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This chapter presents the book’s theoretical framework, which consists in an understanding of crime fiction as an inherently mobile genre. Where crime fiction has traditionally, which typically means since the first texts of Edgar Allan Poe, been seen as static and staid, it is argued that it is in fact defined by three forms of mobility: 1) the mobility of meaning (the textual fluidity that characterizes crime fiction irrespective of the detective’s authoritative solution); 2) the mobility of genre (resulting from the interplay of affirming and violating genre rules and boundaries); and 3) transnational mobility (crime fiction as a transnational practice characterized by the multidirectional transmission and adaptation of styles, structures and themes across national borders). This theory of crime fiction mobility enables a comprehensive reinterpretation of the history of the genre that also has profound ramifications for our reading of individual crime fiction texts.