Police Fiction

Frankie Y. Bailey

The evolution of crime/detective fiction culminates in the 20th century with the police procedural novel. However, the roots of modern police fiction can be traced to the 19th century. Police fiction developed in conjunction with and parallel to developments in law enforcement in Europe and later in the United States. The real-life exploits of criminal investigators and the methods used by police detectives influenced the works of writers of fiction. In 1829, Eugéne François Vidocq, the former criminal who became chief of the SÛreté, published his Memoires de Vidocq . Vidocq's account of his career inspired a number of writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, “the father of the mystery short story” and creator of the brilliant armchair detective, Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin (Richardson, 1999, p. 479). In England, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins offered the early British police detective in the context of a fictional investigation. Inspector Bucket appears in ...

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