Charles Dickens, the great 19thcentury storyteller, and Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most distinguished and readable writers alive, have an important, though rarely acknowledged, element in common: The majority of their works fall into the category of mystery, crime, and suspense.

For Dickens, the most obvious example is “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” conceived to rival his friend Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone” as the greatest detective novel of its time. Regrettably, Dickens died before it could be completed.

“Bleak House” is a milestone in the history of detective fiction. Inspector Bucket, the first significant policeman in literature, must solve the murder of a blackmailing lawyer. In “Oliver Twist,” the nefarious Fagin leads a band of underage criminals. In “Barnaby Rudge,” a subplot involves the efforts of Geoffrey Haredale to find the murderer of his brother.

An early story, “A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second” is often cited as the inspiration for Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In “Three Detectives,” Dickens shows the workings of the newly created Metropolitan Police Force, which also appears in “Great Expectations” and “Our Mutual Friend.” Even his first book, “Sketches by Boz,” contains stories of the Bow Street Runners, the precursors of the official police.

While the versatile Ms. Oates has worked in virtually every area of literature, including children’s books, poetry, criticism, plays, and opera librettos, she has most often, especially in recent years, turned to crime and suspense fiction.

In addition to her 11 full-length pseudonymous suspense novels, Ms. Oates has produced novellas guaranteed to cause sleeplessness. “Zombie” portrays a young man who is arguably the most believable and terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever to be brought to fictional life. “Rape: A Love Story” describes a crime so heinous and brutal that it remains in the consciousness longer than a reader might like. “Black Water” is the fictionalized version of Ted Kennedy’s infamous night with Mary Joe Kopechne, for which many believe he should have been jailed, not re-elected.

Ms. Oates’s novels are no less disturbing. “We Were the Mulvaneys” returns to the author’s frequently rehashed, yet always horrifying, story of a rape and the events that follow. “Mysteries of Winterthurn” is a gothic tale in which the detective-hero deals with three cases of mystery and murder all set in the place of his birth.

The new novel by the author, “Black Girl/White Girl” (Ecco, 272 pages, $25.95), refers to mysteries, not all of which are tied up neatly.

The central characters from which the title derives are Minette Swift, a black girl at a prestigious liberal college, and her roommate, Genna Hewitt-Meade, the daughter of a civil rights attorney.

Ms. Oates, who has often been rightly extolled for her sensitive portrayal of black characters, has, in Minette, created a young woman who is as appealing as a cold sore. Rude, uncommunicative, arrogant, and sarcastic, she makes no friends at school.

Even less attractive is Minette’s roommate who, having been raised by a hippie mother and anarchic father to hate the fact that she is white, does everything she can to win the affection of her black “sister.” When a series of apparently racially motivated events harass Minette, it is a shock to the famously liberal college. Finally, she dies a violent and terrible death. (No secrets divulged here; this is presented in the first paragraph.) Genna, living in fear that she will be accused of the attacks on Minette, blames herself for the death of her “best friend.

“Black Girl/White Girl” is a courageous book, offering little to warm the heart of blacks or whites who took extreme positions in the heated racial atmosphere of post-Vietnam America.

The gentle yet powerful voice of Ms. Oates has underlined the point that, like so many other important philosophical and political issues, it is not a question of black or white, but of shades of gray.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.