The BFI Companion to Crime

No other book provides such comprehensive and authoritative information on the entire development of the genre throughout its history.

The BFI Companion to Crime offers a complete guide to all forms of crime on film. Prison drama, heist movies, films about juvenile delinquents, serial killers, bank robbers and many other sub-genres and motifs are given detailed treatment. There are articles too on the historical and social background to movie crime including the FBI, the Mafia, drugs, the Japanese yukuza, Prohibition, boxing, union rackets, poisoning and prostitution. Real life criminals such as Al Capone, Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd appear, as do giants of fictional detection such as Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Maigret, Philip Marlow and Hercule Poirot. There are entries on literary sources of the crime film including such authors as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Cornell Woolrich, Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane. And of course, there are the films themselves, with over 500 entries on both the classics and the cult films of the genre, including many from Europe and the Far East.
-- A unique and accessible reference book celebrating the teeming crime genre