Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS ix
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
4. Introduction: Mass Art as Experimental Storytelling 1
5. PART I
6. 1. The Art Novel Meets 1910s Formalism 27
7. 2. Making Confusion Satisfactory: Modernism and Other Mysteries 55
8. 3. Churn and Consolidation: The 1940s and After 81
9. PART II
10. 4. The Golden Age Puzzle Plot: The Taste of the Construction 117
11. 5. Before the Fact: The Psychological Thriller 157
12. 6. Dark and Full of Blood: Hard-Boiled Detection 194
13. 7. The 1940s: Mysteries in Crossover Culture 235
14. 8. The 1940s: The Problem of Other Minds, or Just One 261
15. PART III
16. 9. The Great Detective Rewritten: Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout 283
17. 10. Viewpoints, Narrow and Expansive: Patricia Highsmith and Ed McBain 318
18. 11. Donald Westlake and the Richard Stark Machine 336
19. 12. Tarantino, Twists, and the Persistence of Puzzles 357
20. 13. Gone Girls: The New Domestic Thriller 382
21. Conclusion: The Power of Limits 405
22. NOTES 413
23. INDEX 467