The Detective Story
“The detective story, which is, of course, only one kind of the broad spectrum of crime writing which can stretch from the cosy certainties of Mayhem Parva to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, is admittedly an artificial form. But all fiction is artificial, the selection of the writer’s internal compulsions and preoccupations and external experience in a form which he or she hopes will satisfy the reader’s expectations while conforming to Henry James’s definition of the purpose of a novel: ‘To help the human heart to know itself’.” P.D.James the ‘Queen of Crime‘ 1920 – 2014
Listen to an interview with Baroness James
About Alton Chapter
