous character's sex life, if any?" -- The Short Story's Mutations -- Crime Novel and Police Novel -- Big Producers and Big Sellers, Curiosities and Singletons -- A Short History of the Spy Story -- The Crystal Ball Revisited -- A Postscript for the Nineties.
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