With deep roots in regional American Gothic literary traditions, detective fiction serves as a source of both spooky entertainment and a cultural critique of corruption and the abuse of power in the United States.

American Gothic detective fiction weaves together familiar elements like hostile environments, extreme jeopardy, and intuitive investigators to target anxieties within American culture. Keli Matsen argues that the way authors draw from multiple genres in American Gothic detective mysteries allows them to examine how the struggles between civility and savagery, authenticity and pretense, and order and chaos have evolved in response to regional American social values and concerns.

Each chapter features an influential representative author--Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Katharine Green, Mark Twain, and Dashiell Hammett--and offers unique regional perspectives on transgressive crimes and their disentanglement.