This book reveals subversive representations of gender, race and class in detective dime novels (1860-1915), arguing that inherent tensions between subversive and conservative impulses-theorized as contamination and containment-explain detective fiction's ongoing popular appeal to readers and to writers such as Twain and Faulkner. | Dime Novels And The Roots Of American Detective Fiction by P. Bedore, Paperback | Indigo Chapters