Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper describes the author's current and past involvement in reading crime fiction, as a way of introducing 0 project intended to investigate how people communicate, on what terms and why, about their crime·reading practices. Astudy involving members of the Melbourne based readership network, Sisters in Crime, demonstrates that the discourses of value that circulate about crime fiction have a long history and can be related to debates about mass culture and consumerism circulating from the mid·nineteenth century anwards-{[ebates which the author relates to her own experience as a graduate and teacher of English literature' (Author's abstract).