Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

From Agatha Christie's Poirot to Benedict Cumberbatch's memorable portrayal of Sherlock Holmes,

crime fiction has long been popular.

So in today's episode, we're looking at the genre's history

and how it has affected attitudes to crime over the years.

For this Everything You Wanted to Know episode,

Isabel King put your questions to crime writer

and expert in the history of crime writing,

Martin Edwards.

So, Martin, I just want to start with a really basic question of how do you define crime fiction?

Well, Isabel, a basic question, but a pretty tricky one because so many different books are on the perimeter of the genre,

that it's hard to come up with an all-encompassing definition that really works and is yet meaningful.

So the way I like to look at it is to think of crime fiction as involving stories where the central focus is on

a crime and also on entertaining the reader. And there are many, many individual novels ranging from

Tostoevsky in Crime and Punishment, Kafka, the trial, John Fowles, the collector, and many more that

may or may not be seen by some people as fitting within crime fiction, but their outliers.

I think that entertainment is the key, and focus on crime. It's as simple as that.

What are the sub-genres of crime fiction? Well, again, because

it's such a very broad church,

there are many different sub-genres.

The classic detective story

where you're either a private

...