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Palgrave Macmillan

The Legal Thriller from Gardner to Grisham

See you in Court!

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Lars Ole Sauerberg

    1. Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

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  • Sketches a lively and accessible overview of the growth of the Anglophone legal thriller
  • Provides a refreshing focus on the growing concern with gender and ethnicity within the genre
  • Offers the first dedicated analysis of the legal thriller

Part of the book series: Crime Files (CF)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
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  2. Introduction: The Legal Thriller

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 1-12

  3. Law and Literature: Legal Thrillers

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 13-37

  4. The Beginnings of a Success Story: Pulp Magazines and Legal Thrillers

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 39-55

  5. American Post-Second World War Thrill and Ethics Trials

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 57-73

  6. Genteel Jurisprudence: The British Scene

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 75-99

  7. See You in Court (1). The American Genre Explosion from the Late 1980s

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 101-110

  8. See You in Court (2). The American Genre Explosion from the Late 1980s: The Women

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 111-143

  9. See You in Court (3). The American Genre Explosion from the Late 1980s: The Men

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 145-176

  10. Conclusions: In and Beyond the Anglo-American Courts of Fact and Fiction

    • Lars Ole Sauerberg
    Pages 177-185

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 187-199
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Keywords

About this book

This book offers a critically informed yet relaxed historical overview of the legal thriller, a unique contribution to crime fiction where most of the titles have been written by professionals such as lawyers and judges.

The legal thriller typically uses court trials as the suspense-creating background for presenting legal issues reflecting a wide range of concerns, from corporate conflicts to private concerns, all in a dramatic but highly informed manner. With authors primarily from the USA and the UK, the genre is one which nonetheless enjoys a global reading audience. As well as providing a survey of the legal thriller, this book takes a gender–focused approach to analyzing recently published titles within the field. It also argues for the fascination of the legal thriller both in the way its narrative pattern parallels that of an actual court trial, and by the way it reflects, frequently quite critically, the concerns of contemporary society.

Reviews

“Lars Ole Sauerberg’s The Legal Thriller from Gardner to Grisham: See You in Court! is a welcome volume for  both fans of the legal thriller and scholars interested in crime-related popular culture. The author offers a spirited attempt to define printed legal thrillers as a genre and an insightful tour of what he characterizes as ‘a sufficiently representational overview’ of individual legal thrillers … .” (David Ray Papke, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, clcjbooks.rutgers.edu, January, 2018)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

    Lars Ole Sauerberg

About the author

Lars Ole Sauerberg is Professor of Literature in English at the University of Southern Denmark. He has written extensively on crime fiction, both academically and as the crime-fiction reviewer of Denmark’s leading quality newspaper over the last 30 years. He is a founding member of the Danish Crime Academy.

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