The "hard-boiled" detective story which originated in the 1930s with Dashiell Hammett is usually a form for liberal social doctrine. The "Who-DoneIt," of which No Future for Luana is a historically late example, on the other hand, is the detective fiction repository for conservative social thought. As in his Sac Prairie work and in his other Judge Peck mysteries, Derleth here is concerned with the status quo, with the need for a free people to have free use of fire arms to protect their property and their good names, with the idea that a criminal is a social abnormality which needs to be removed, and with the assumption that the victim deserves to be victimized. The detective in such a mystery serves to assure that property remains with those who worked for it, and that any interference with the assumptions of a capitalist, patriarchal society must...