ABSTRACT
This article is based on the premise that crime fiction, as a literary genre and also as means of recording and expressing (fictional) experiences, allows the analysis/interpretation and representation of certain collecting practices and of socio-historical references. As a productof studies onbibliophilia, the article takes five police novels written by the American John Dunning as empirical field, and, through the analytical reading of these books, proposes, theoretically and methodologically, to identify and observe the informational issues that permeate/emerge from value dynamics found in the plots. The flow of books as goods and objects of collection, and their passage into and out of the market situation, result from the complex convergence of social, temporal, and cultural aspects. Thus, the article turns to the processes of (de)valuing of books, in order to elucidate what can be deduced about the bibliophile universe, and what, in this fictional universe, constitutes and represents informational practices used by/in a non-fictionalcollecting universe.
Keywords:
Bibliophilia; Crime fiction; Value; Information