Narratives of Enclosure in Detective Fiction

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Edgar Allan Poe and the Detective Story Narrative

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 1-20

3. The Locked Compartment: Charles Dickens’s ‘The Signalman’ and Enclosure in the Railway Mystery Story

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 21-42

4. The Body in the Library: Reading the Locked Room in Anna Katherine Green’s The Filigree Ball

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 43-61

5. G. K. Chesterton’s Enclosure of Orthodoxy in ‘The Wrong Shape’

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 62-84

6. The Hollow Text: Illusion as Theme in John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 85-111

7. Jorge Luis Borges and the Labyrinth of Detection

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 112-133

8. The Question is the Writer Himself: Paul Auster’s Locked Room in City of Glass

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 134-151

9. The Narrative of Enclosure

   • Michael Cook

   Pages 152-172

10. Back Matter

    Pages 173-210

    PDF

The locked room mystery is one of the iconic creations of popular fiction. Michael Cook's critical study reveals how this archetypal form of the puzzle story has had a significant effect in shaping the immensely popular genre of detective fiction. The book includes analysis of texts from Poe to the present day.

• Charles Dickens
• detective fiction
• fiction
• Narrative
• British and Irish Literature

MICHAEL COOK worked as Regional Director for the National Trust in South-West England until his retirement in 2002. He then completed a Ph.D. in English at the University of Bristol, UK, which was awarded in 2008. He has lectured on diverse subjects including film and conservation, and is currently researching the Ghost Story and the poetry of John Clare and Wilfred Owen.

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