This is an interdisciplinary PhD that draws upon social and political history, the sociology of culture and criminology, as well as film, literary and cultural criticism. While attempts to provide a cultural sociology of crime fiction have previously concentrated on the relationship of audiences to text the emphasis here is very much on the production process itself. This emphasis on production rather than consumption complements the relationship between political and vulgar economy. By rooting crime narratives in the social and political processes that created them, I aim to reveal what crime narratives tell us about the class struggle, alienation, primitive rebellion and the social crisis and changes in the state form in Britain between 1948 and 2000.