Re-Formations of the Thriller: Raymond Chandler and John Le Carre

Abstract

Crime fiction is hugely popular and some of its authors have been recognized not only as best sellers but also as major artists-Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, for example. Mainstream literary studies have tended to bypass the form, but that attitude is steadily changing as crime fiction is being increasingly studied, especially as a genre which deals, in varying ways, with issues and problems of the contemporary world. The thriller is first and last a modern form.