Panek, LeRoy Lad 1943-

PERSONAL: Born January 26, 1943, in Cleveland, OH; son of Lad (an industrial manager) and Alice (a teacher) Panek; married Susan Phoebus (a teacher), July 7, 1973; children: Alexander, Claire. Education: Marietta College, B.A., 1964; Lehigh University, M.A., 1965; Kent State University, Ph.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES: Home—Westminster, MD. Office—Department of English, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD 21157.

CAREER: McDaniel College, Westminster, 1968—, began as assistant professor, currently professor of English. Member of Carroll County Arts Council.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980; Edgar Allan Poe Award, Mystery Writers of America, 1981, for Watteau’s Shepherds, and 1988, for An Introduction to the Detective Story.

WRITINGS:

Watteau’s Shepherds: The Detective Novel in Britain, 1914-1940, Bowling Green University Press (Madison, WI), 1979.

The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890-1980, Bowling Green University Press (Madison, WI), 1981.

An Introduction to the Detective Story, Bowling Green University Press (Madison, WI), 1987.

Probable Cause: Crime Fiction in America, Bowling Green University Press (Madison, WI), 1990.

New Hard-Boiled Writers, 1970s-1990s, Bowling Green State University (Madison, WI), 2000.

The American Police Novel: A History, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2003.

Reading Early Hammett: A Critical Study of the Fiction Prior to the Maltese Falcon, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2004.

The Origins of the American Detective Story, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2006.

Contributor to magazines, including American Literature, Poe Studies, Armchair Detective, Clues, and Studies in Short Fiction.

SIDELIGHTS: LeRoy Lad Panek is best known as a pioneer in the critical study of the emergence of the detective story in modern fiction. A two-time Edgar Award winner, he helped create a new understanding of the significance of detective fiction in modern literary history. In The Origins of the American Detective Story, Panek traces the fictional precursors of the genre in the United States and the world, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue and continuing through Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous independent detective, Sherlock Holmes. Equally as important, however, Panek examines the social and legal trends that made detective fiction popular to a mass audience, including changes in the judicial system, the rise (and fall) of the reputation of the police, the emergence of forensic science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the role of muckraking and other socially conscious journalists, and many other factors. The Origins of the American Detective Story is “a critical and close scrutiny, especially intended for literary scholars,” according to a reviewer for Internet Book-watch, “but sure to fascinate passionate detective story enthusiasts.”

LeRoy Lad Panek commented: “Reading sensational fiction changed from a hobby to a mission when I realized how little extant criticism made sense to me. It was either jejune or unnecessarily abstruse. I was the first, I think, to describe detective stories as games or jokes instead of puzzles. More importantly, I have tried to discuss sensational fiction as literature as opposed to seeing it as mere entertainment or a kind of curious cultural artifact.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Literature, June, 2005, review of Reading Early Hammett: A Critical Study of the Fiction Prior to the Maltese Falcon, p. 439.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 2005, D.W. Madden, review of Reading Early Hammett, p. 1989.

Internet Bookwatch, May, 2007, review of The Origins of the American Detective Story.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2003, review of The American Police Novel: A History, p. 253; May, 2007, review of The Origins of the American Detective Story.*