The Changing Role of Cadavers

American novelist Amor Towles, who may be best known for his books A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway, has also edited the forthcoming collection, The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023. In his introduction—recently reprinted in The New York Times—Towles looks back at how the cadaver, the central focus of so many whodunits in the 1920s and ’30s, evolved to become a more minor presence in hard-boiled detective fiction, and finally a mere prop in serial-killer yarns.