May I suggest murder? An overview of crime fiction for readers' advisory services staff.

Crime fiction first started to gain widespread popularity in the 18th century, a popularity which dramatically increased in the 19th century. Today, almost one in every three new books published in English falls into the crime fiction category. Since the early days of crime fiction the genre has evolved into an incredibly diverse area of fiction, making it one of Australia's, and the world's, most popular. There is, literally, a dead body to suit every reader's taste. Such scale and scope of choice, however, can create challenges for readers wanting to read crime fiction for the first time or wanting to extend their reading past a favourite author or series. This overview of the genre identifies the main sub-genres of crime fiction, providing a set of concise definitions illustrated with international and Australian examples of crime fiction works, require us all to be aware of and surface underlying values, assumptions and ideologies that are in play and to understand how leadership and followership practices affect production in a knowledge-intensive economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Library Journal is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)