This revised and updated study of crime fiction contains a detailed postscript which deals with the most recent work of British crime writers, including P.D. James and Ruth Rendall, writing as Barbara Vine, and considers American trends in crime writing over the past decade by writers such as James Ellroy and Thomas Harris. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and other books like Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, which treat the crime story as a metaphysical joke, also come in for sharp comment. In 1990, Julian Symonds was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger for services to crime literature.