大象传媒

Philip Dodd presents a special edition dedicated to crime. He talks to doyenne of crime writers PD James about her own work and her new book Talking about Detective Fiction. In it, she shares her personal thoughts on one of the most popular and enduring forms of literature from Sherlock Holmes to Inspector Rebus. James also discusses about the challenges, achievements and technical demands of a genre which has fascinated her for nearly 50 years as a novelist.

Critic Mike carlson and academic Shelly Godsland join Philip to compare literary detectives across Europe and see how their characters and their cases reveal specific things about places from Sweden to Sicily.

And Philip speaks to Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta, whose new book Codes of the Underworld studies the way crimials use non-verbal ways to get their messages across. In a culture where trust is at a premium and communication is neccessarily secret, criminal gangs have evolved elaborate and subtle ways of communication and exchange.