TY - JOUR
AB -  REVIEWS fight to reverse, through understanding Bloch and reasserting the crucial importance of critical theory. [doi: ./fmls/cqv] WALTON,SAMANTHA. Guilty But Insane: Mind and Law in Golden Age Detective Fiction.Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Textual Perspectives), .  pp. £.. ISBN ––––. Samantha Walton’s Guilty But Insane is a compelling psychological study of crime novels from the Golden Age of detective fiction. Walton argues that these novels have a subtle and sophisticated engagement with their contemporary intellectual and cultural developments, particularly psychological and legal discourses of insanity, mental health and moral responsibility. In the second introductory chapter, she presents an eclectic summary of theories of mind that constituted the background to these discourses. Rather than characterizing the period as uniformly steeped in Freudian psychoanalysis, she suggests that there were conflicting ideas prevalent at the time, like neurological determinism, social Darwinism and psychoanalysis. In the first chapter, Walton examines the emergence of psychological insight as a mode of detection, particularly in the works of Agatha Christie and Gladys Mitchell. The second chapter examines Mitchell’s and Christianna Brand’s works in the context of contemporary medico-legal debates on insanity as a criminal defence. Walton examines, along with the professional conflict between the 
TI - Walton, Samantha. Guilty But Insane: Mind and Law in Golden Age Detective Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Textual Perspectives), 2015. 320 pp. £19.99. ISBN 978–0–19–872332–5
JF - Forum for Modern Language Studies
DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqv085
DA - 2015-10-12
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/walton-samantha-guilty-but-insane-mind-and-law-in-golden-age-detective-b0Zmw0N06f
SP - 508
EP - 508
VL - 51
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -