Seeking to delineate the limits of crime, mystery and thriller
fiction using these stories’ manifest commonalities only sounds
like a simple endeavor. In fact, it’s as difficult and
frustrating as trying to put together a perfect list of must-
read books from the genre. Every time you think you’ve satisfied
all possible criteria, some additional work challenges your
descriptive boundaries.  Ask yourself this: Why is it that the
novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy L. Sayers,
Jo Nesbø and Sue Grafton are automatically shelved in bookshops
under Crime Fiction, yet other no-less-compelling tales of
mayhem and mystery—such as Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White
(1860), Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866)—usually find homes in
General Fiction? That last book’s absence from the crime
department is particularly puzzling, since Dostoyevsky’s story
is all about a brutal slaying in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the
perpetrator’s efforts to conceal