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Gangs and Mobs : Towards a History of Gangster Fiction

This chapter contributes to what is regarded as a definitive volume on crime fiction (in its literary and film forms). The volume is composed of entirely original essays by internationally renowned researchers in crime film and literature, providing the most comprehensive critical coverage of one of popular culture’s most enduring genres. The research informing my output constitutes the first attempt to identify and categorise a sub-genre of crime fiction as ‘gangster’ fiction. In doing so it highlights various factors that have militated against conceiving this as a coherent and continuous tradition of such fiction—most importantly with regard to the close association between the authors of gangster fiction and screenwriting. The originality of the research lies not simply in unearthing lost authors (such as Clarke) and establishing a definitive gangster fiction lineage but in bringing writers together who might otherwise be separated because of ruling genre categories and enduring distinctions between film and literature. Such research’s findings are only possible through the adoption of an interdisciplinary framework. New insights about the particular character of gangster fiction as a screen/writing form are the product of theory grounded in film as much as literary studies. For understanding gangster writing requires sensitivity to the way film influences literature and vice versa.