Connecting Detectives: The Influence of 19th Century Sleuth Fiction on the Early Hard-Boileds

A literary examination of the influence of 19th-century sleuths on the early hard-boiled investigators, this book explores the importance of works by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the development of detective series by Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Brett Halliday, Mickey Spillane, Thomas B. Dewey, Ross Macdonald, Richard S. Prather and William Campbell Gault.

Authors from the transitional (1964-1977) and modern periods (1979 to the present) are also discussed to show the ongoing influence of the 19th century detective writers.

Lewis D. Moore, a retired professor of English, taught at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington for thirty years. He is also the author of Meditations on America: John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee Series and Other Fiction (1994).