Scope and Contents ‘The Stuart Larkin Lectures’: text of a series of lectures delivered on three consecutive days by P D James in Toronto in 1986. The text of the first lecture sets out her intentions for all three lectures: 1) to attempt some definitions and then survey the history of the detective novel; 2) to describe how she herself set out on the task of writing the modern mystery; 3) to discuss some of the reasons why the detective continues to exert a hold on the imagination and an attempt...