Glossary
Period and genre terminology drawn from Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction — underworld slang, publishing-trade vocabulary, and the tropes critics use to talk about the genre. 40 entries so far.
A
- A defendant's claim to have been elsewhere when a crime was committed; the central puzzle device of the Golden Age.
- A detective who solves crimes without official position — the dominant type of the British Golden Age.
B
- British police constable, also named after Sir Robert Peel.
C
- An older spelling of "clue" — a piece of evidence pointing to a solution; favored in dime-novel detective fiction.
- Sherlock Holmes's term for himself: a private investigator hired by police or other detectives when the case is too difficult.
- Slang for a police officer; British in origin (from "to cop," to seize), American by the 1850s.
- A burglar who specializes in breaking open safes and strongboxes — "cracking the crib."
D
- The final scene where the detective explains the crime, identifies the criminal, and resolves all loose ends.
- Cheap American adventure paperback sold for ten cents, dominant from the 1860s through the 1910s.
- A clue left by the victim in the moments before death — a stock device of the Golden Age, especially Ellery Queen.
F
- The Golden Age principle that all clues needed to solve the crime must be presented to the reader before the denouement.
- A receiver of stolen goods — the criminal middleman between the thief and the market.
- The slang argot of the British criminal underworld, deliberately impenetrable thieves' jargon.
G
- A robber who attacks his victim from behind, choking him while an accomplice rifles his pockets.
- American slang for a detective, from the soft rubber-soled shoes that let plainclothes officers move silently.
H
- A member of a Chinese-American criminal society — what later writers called a tong.
- A habitual opium smoker; "hop" was 19th-century slang for opium.
L
- Branded series of cheap fiction issued under one banner — e.g. Old Cap Collier Library, Nick Carter Library.
- A subgenre in which a crime is committed inside a sealed room with no apparent way in or out.
M
- An object whose pursuit drives the plot but whose specific nature is essentially interchangeable.
- Theatrical genre of exaggerated emotion and stark moral contrasts; used dismissively as a label for early detective fiction.
N
- 1830s–40s British subgenre romanticizing real criminals from the Newgate Calendar; immediate ancestor of sensation and detective fiction.
- A short novel — too long for a magazine story, too short for a triple-decker; the standard length of a Brady or Old Cap Collier issue.
O
- A clandestine establishment where opium was smoked, typical of late-19th-century Chinatowns.
P
- British police officer; from Sir Robert Peel, who founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829.
- British weekly serial of sensational fiction sold for one penny per part, popular from the 1830s to the 1890s.
R
- Methodical deductive reasoning — Poe's term for the analytical method of his Dupin stories, the founding template for the literary detective.
- A misleading clue planted by the author to divert the reader from the true solution.
- English narratives told from the criminal's perspective, from Elizabethan pamphlets through Defoe; the long pre-history of the detective story.
S
- Headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police, established 1829; metonym for the British detective force itself.
- Mid-Victorian genre of secrets, identity, bigamy, and crime hidden under respectable middle-class life — direct ancestor of the detective story.
- A detective who follows a suspect closely and continuously; also a verb.
- A detective; originally short for "sleuth-hound," a tracking dog.
- A detective or informant planted to watch for criminal activity in a crowd or place of business.
- Weekly tabloid magazine of serialized adventure or detective fiction, dominant in cheap publishing before the pulps.
T
- A convict released on parole, required to carry his license — a marked man and stock suspect in Victorian crime fiction.
- A Chinese-American fraternal society, often depicted in fiction as controlling Chinatown's gambling and opium rackets.
- A novel published in three separately bound volumes — the dominant format for serious British fiction from the 1820s through the 1890s.
W
- A detective story whose central interest is the identity of the criminal, withheld until the final chapter.
Y
- Cheap British paperback reprint sold at railway bookstalls, named for its yellow pictorial boards.