Reading offered relief and distance, especially the alternate worlds of science fiction and history. Mysteries promised something better once I discovered them: the assurance that things made sense, that evildoers were punished, and order could be restored.

The first female detective is generally agreed to have been "G", the hero of "The Female Detective," an 1864 novel soon to be republished by the Briti...

Here are the authors and their creations who, in my view, changed the detective game.

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and other Agatha Christie characters are now under American ownership. Acorn Media Group announced ...

Out this week, "Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making" is the second volume compiled from Agatha Christie's notes and letters based on 73 unpublished ...

Much information about writer Agatha Christie has been uncovered over the past few weeks, from her love of surfing to a riveting discovery made in Eng...

'Surfing looks perfectly easy. It isn't. I say no more. I got very angry and fairly hurled my plank from me. Nevertheless, I determined to return on the first possible opportunity and have another go.

I confess to liking, collecting, sharing and savoring both mysteries and thrillers. My favorite sleuths are, like me, flawed and curious in an often dark, confusing and fallen world.

For many people, summer reading involves SPF, shirtlessness and bare feet in the grass. On a recent partly sunny Sunday afternoon on the Sheep Meadow ...

Most of us remember that time in our childhood when we picked up a book that we just couldn't put down. Our imaginations were such that it transported...

Last month, The New York Times ran a slideshow of Norman Mailer's Brooklyn Heights apartment, which will be up for sale shortly. This got us thinking ...

The Google doodle shows Poirot -- the only fictional character ever to receive a full-page obituary in the New York Times -- and a cast of characters ...

There's not a lot to look forward to if you're one of the 176 prisoners held in the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay -- no visits from loved...

All this Stieg Larsson bashing around here these days has been cause celebre for me to grab my own torch and pitchfork. Now I, like some of y...

Nine million people live in Sweden. Camilla Läckberg has sold three million books there. She is, her publisher boasts, "the most profitable native author in Swedish history."

The greatest mystery of detective fiction is why generations of readers have continued to read it in such huge numbers. Obviously, it is partly to do ...

The African crime writing duo pick the best books in their field, from established greats Agatha Christie and John Le Carré to newer names on the sce...