This volume contains the lectures from the Tübingen Poetics Professorship 2017, titled "Poetics of Crime - The Poetics of Crime Literature." For a long time, crime novels, detective stories, noir fiction, and thrillers were considered trivial literature. However, neither literary history nor the current literary landscape justifies such a judgment. A 'poetics' of crime stories can be traced back to Greek myths - to Hermes, the thief, and Oedipus, the murderer, to Medea and Heracles, and even to the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers, Lot and Judas. Theft, murder, kidnapping, and rape form the plots of myths and their variations. These narratives revolve around the destruction of order, its restoration, family disputes, land appropriation and deception, kidnapping, extortion, and much more.