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Zur Mühlen identified crime fiction as a booming genre during the Weimar Republic and attempted to respond to it with socialist Krimis. She was aware of the formulaic nature of crime fiction, and capitalised on its familiar plot devices and motifs in order to open up a discussion of the injustices perpetrated by the wealthy, property-owning classes in a flawed society. She used the pseudonym Lawrence H. Desberry to appeal to readers of Anglo-American crime literature, and modelled her novels varyingly on the English murder mystery and the ‘hard-boiled’ US novel. It discusses the tensions that arise from appropriating a bourgeois form whose detective hero champions the preservation of law and order, and the restoration of well-being. Zur Mühlen's Krimis were rejected at the time by Communist intellectuals such as Johannes R. Becher, but ultimately prefigured the BPRS's attempt to appeal to a mass audience of Trivialliteratur with their own series.

Television drama in the late 1940s seemed to have a continuing uncertainty about the themes, form, and style it was taking. This brings to fore the ways in which the television service during this period was reddening itself with a prominent aid from television drama. Even though the post-war period saw an increase in the amount of drama on screen, repeat telecast of the plays was still considerable more reliable. The fact that mystery-murder and ‘horror’ productions were preferred during the post-war period along with drama with wartime themes, is exemplified by the late 1940s drama schedules of producing plays of the Gothic, supernatural, or thriller genres, generically known by television management as ‘Horror Plays’. The reopening of post-war service saw technical and stylistic changes such as those regarding camera movements, along with changes in programme content and scheduling.

In some murder mysteries, the amateur sleuth created by Camilla T. Crespi is Simona Griffo. She wears no fedora, nor does she talk out of the corner of her mouth. She is a transplanted Italian employed by a small New York advertising agency. From the first volume, Simona's Italian identity is built up through her zest for good food, preference for espresso, intuitive bonding with other Italian characters, experience in dubbing films in Italy, reversion to Italian speech when upset and especially through recollections of Rome — as when she sees a knife-sharpened little pencil and “remembered the Roman greengrocers, spare stubs safely secured behind their ears, adding up the bill on rough, wheat-yellow paper.” For Simona Griffo, freelancing amateur beset by “troublems,” to probe criminal acts and intents is not only a matter of answering questions and abetting justice.

This chapter argues that hard-boiled detective fiction provided disillusioned screenwriters with a platform to project a fantasy version of themselves and preserve what was left of their ego under studio employment. Where the screenwriter felt emasculated, creatively stunted, and expendable, the hard-boiled detective was characteristically tough, autonomous, and invaluable in taking care of the studio’s dirty work. Meanwhile, in their aim to disrupt the promotional façade of Hollywood, these writers found inspiration not only in the political limits of the screen but also in the industry’s ongoing efforts to regulate Hollywood as a place. A.C. and Carmen Edington’s novel The Studio Murder Mystery and Raoul Whitfield’s Death in a Bowl therefore created a critical lens through which to view the “real” Hollywood in the era of the talkies. These novels treat Hollywood Boulevard and the Hollywood Bowl as extensions of soundstages where stars perform their studio-mandated morals clause for an unsuspecting public. It is only by realizing that movie “magic” is no longer exclusive to studio lots that the detective can solve the mystery.

This chapter explores the significance of German participation in the film Blood and Black Lace. It discusses how Italy had signed a co-production agreement with West Germany in 1962 that started the passage from period Gothic to a thriller set in the present day. It also explains the Italian film makers' intention of joining the successful thread of the German so-called “krimis,” the murder mysteries inspired by the works of Edgar Wallace and produced by Preben Philipsen's Rialto film company in 1959. The chapter focuses on the distinct and well-defined tradition of mystery in Italy. It describes the genre known as “giallo,” which had been very popular since 1929 when the Italian publishing house, Mondadori launched a new editorial series called the Yellow Books (I Libri Gialli).

The story behind this show starts in the mid-1940s, when Dorothy and Herbert Fields got interested in Madame Tussaud's waxworks in London. They thought it would prove a dandy setting for a musical murder mystery, with a spinster heroine who at last finds romance. Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr optioned it, and sought a star for the lead, such as Ethel Merman, Bea Lillie, Celeste Holm, or Gisele MacKenzie. Each one would have tilted composition in a different direction, so all the show was at this point was an idea, a script that knew it was doomed to be rewritten, and a title, The Works. In any case, everybody turned it down. Not until Gwen Verdon was consulted and her husband, Bob Fosse, invited to direct it in a package deal was the show finally set.

An overview of Allen’s 1990s films, this chapter also summarizes the book’s recurring argument about Allen’s ambivalent attitude toward the art that he obsessively creates and the issue of cynicism that often arises from that conflict. Because the contrived endings of the American films he grew up watching reinforce rather than resolve the human existential bind, many of Allen’s ’90s films tend toward elliptical endings in imitation of the irresolvability of that condition, although there are also films like Manhattan Murder Mystery, in which he cleaves to the structures and emotional tenors of 1940s popular film. What makes Allen’s films significant even when they are less than perfect artworks is their incessant interrogation of the value of art to human lives, their questioning of the necessity of illusions to human psychic equilibrium. This chapter largely attempts to lay the thematic groundwork that existed before the watershed moment of the Soon-Yi scandal and the release of Husbands and Wives.

Burnett is a complete filmmaker who has not only directed but also photographed, edited, and written many films. This chapter puts emphasis on his talent as a screenwriter, using two very different projects as examples. Bless Their Little Hearts was written for director Billy Woodbury and is similar in many ways to Burnett’s Killer of Sheep. It tells the story of an unemployed black man in Watts who suffers a crisis of masculinity while he tries to find a job and keep his family together. Man in a Basket is an adaptation of Crazy Kill by noir novelist Chester Himes. Set in 1950s Harlem, Burnett describes it as Himes’s only love story. Burnett has long wanted to direct this film and is still trying to find backers.