"Starting with Conan Doyle, and focusing in particular on the Golden Age of the genre, Victims or Villains uses multiple examples from the literature to trace the evolution of Jewish caricature in crime writing, and examines fictional representations of Jews in relation to growing antisemitic sentiment within British society. At the same time, the author analyses the reevaluation of Jewish stereotyping after 1930, both as a result of the natural development of the crime novel, and more immediately, in light of the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Holocaust."--BOOK JACKET.