Detective Fiction and the Ghost Story ― The Haunted Text

Detective Fiction and the Ghost Story 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.

Michael Cook is a freelance writer based in Devon, UK. A former National Trust Director, he holds a PhD in English from the University of Bristol. His previous publications include Narratives of Enclosure in Detective Fiction: The Locked Room Mystery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), the first full length critique of the Locked Room Mystery; Detective Fiction and The Ghost Story is his second book.