The coming-of-age of a mature crime fiction in England, to which P. D. James has contributed prominently, can be attributed to a variety of disparate causes: the rapid changes in a society that had appeared for so long as monolithic; the end of the death...

[This entry was updated by Ann Sanders Cargill (Columbia, S.C.) from the entry by Bernard Benstock (University of Miami) in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 180-199.] The coming-of-age of a mature crime fiction in Engla...

P. D. James is the inheritor of some of the most distinguished literary mantles in popular fiction, those previously worn by detective-story writers who achieved near perfection in their craft. James's works hearken back to Agatha Christie's ingenious pl...

The Observer is running a column called Time to Go, a spoof about a writer intending suicide. It parodies a genuine Observer column written by Ruth Picardie while dying of breast cancer. Her friend INDIA KNIGHT can't see the joke READERS of The...

Andres Serrano has aimed his camera into the maw of a loaded Colt 45. He's looked into the black holes of a Klansman's hood and stared death in the face. A catalogue of Serrano's work has been ripped up in Congress. He's had Jesse...