The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection
Language: English
Published by Free Press, 1989
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: zenosbooks, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.zenosbooks
AbeBooks seller since March 24, 1997
Condition: Used
US$ 22.50
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Add to basketItem description from seller
New York. 1989. Free Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0029197708. 242 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Reginald Perry. keywords: Mystery Literary Criticism. DESCRIPTION - Detective novels are seductive and addictive, and the American reading public has a seemingly endless appetite for them. The mystery genre's appeal uniquely transcends the ordinary barriers of class, income level, gender, and education. In this lively, enjoyable look at the best American and British detective fiction, David Lehman investigates the mystery of mysteries: the profound satisfactions we get from evil, disorder, mayhem, and deception - which we know will be put right by the last page. The first story of ratiocination' was Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue:' but as Lehman shows, the detective story draws deeply from the rich ancient storytelling traditions. The mystery's conventions - the locked room, the clue hidden' in plain sight, the diabolical double, the villainous least likely suspect - work on us as childhood fairytales do; they prey upon our darkest fears, taking us to the brink of the unbearable before restoring a comforting sense of order. The myth of Oedipus, for example, contains the essential elements of a whodunit, with the twist that the murderer the detective pursues is himself. The detective novel, says Lehman, took murder out of the ethical realm and put it into that of aesthetics. Murder in a mystery becomes a kind of poetic conceit: the criminal is an artist, the detective a critic, and the blundering policeman a philistine. To this day, no other category of fiction so cleverly fuses a visceral impulse with a cerebral one - the physical action of the crime, the mental action of the detective. The impulse to treat murder as a baroque art form had its heyday between the wars in elaborate setpieces such as Agatha Christie's country house puzzlers. With their wisecracking gumshoe heroes, Dashiell Hammert and Raymond Chandler fashioned an existential romance out of the detective novel. More recent writers such as Ross Macdonald, P.D. James, and Ruth Rendell have raised the genre to a new level of psychological sophistication. Yet the form evolves still, and Lehman guides us to the epistemological riddles of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco, who challenge the notion of a knowable truth. PERFECT MURDER contains a useful selected bibliography of the best detective fiction, novels in related genres, and critical works about mysteries. Lehman also includes an annotated list of his fifteen favorite mysteries ever written. inventory #24236.…
Seller Inventory # z24236
- Title
- The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection
- Author
- Lehman, David
- Publisher
- Free Press
- Publication year
- 1989
- Condition
- Very Good in Dustjacket
- Dust jacket
- Very Good
- Binding
- hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0029197708
- ISBN 13
- 9780029197707
- Edition
- First Edition.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
Julian Symons wrote Mortal Consequences in 1972 and it too is brilliant, though far more controversial in its appraisals. (In the copy Symons inscribed to me, he accurately describes it as "material for disagreement and argument," following one of our many disagreements and arguments--the one we had when he failed to accept the enduring brilliance of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels.)
David Lehman's The Perfect Murder was originally published in 1987 and has at last been reissued in paperback, with a new chapter on mystery novels of the 1990s. While Lehman is as opinionated as Symons, he is more generous in his taste and seems to prefer the best writers. (This actually means that his taste coincides with mine, which suggests that it is impeccable!)
Although mainly chronological in structure, The Perfect Murder jumps around some, even including references to modern films while discussing old books. Oddly, the chapter on Sherlock Holmes precedes the chapter on Edgar Allan Poe, but somehow it all makes sense. His list of favorite books at the end is one of the most intelligent selections I've ever encountered--with the exception of The Name of the Rose, which is impenetrable, and The Singing Detective, which just tries too hard to be cool.
If you are interested in mystery fiction but know little beyond the obvious classics, read this to be the biggest expert on your block. If you're already the biggest expert on your block, read it to learn how much you don't know, and be grateful for its perceptive insights. --Otto Penzler
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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