The purpose of this Master's thesis has been to explore attitudes concerning the appropriateness of crime fiction as a part of the book selection of the public library, on the part of the Swedish public library and its principals.

In connection with this aim we have also investigated the more complex problem of finding a balance between the idea of educating the people, which was the initial aim of the Swedish public library, and the will to satisfy the publics need for recreational literature.

In this thesis we show that finding this balance to a great degree has coloured the ongoing Swedish library debate and that the arguments for and against the appropriateness of the public libraries offering recreational reading have fluctuated through the years and that the motives behind these arguments have varied with the prevailing political winds.

The crime fiction genre has figured in this debate as a punching bag and source of irritation.

In order to widen the background behind the questions that have been investigated we have also chosen to study the occurrence of the crime fiction genre in older core collection catalogues and in recent years lending statistics.

We also discuss the problem of defining crime fiction and investigate if the attitude of the library towards the detective novel has been influenced by the journals and literary societies that have grown up around the interest for crime fiction in the last 30 years, and the fact that a special research library was created in 1989.