Detective Fiction and the Ghost Story

This is the first full-length study to concentrate on the engagement between detective fiction and the ghost story, one of the central relationships in all popular genres. It features works from many of the giants in both traditions including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, M. R. James, John Dickson Carr, Susan Hill and Tony Hillerman.

The Haunted Text includes a new and lively reading of The Hound of the Baskervilles, a comparison between Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and the Simon Serrailler novels, and discussions on the ghost-haunted city of Rebus’s Edinburgh and Tony Hillerman’s novels about the Navajo people of the Southwestern United States. What emerges is a surprising picture of a long and influential association which has had a major effect on the development of detective fiction. This fascinating book will be of interest to both scholars and general readers alike.