-Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. Knopf, New York, 1939. Although at times little more than a seedy, sentimental piece of hackwork, the lessons to be learned from this "masterpiece" of its genre and moment are worth the dive.
-Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1926. This seminal work of the clue-laden "whodunit" relies on a more proper vocabulary than Chandler, and thus may be finished in a less torrid manner. Aspects of the story recall a certain debt to the classics, particularly the story of Oedipus, persisting in his curiosity until the awful truth has mastered him; in Poirot we have a Tiresius.
-Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., New York, 1934. When speaking of "clue-laden" works composed in Britain during the twenties, we must not forget the poem which had a seismic impact upon all letters in English, a mystery fit for the student-reader-writer as detective.
-Fagles, Robert. The Odyssey of Homer. Viking, New York, 1996. Although I recommend the Fitzgerald translation for classrooms, as far as the story, images and sounds go, the Fagles translation has its merits. For one, he uses the traditional pronunciations and spellings used in the English tradition, rather than the intimidating and often confusing restored spelling used by Fitzgerald. There is also a pronouncing glossary, which can make teaching much simpler. Still, as poetry, I prefer the Fitzgerald translation. Regardless, the extended introduction offered by Fagles would be extremely helpful to students and teachers alike (as is the introduction offered by translator Richmond Lattimore to his version).
-Fitzgerald, Robert. The Odyssey of Homer. Doubleday, New York, 1961. Although line by line analysis of Homer's Greek may leave the purist gasping, and classicists often find reasons to rebuff it for making Homer sound like a Poundian bard, full of monosyllabics, under the spell of, say, Beowulf, rather than the Mediterranean poet found in the Greek, there may not be a more enjoyable and gripping rendering of the text in English. I have found the translation of Cook (1967) very good, much closer to Homer as Homer would be, but still, the effect of the counterpoint is to Cook's disadvantage. Chapman and Bryant may be brought in for a lesson now and then, as well as chapters of Pope. Fitzgerald also supplies some essays as a postscript, concerning the real geography of Greece, issues of translation and tradition, and interpretation of various mysteries of the text.
-Parker, Robert B. Looking for Rachel Wallace. Delacorte Press, New York, 1980. Parker's work is, as Chandler's, at times, horrendously cliché, but holds its own despite this necessary shortcoming of the genre. I especially enjoyed the critique of the hero and feminism the plot makes possible. Fecund comparisons of formulaic elements may be made between this work and The Big Sleep. Whereas Chandler gives us an eerie LA, Parker provides us with a cheery Boston; whereas Chandler gives us rain, Parker gives us snow. Both Marlowe and Spenser carry around large quantities of adolescent sentiment about truth and justice, yet both know the power of timely action and the need to get what one wants.
-Winks, Robin W. Ed. Detective Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice-Hall, 1980. This book has proven vital as a spine for the research undertaken in writing this unit. The essays fall under five major headings: The Genre Examined, A History of the Type, Literary Analysis, A Closer Look at Specific Authors, and Epilogue: An Eye to the Future. This reader especially benefited from essays by Auden, Sayers, Wilson, Cawelti, and Barzun. The Appendix and Bibliography of this collection are indispensable to the teacher.