Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library

The secrets of great mystery and suspense fiction, David Schmid

eng

technical information on music

not applicable

not applicable

other

The secrets of great mystery and suspense fiction

David Schmid

Great Courses Audio

One of the most captivating components of this course is how Professor Schmid-both an avid fan of mystery and suspense and a scholar of the genre- surveys the same works through many lenses, giving you a different perspective each time. With Professor Schmid as your guide, you'll examine the use and many variations of characters such as the detective, the criminal, the sidekick, the private eye, the police officer, and the femme fatale, as well as how the interconnections between these character types both define and defy their genres. For example, the relationship between the detective and police or the juxtaposition of criminal and private eye can help delineate subgenres within mystery and suspense fiction. Professor Schmid considers the ways certain works might utilize clues, solutions, poetic justice, and violence, taking you through centuries of history and various sorts of suspense fiction to pinpoint specific examples. As authors experimented with the form over time, you'll learn how books with ambiguous or unsolved conclusions became gradually more accepted into the mainstream, reflecting a change in the audience who once saw open-ended conclusions as simply frustrating or unsettling. All Lectures: 1. Mystery Fiction's Secret Formula 2. The Detective Is Born 3. The Criminal 4. The Sidekick 5. Detecting Clues 6. Case Closed? The Problem with Solutions 7. The Locked Room 8. The Dime Novel 9. Murder in Cozy Places 10. Return of the Classic Detective 11. The City Tests the Detective 12. The Private Eye Opens 13. African American Mysteries 14. The Femme Fatale 15. The Private Eye Evolves 16. Latino Detectives on the Border 17. The Lady Detective 18. Violence Waits in the Wings 19. Violence Takes Center Stage 20. Psychopaths and Mind Hunters 21. Police as Antagonist 22. Police as Protagonist 23. Native American Mysteries 24. The European Mystery Tradition 25. Nordic Noir 26. Japanese and Latin American Mysteries 27. Precursors to True Crime 28. True Crime in the 20th Century 29. Historical Mysteries 30. Spies, Thrillers, and Conspiracies 31. Female-Centered Mystery and Suspense 32. Poetic Justice 33. Courtroom Drama 34. Gay and Lesbian Mystery and Suspense 35. Adapting the Multimedia Mystery 36. Mysterious Experiments

adult

not applicable