Cut!: Popular anxieties in crime novels

Even if I hadn't known that postwar masculine anxiety was one of the staples of American pop culture and psychology, I might have guessed it from Lester Dent's Honey in His Mouth (1956) and Charles Runyon's Color Him Dead (1963); each has a castrated character.

From the same period, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is famously supposed to have played on the era's political fears. Were movies and crime novels of the 1950s and 1960s especially rife with political, sexual, and social anxiety? What crime novels (or movies or TV shows), whether from that time or any other, make contemporary fears and anxieties part of the story?

***

Celebrate Mystery Month over at Booklist's Likely Stories blog, which will feature posts from a wide variety of crime fiction blogs, journals, and magazines throughout the month. Guest posters talk about their publications and what they have to offer, and they point readers' way to even more blogs and websites. Have a look, won't you? Support your local library, and let it support you!

 © Peter Rozovsky 2012