Conclusion: the Age of Formula Fiction

Abstract

In my attempt to write a counter-history of crime fiction I have touched on a variety of sub-genres, including the ghost story, adventures of psychic detection, sensation fiction, the ‘literature’ of London and anarchist fiction, so as to shed light on the variety of discourses that intertwined in nineteenth-century ‘criminography’. To conclude my survey, I need to focus on the important changes that took place within crime fiction itself at the turn of the century, for it was these changes that set the ground for the formation of a detective canon. Thus I will first consider the relevance that the Sherlock Holmes saga acquired as a complex cultural phenomenon and the ideological framework underlying the Father Brown stories. Then I will briefly sketch the early development of the new subgenre of spy fiction, and finally I will go on to explain why the burgeoning comprehensive tradition of crime criticism discussed in Chapter 1 was progressively marginalised and a more restrictive tradition of detective criticism became dominant.