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Mystery Fiction

History

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The Problem of Definition

  • Detective story, crime fiction, mystery, police novel?
  • Two essential qualifications:

Must present a problem or puzzle.

The problem must be solved by an amateur or professional detective through the process of deduction.

  • Rigid classifications don’t work.
  • All variations of sensational literature.

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Forms of Mystery Fiction

  • Golden Age Writers
  • Hard-boiled Private Eyes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler
  • Cozies
  • Police Procedurals of Ed McBain
  • Classic private-eye puzzlers of Sue Grafton and Robert Parker
  • Medical mysteries of Patricia Cornwell and Michael Palmer.

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Popularity

  • More widely read than any other class of fiction in the US and United Kingdom.

1995: 63 million mystery and detective novels published.

2004: 5,000 mystery titles published in U.S. alone.

  • Fascination with death and crime, good & evil.
  • Pleasurable excitement
  • Unlike real life, injustice is redressed.

Crime literature from the 1890s offered a reassuring world in which criminals were discovered and punished.

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Why Read Mysteries?

  • “Detective stories keep alive a view of the world that ought to be true. Of course, people read them for fun, for diversion. . . . But underneath they feed a hunger for justice. . . . You show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.” “Detective stories contain a dream of justice. They project a vision of the world in which wrongs are righted, and villains are betrayed by clues that they did not know they were leaving. . . .A world in which murderers are caught and hanged, and innocent victims are avenged, and future murders are deterred” Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (Lord Peter Wimsey speaking in Thrones, Dominations, 1936/1988)

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Cultural Origins

  • Which came first, the detective story or the detective?
  • Some historians assert that in order for there to be fictional detectives, there first needed to be real-life detectives.
  • Others believe that murder and detection can be traced to the Bible and Herodotus.
  • Detectives and police forces are relatively new professions that developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

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Cultural Origins

  • In 1812, Napolean’s Gendarmerie included Le Surete Nationale, Europe’s first real detective bureau.
  • In England in 1829, Sir Robert Peel reorganized the Bow Street Runners (constables organized to catch criminals) into a modern force that would be more efficient and better trained.
  • In 1842, Sir James Graham created a special unit he called “The Detective Police,” thus giving for the first time the title “detective” to the man whose job was to deduce the criminal from clues.
  • In 1850, Alan Pinkerton set up his private detective agency in Chicago.

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First Real-life Modern Detectives

  • Sureté’s Francois Eugene Vidocq provided the first modern detective tome when he published his Mémoires in 1828.
  • Played both sides of the law and served as a key police informer with the Paris police.
  • Promoted to police officer and became chief of the Sureté in 1812.

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First Real-life Modern Detectives

  • Claimed to have solved more than 1,000 crimes.
  • He was almost a national hero in France, where his efforts brought a 40% reduction in crime between 1812 and 1820.
  • Opened the world’s first private detective agency in 1834.

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First Crime Narrative: Mémoires

  • So fictionalized it can be classified as either fact or fiction.
  • Vidocq can be considered the innovator of both mystery fiction and true crime.
  • In his fictionalized tales, Vidocq

goes undercover in disguise,

sets elaborate traps for criminals,

and ferrets out clues on the streets of Paris.

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Pinkerton and the Birth of the Private Eye

  • In 1849, Allan Pinkerton became the first detective of the Chicago police department.
  • Known as a “rough and tumble cop,” narrowly escaped several attempts on his life.
  • Went undercover in Chicago as a postal clerk investigating mail thefts.
  • In early 1850s, Chicago police were swamped with street crime and vice, beset with payoffs from criminals.

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Pinkerton and the Birth of the Private Eye

  • Pinkerton saw an opportunity for a skilled detective to open his own private police service (in 1850).
  • Though not the first (a small agency in St. Louis did private policing) Pinkerton’s firm became the largest and most successful.

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Pinkerton and the Birth of the Private Eye

  • The agency’s logotype—an eye with the slogan “We never sleep” inspired the term “Private Eye.”

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Pinkerton and the Birth of the Private Eye

  • After President Lincoln’s election, Pinkerton was hired to prevent possible attempts on his life.
  • On the way to Lincoln’s inaugural, Pinkerton and his operatives uncovered a plot to kill the president and spirited Lincoln out of the city before the plot could succeed.
  • Pinkerton established professional standards for his operatives.

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Pinkerton and the Birth of the Private Eye

  • Pinkerton’s men lived the themes that later became the core of detective fiction.
  • Regularly used disguises and went undercover.
  • Associated with criminals and law enforcement at will.
  • Regularly outperformed the police in a series of high-profile cases.

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Fictional Origins

  • First written account of murder—Genesis.
  • Certain elements of mystery writing found in early gothic novels:

Castle of Otronto by Horace Walpole (1764) with its castles, dungeons, and dark passages.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) creates tension by relating events that seem supernatural but are not.

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Fictional Origins

  • Characteristic note of crime literature first struck in Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794).
  • Caleb Williams focuses on a murder, detection, and pursuit of the murderer by the person who has discovered his guilt.
  • However, the story denies all the assertions to be made later through the detective story: rule of law is wholly evil vs. rule of law as an absolute good.

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Birth of Mystery Fiction in Literature

  • Edgar Allan Poe, considered the undisputed father of the detective story.
  • Poe--inspired by Vidocqu—published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841 in Graham’s Magazine.
  • Poe introduces C. Auguste Dupin, the detective who,

through superior intellect and brilliant powers of observation and detection,

sorts out clues and identifies the murderer of an old woman and her daughter.

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“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

  • Poe’s first “tale of ratiocination” or logical reasoning.
  • The first detective series.
  • The first “locked-room” mystery that proposes the puzzle of a dead body found in a room which seems to be effectively sealed.
  • Followed by “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter” (1845)

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Inspired Poe

  • Poe’s narrator, Dupin’s roommate, mentions Vidocq’s approach, bemoaning its lack of sophistication:
  • In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Poe wrote, "Vidocq was a good guesser, and a persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations."
  • Dupin was not a member of the police force but an amateur, his cases recorded by his roommate, setting the pattern for Sherlock’s Dr. Watson.

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Dupin vs. Vidocq

  • Vidocq—detective as a man of action.
  • Dupin—sleuth as cerebral

what he thinks is more important than what he does

outperforms the police.

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Poe’s Innovations

  • The amateur sleuth

Capable

Intelligent and analytical

Apparently omniscient

  • The detective’s partner (and chronicler), the somewhat less intelligent sounding board for the detective.
  • The stereotype of the ineffective police

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Poe’s Contributions

  • The locked-room mystery
  • The innocent suspect in jeopardy
  • The laying of false clues
  • The first use of elementary ballistics
  • The use of careful detection through the observation of clues

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Poe’s Contributions

  • The use of a trap laid for the true villain
  • The commission of the crime by the most unlikely person
  • The solution through the efforts of the detective
  • The first series character
  • The pattern followed by most detective fiction for the next 100 years

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Poe’s Contemporaries

  • Charles Dikens

Bleak House (1853), first British literary detective, Inspector Bucket, solves the crime through footwork.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), considered a perfect murder mystery because Dickens’s death left it unfinished.

  • Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White (1860)

The Moonstone (1868), considered by some the first English detective novel.

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Poe’s Contemporaries

  • Anna Katherine Green

The Leavenworth Case (1878), first detective novel written by a woman.

Introduced Violet Strange, a woman detective (not well received)

  • Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), extremely successful, selling 375,000 copies by 1898.

Wrote 136 novels up to his death in 1932.

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Mystery Genre as Popular Reading

  • Between Dupin (1841) and Holmes (1886), literary and social events contributed to the success of the genre.
  • 19th Century and the Industrial Revolution marked the emergence of

The middle class

Public education

The growth of a large reading populace beyond the upper class.

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Mystery Genre as Popular Reading

  • The Industrial Revolution brought about the growth of the city and an economy and society that valued portable property over land.
  • The art of criminal investigation began to grow as a science.
  • The police, the source of public hostility in the past, began to gain acceptance as a result of an expanding middle class who now viewed the police as protectors.
  • Crime literature switched its sympathies away from the criminal as sympathetic hero.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

  • 50 years after Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized mystery with his Sherlock Holmes.

Brilliant detective who gathers clues.

Ponders them privately.

Fingers the villain in a dramatic scene of revelation.

Has a worshipful roommate and chronicler, Dr. Watson, an everyman of average intelligence, awed by the detective’s deductive powers.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  • Took the Poe formula and galvanized it into life and popularity.
  • Wrote 56 short stories and 4 novels about Holmes.
  • Used a small number of basic plots.
  • Since early detective fiction did not go in much for murder, Doyle’s plots focused on

The returned avenger

The stolen inheritance

The secret society

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Sherlock Holmes

  • First appears in A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887 though written in1886.
  • Based on consulting surgeon Dr. Joseph Bell.
  • At first outrages several typical Victorian era conventions:

Takes drugs (cocaine)

Suffers from depression

Proud of his vast fields of ignorance in a time that valued the acquisition of knowledge.

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Sherlock Holmes

  • Immune from ordinary human passions (no love interest)
  • Occasionally disregards the law
  • Is a master of disguise: drunken-looking groom, a nonconformist clergyman
  • Superior analytical powers:

Given an old battered hat, he can deduce that its owner is highly intellectual, was once fairly well to do but is now poor, has been going down hill, and is under the influence of alcohol.

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The Holmes Myth

  • At the end of the second series of stories, Doyle killed off Holmes (plunging over Reichenbach Falls) (because “he takes my mind from better things.”)
  • Received hundred of letters imploring him to bring Holmes back and many lucrative offers.
  • Holmes returned in 1902 after an eight-year absence.

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The Golden Age

  • 1890-1940
  • A reasoning world in which those who tried to disturb the established order were discovered and punished.
  • Values from the 1890s to the beginning of World War II were those of a class of society that felt they had everything to lose by social change.

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The Golden Age

  • 1920s, British mysteries extremely popular, especially the “cozy”

featuring “a small village setting

a hero with faintly aristocratic family connections,

a plethora of red herrings,

and a tendency to commit homicide with sterling silver letter openers and poisons imported from Paraguay.”

  • Golden Age mysteries adhered to a prescribed format with little variation.

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The Golden Age

  • Detectives were typically amateurs.
  • Protagonists were typically male.
  • Female protagonists were usually

Frail

Elderly

Passive

Non-aggressive, non-threatening women

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The Golden Age

  • Social order is fixed (typically upper-class).
  • Women generally are confined to traditional roles.
  • Novels sometimes casually anti-Semitic, anti-foreign, and anti-anyone not of the upper-middle class.

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Golden Age Writers of the 1920s

  • Many of the best-known authors of this period were British women.
  • Queens of Crime included

Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham

  • Other notable female writers of the age:

Mary Roberts Rinehart, Ngaio Marsh

Patricia Highsmith

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Successors of Holmes: Early Golden Age Writers

  • R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943) introduced Dr. Thorndyke (The Red Thumb Mark) (1907).
  • Thorndyke often counted as the first detective to use forensic science.
  • Relied on technical expertise and laboratory analysis.
  • Thorndyke series ran for 35 years.

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Successors of Holmes: Early Golden Age Writers

  • G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) embedded the detective puzzle in a theological fable featuring a clergyman sleuth,
  • Started a tradition of clerical detectives.
  • Chesterton favored the cozy mystery, the domestic murder,

with a millionaire as the typical murder victim

the scope of the investigation narrowed to limited time, limited space, and a limited number of suspects,

all the clues revealed to the reader as well as to the detective.

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Successors of Holmes:
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

  • Helped establish the rules of fair play.
  • Father Brown stories first appeared in 1908 in the Saturday Evening Post.
  • Emphasis on motive and character freed detective fiction from the copycat techniques of the rivals of Sherlock Holmes.

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Successors of Holmes:
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

  • Father Brown had the ability to get inside the criminal’s mind and heart and could go unnoticed since criminals thought him naïve.
  • Father Brown

Known for his meek manner, his umbrella, and his brown-paper parcels.

One of the few early detectives—perhaps the only one—to escape the shadow of Holmes.

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Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)

  • Debuted in 1907 with the serialized publication of The Circular Staircase.
  • Introduced the heroine in jeopardy who has to be rescued (or later—has to rescue herself)
  • “Had-I-But-Known” vein—so called because the first-person heroine acknowledges in retrospect the risk involved in amateur detecting.

An obvious form of foreshadowing with the narrator hinting of looming disaster,

Lamenting his or her course of action which has precipitated some unfortunate series of events, and

Almost never making explicit the nature of the mistake, until both the narrator and the reader have realized the consequence of the error. If done well, this literary device can add suspense.

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Agatha Christie (1890-1976)

  • Born in Devon, England, in 1890.
  • Began writing detective fiction while working as a nurse during World War I.
  • Published more than 80 novels.
  • First novel: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) introduces Hercule Poirot.
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a puzzle story, ushered in the “Golden Age” of detective fiction.

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Agatha Christie

  • Books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in other languages.
  • Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
  • A demon plotter.
  • Deep understanding of human nature.
  • Employs psychological principles of human behavior to solve crimes.

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Agatha Christie

  • Made “Dame of the British Empire”
  • Two most famous detectives

Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian professional.

Jane Marple, the English amateur detective and village spinster

  • Typical Settings

English country houses

Some exotic settings that reflect her travels

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Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)

  • Novels and short stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.
  • Wimsey, debonair style conceals a keen intelligence and much learning.
  • More literary style.
  • Mixed reviews:

Some consider her the finest detective story writer of the 20th century

Others consider her long-winded and snobbish.

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Introduction to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

  • Published in 1926, an instant success.
  • Fourth in the series of Poirot Mysteries.
  • Most controversial of her novels.
  • A village deep in the English countryside, a widow’s suicide, rumors of blackmail, a stabbing.
  • Look for suspects, motives, clues, attitudes toward lower class and foreigners.

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Elements of Classic,
Golden Age Mystery

There must be a puzzle to be solved by the author, detective, and reader together (preferably a murder).

The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery.

Clues must be present and plainly described (and declared by the detective), even if they are cleverly disguised and phrased ambiguously.

The author must not play tricks or lie, either in 3rd person or through the mouth of a character who is pronounced trustworthy.

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Elements of the Classic Mystery

5. The detective, who solves the crime, is set apart from everybody, including the reader, for eccentric habits/appearance.

Exceptional intelligence and keen observer.

Practice of making obscure statements instead of just revealing deductions and revelations as the occur.

Not permitted to have a love interest unless one of the partners is in danger of being accused of the crime.

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Elements of the Classic Mystery

6. The solution to the crime

Must be found out by logical deduction and detection, not luck, accident, or unmotivated confessions.

Must come about by naturalistic means.

Must not depend upon unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

Must never turn out to be accident or suicide.

Must be apparent—Provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it.

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Elements of Classic Mystery Fiction

7. The detective’s friend

Often tells the tale

Must not conceal his own thoughts from the reader

And his intelligence must be slightly, but only very slightly, below that of the average reader.

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Elements of Classic Mystery Fiction

8. Villain must be some character who has appeared or been mentioned fairly plainly, prominently, and early in the story.

However, S.S. Van Dine (1936) and Ronald Knox (1929) insisted that the murderer

Could not be the detective or one of the official investigators.

Could not be a servant (The butler didn’t do it!).

Could not be a professional criminal or part of a secret society.

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Elements of Classic Mystery Fiction

The motive must be personal, rational, and clear, even if hidden as a “clue”; must not be political; and should reflect the reader’s everyday experience.

The methodology of the crime should at least seem plausible even if impractical.

No unknown, undiscovered poison.

No secret passageways.

No supernatural means.

No pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices.

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Elements of the Classic Mystery

Official police (or if the detective is a policeman, his compatriots) typically are bumblers, who even if they discover useful evidence miss the point.

There should be accuracy as to the reality of settings, judicial proceedings, and even hierarchy.

There must not be any sex, explicit or implied.

Novels often include maps or floor plans of the house and grounds.

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S.S. Van Dine’s 20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories Forbade Certain Tricks and Devices:

  • Comparing a cigarette butt with the suspect's cigarette.
  • Using a séance to frighten the culprit into revealing himself.
  • Using phony fingerprints.
  • Using a dummy figure to establish a false alibi.
  • Learning that the culprit was familiar because the dog didn't bark.
  • Having "the twin" do it.
  • Using knock-out drops.
  • If the murder is in a locked room, it has to be done before the police have actually broken in.
  • Using a word-association test for guilt.
  • Having the solution in a coded message that takes the detective until the end of book to figure out.

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Fr. Ronald Knox's Ten Commandment List for Detective Novelists, 1929

The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

All supernatural or preternatural [outside of nature] agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

No Chinaman must figure in the story.

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Fr. Ronald Knox's Ten Commandment List for Detective Novelists, 1929

6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.

8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

9.The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

10.Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

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The Detective’s Oath

  • Composed by G. K. Chesterton (the Father Brown series), for membership in the famous British Detection Club:
  • "Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?"

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The Controversy of Roger Ackroyd

  • The novel nearly got Christie kicked out of the Detection Club for violating the rules of "fair play" with the reader.
  • Only the tie-breaker vote of president Dorothy Sayers kept Christie in the club.

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The Controversy of Roger Ackroyd

  • The deceit of the story is making the murderer the local doctor who tells the story and acts as Poirot’s Watson.
  • It violated one of Knox’s Detective Decalogue which said that the thoughts of the Watson must not be concealed.
  • It violated Knox’s rule that the detective or narrator must not commit the crime.

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The Controversy of Roger Ackroyd

  • The disguise principle insists that

The truth must be hidden throughout the book.

This truth must be accessible to the reader.

  • Christie perfected the disguise principle by using three techniques:

Disguising the murder as someone else (his public image or profession).

Distracting the reader to other more suspicious clues or characters.

Exhibition—making the truth invisible by making it apparent everywhere.

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Christie’s Techniques

  • Primarily disguise.

Sheppard masquerades as someone unlikely to be a murderer.

The murdered is concealed in the narration itself (since the 1st person narrative is conventionally the mouthpiece for truth).

  • Least Likely Suspect as Guilty.

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Christie’s Techniques

  • Lie by Omission—Sheppard does not tell the whole truth.

Look for ellipses

  • Double-edge discourse—statements mean two completely contrary things.

What Sheppard says may not mean what we think.

But we must reread to understand his words “correctly.”

“I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone.” (p. 55)

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The Second Golden Age:
1970-1990

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Publisher Realizations of the 1970s-1990s

  • One was regionalism.

Settings moved from typical urban areas and English villages.

Tony Hillerman’s southwestern settings featuring Native Americans.

  • The second was inclusion (female private eyes).
  • The third was improved ethnic and racial representation.

The Rabbi David Small & Father Dowling mysteries,

James McClure’s South African mysteries,

James Patterson’s African-American detective Alex Cross

  • And fourth was Specialization.

Dick Francis’s horse racing mysteries,

Harlan Coben’s sport mysteries

Patricia Cornwell’s forensic mysteries.

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Contemporary Categories

  • Too much action, too violent, not enough violence, too flowery, too descriptive. Each reader tends to be drawn to certain types and styles.
  • The traditional, classic or “cozy”
  • The hard-boiled or PI crime novel
  • The soft-boiled, PI crime novel.
  • The police procedural
  • The historical crime novel
  • The traveler’s crime novel
  • The comedy/caper

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The Contemporary Traditional, Classic, or Cozy Mystery, 1970s to Present

  • Written largely in the tradition of the Golden Age novel.
  • A novel of manners with an aura of crime.
  • A story of intimate relationships skewed by anger or jealousy, fear or cruelty, focused on broken relationships.
  • A story where justice will prevail, goodness is celebrated, and decency is admired.
  • At story’s end, the criminal is punished and order is restored.
  • An enclosed setting (a cat is optional)
  • A good puzzle to be solved by an armature detective.

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Elements of the Contemporary Classic, Traditional Mystery

The puzzle. Who did it? At the beginning, neither the protagonist nor the reader knows.

Detection. The investigation of the crime constitutes the central action.

The sleuth as hero.

Generally a reluctant amateur.

Solves the puzzle through intelligence, perseverance, courage, strength, and moral conviction.

Seems to have a clear mandate to get involved in complicated personal relationships.

often seen as a nuisance or a busy body, especially by the crime’s perpetrator.

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Elements of Contemporary
Classic, Traditional Mystery

The Worthy Villain

Usually the murderer.

Tests limits of sleuth’s abilities.

Clever, resourceful, single-minded.

Usually motivated by greed, jealousy, or revenge.

The Victim

Generally should not be someone who is terribly missed.

Supporting Characters

Eccentric, exasperating, entertaining.

Never outrageously evil.

Often unrealistic police (who don’t seal off murder scenes).

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Elements of Contemporary
Classic, Traditional Mystery Fiction

Settings

Can take place anywhere.

Typically a confined setting with a limited pool of suspects.

Weather is often bad, isolating the characters from outside assistance or escape.

However, a long-running series can wipe out the population of a small town, so cozy authors often dispatch their sleuths on sea cruises, garden tours, and academic conventions.

Often maps and floor plans are included.

Romance

May play a part, but graphic sex is out.

If romance overshadows the mystery, it becomes romantic suspense (rather than a cozy).

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Elements of Contemporary
Classic, Traditional Mystery Fiction

Fair Play

All clues uncovered equally available to the reader.

All central characters are introduced early in the story.

All the clues are given.

May include red herrings (apparent clues that distract or mislead the reader).

Often ends in a gather-the-suspects scene in the library.

Climatic revelation does not present evidence that hasn’t already been disclosed.

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Elements of Contemporary
Classic, Traditional Mystery Fiction

Realism and Logic

Everything fits, makes sense, and could have happened.

Method of murder is not some unusual poison or outlandish weapon.

Little explicit violence, blood, gore, or sex:

“Their eyes said it all,” is about as steamy as it gets.

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Examples of Contemporary Classic, Tradition

  • Mary Higgins Clark, My Gal Sunday (1996)
  • Elizabeth George, Well-Schooled in Murder (1990)
  • P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh, a professional detective (and poet) attached to New Scotland Yard (introduced in 1962 and still detecting in 2006):

novels are in the tradition of English detective fiction, with razor-sharp observations of British society and coolly graphic descriptions of dead bodies.

have realistic and complex characterizations,

meticulously described settings,

complex motivations, and sophisticated plots.

Quality of her writing inspires debate over whether detective fiction can be great literature.

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Carolyn Hart

  • Author of 36 novels with more than 2.5 million books in print

Including 6 Henry O books

Including 17 Death on Demand books.

  • 1987 Death on Demand introduces Annie Laurance (mystery bookstore owner), Max Darling, and Broward’s Rock, SC.
  • Created a young couple who truly fall in love and treat each other with great respect to counteract the trend of female protagonists of having either failed or very dysfunctional relationships with the men in their lives.

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Carolyn Hart

  • Though she had 14 prior publications, Death on Demand propelled her success.
  • “When Death on Demand came out [in 1987], . . . I was really invisible as a writer. I’d sell a mystery here and there, and it would be published and immediately disappear into the black holes of publishing. I think New York at that time felt that mysteries were the province of the dead English ladies and hard-boiled American private eyes. So I got to the point that I thought, This is really stupid. I am going to write one more book, and this time I am not going to give any thought to the market. I’m not going to care about the fact that nobody seems to like mysteries. By setting it in a mystery bookstore, I can, through my protagonist, celebrate the mysteries I love, both present and past.”

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Carolyn Hart

  • Winner of Numerous Mystery Awards

Agatha Award 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993,1995, 2004

Anthony Award, 1990, Macavity Award, 1990

  • Noted for her

richly evoked Southern atmosphere,

ticklish wit,

wildly eccentric characters,

perplexing puzzles.

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Carolyn Hart

  • Showed that mysteries by women--without sex, violence, or undue cynicism, with a focus on relationships and communities and mature characters -- could outsell the tough-guys and British spies.
  • Books are peppered with references to other mystery writers, especially Agatha Christie.
  • Death on Demand series always has a mystery picture competition.

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The Hard-Boiled Tradition

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American Hard-Boiled Crime: 1920s-1940s

  • Distinctly American tough guy crime
  • Characters live in a world gone wrong
  • Began in the aftermath of World War I and continued through the Second World War
  • A world of economic and political disasters:

The folly of Prohibition and its gangsters

The growing evidence of illicit connections between crime, business, and politics in American cities.

Stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression

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Birth of Hardboiled Mystery:
The Pulps

  • “Hardboiled” from World War I, applied to tough drill sergeants who made men out of boys.
  • After World War I, term used to refer to any person or action that reflected a tough, unsentimental point of view.
  • The Black Mask (1920s), perhaps the most famous and respected pulp magazine and the birthplace of hardboiled mystery fiction.
  • Created by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan as a low-end cash cow to make up for losses on their high-toned literary magazine.

*

Birth of Hardboiled Mystery:
The Pulps

  • Black Mask writers updated the private-eye story to include the realities of the 1920s and shaped the hardboiled variety.
  • Printed on cheap, pulp paper and sold for a dime.
  • Other popular pulps included The Shadow, Detective Magazine, and Detective Fiction.
  • Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler began their careers writing for pulp magazines.

*

Characteristics of Hardboiled Mysteries

Writing style: Tough and gritty.

Usually incorporate violence and graphic descriptions of crime scenes.

Detectives typically paid professionals

Tough, independent, often solitary

Cynical city-dweller

Not necessarily an achiever

Protagonists might be the detective or the criminal.

*

Characteristics of Hardboiled Mysteries

Method: not always compatible with the law

Surrounding world: mostly hostile and aggressive

Setting: typically urbanized, big cities

Typical storyline: involves either the commission or the detection of a crime.

*

Characteristics of Hardboiled Mysteries

Basic narrative pattern: the lone investigator is pitted against brutal criminals who are often in league with a corrupt power structure.

Plot: Mixing of murders, organized crime, abuse of authority by officials, corruption in any level of society.

*

Characteristics of Hardboiled Mysteries

Narrative style is usually terse and colloquial (slang, every day language), often told from the 1st-person perspective.

Stories tend to emphasize character more than plot.

Exploration of guilt is fundamental.

Human nature sharply analyzed.

Often no clear distinction between guilt and innocence.

*

Characteristics of Hardboiled Mysteries

Two types of investigators:

The morally superior (Chandler’s Marlow)

Those more implicated in the world of corruption with their own capacity for violence (the novels of Hammett).

Unlike Holmes, cannot restore order and set all to rights.

  • Notable hard-boiled writers include Raymond Chandler, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, and Robert B. Parker.

*

Hardboiled vs. the Great Detective

  • Embraced and accepted violence
  • Pungent language
  • Instinctive
  • Fallible
  • Faith in his gun rather than reason
  • Avoided and scorned violence
  • Affected language
  • Omniscient
  • Largely infallible
  • Believed in power of reason

*

Harlan Coben (1962--)

  • His critically acclaimed first novel Deal Breaker debuted in 1995, launching his Myron Bolitar series.
  • Myron Bolitar, a wisecracking, tender-hearted sports agent sports agent mystery sleuth who reigns as the king of zippy one liners and loves his aging parents.
  • An idealistic, hopeless romantic; strong female characters.
  • Aided by an enigmatic tough guy "sidekick" and a spunky female assistant.

*

Harlan Coben (1962--)

  • Skillfully plotted, entertaining hardboiled PI novel (though Coben does not consider himself to be hardboiled).
  • Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award, and Anthony Award - the first author to win all three mystery awards.
  • After 7 Myron Bolitar novels, he published his first stand alone, Tell No One, the most decorated thriller of 2001:

nominated for an Edgar, an Anthony, a Macavity, a Nero, and a Barry

winner of the Audie Award for Best Audio Mystery/Suspense Book (read by Steven Weber)

#1 hardcover book on the Book Sense 76 list.

*

Harlan Coben

  • His themes focus on

Family – the powerful ties and bonds we all know.

Suburban America

Stories where the past reverberates and sends shock waves to the present.

Old secrets and missing people who may still be alive,

Love, loss, and redemption.

  • 8th in the Myron Bolitar series, Promise Me, available April 25, 2006.

*

*

Dashiell Hammett (1884-1961)

  • Stories based on his Pinkerton days.
  • Diamond-hard prose
  • Deadpan understatement
  • Tough private eye as “half gangster”
  • His lean writing style, cynical characters and complex plots brought a new energy to pulp magazines
  • His writing went on to define the genre in movies, radio, and television

*

Dashiell Hammett (1884-1961)

  • Best known for his tough guys, Sam Spade and the Continental Op, as well as debonair sleuths Nick and Nora Charles.

*

Dashiell Hammett (1884-1961)

  • The Maltese Falcon (1930) all the accouterments of the tough P.I. are in place:

The unrequited, loving secretary

The one-man agency

The private eye’s cop pal

The private eye’s cop adversary

The untrustworthy female client

*

*

Dashiell Hammett (1884-1961)

  • In The Dain Curse (1929), Hammett leads the way for Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald in a complex yarn of family skeletons in closets.
  • In The Thin Man (1934), he presents the mystery as the novel of manners and sets the pattern for husband/wife detective teams from Mr. and Mrs. North to Carolyn Hart’s Annie and Max of the Death on Demand Series.

*

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

  • Hammett’s most famous successor, started writing for Black Mask in 1933
  • Lighter tone
  • Perfect ear for dialogue
  • Witty detachment
  • His most famous private detective: Philip Marlowe

*

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

  • Underlying sentimentality and romanticism
  • “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.”
  • Marlowe: honorable conduct, penetrating judgment, and self-mocking humor: “Don’t make me lose my beautiful manners and my flawless English.”

*

Kenneth Millar,
AKA Ross Macdonald (1915-83)

  • Wrote his best works under the name of Ross Macdonald.
  • Considered the linear successor to Chandler.
  • Used the crime story to convey psychological truths.
  • Lew Archer series

Densely complicated plots, vivid metaphor & simile

Lots of gun play

Later books sometimes a father confessor.

*

Robert Parker (1932--)

  • Also considered a linear descendant of Chandler.
  • Boston-based detective Spenser has moved through a series of novels beginning with The Godwul Manuscript (1973).
  • Sensitive tough guy, wisecracking, street-smart.
  • Dialogue-driven plot.

*

Mickey Spillane (1918--)

  • American writer who began his career by writing for pulp magazines and comic books.
  • Introduced Mike Hammer, a hard-as-nails private eye in I, the Jury (1947).
  • Writing noted for its vivid first-person style.
  • Escalated sex and violence.
  • Kiss Me Deadly (1952), first private eye novel to make the New York Times best-seller list.

*

"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.

*

Excerpt from I, the Jury

  • "You can figure things out as quickly as I can, but you haven't got the ways and means of doing the dirty work. That's where I come in. You'll be right behind me every inch of the way, but when the pinch comes I'll get shoved aside and you slap the cuffs on. . . ."
  •           " Okay, Mike, call it your own way. I want you in all right. But I want the killer, too. . . . I'll be trying to beat you to him. We have scientific facility at our disposal and a lot of men to do the leg work. We're not short in brains, either," he reminded me.
  •           "Don't worry, I don't underrate the cops. But cops can't break a guy's arm to make him talk, and they can't shove his teeth in with the muzzle of a .45 to remind him that you aren't fooling. I do my own leg work, and there are a lot of guys who will tell me what I want to know because they know what I'll do to them if they don't."

*

Noir

  • A term usually applied to movies with

dark lighting,

darker outlook,

a particularly bleak variety of hard-boiled crime story,

  • A story where

everyone is a villain,

betrayal is inevitable,

and frequently no one is left standing at the end.

*

Hardboiled Female Detectives

  • 1980s: The advent of women as private eyes.
  • Prior to the novels of Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Sara Paretsky, publishers had a narrow view of the private eye.
  • Private eyes thought be the domain of male authors with male protagonists.
  • In the early 1980, books by men mystery writers were reviewed seven times as often as books by women.

Hardboiled Female Detectives

  • Typical hardboiled stereotypes:

bereaved but  beautiful widow

the tomboyish (or conversely, vampish) secretary

the seductive femme fatale who keeps a pistol in her purse and who, all too often, is pretending to be the bereaved widow

a man in a trenchcoat, eyes narrowed with cynicism, smoke curling past the brim from a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth;

a tough guy who hits hard, drinks hard, and shoots straight.

Hardboiled Female Detectives

  • Stereotypes suggest that

a man has to be tough to be a hero, and

women are dangerous, changeable, and not to be trusted under any circumstances. 

  • Success of fictional women private eyes (Sharon McCone, Kinsey Millhone, and V.I. Warshawski) changed this and created a window of opportunity to other female writers.
  • Sara Paretsky cofounded Sisters in Crime (With Carolyn Hart) in 1986 to "To combat discrimination against women in the mystery field, educate publishers and the general public as to inequities in the treatment of female authors, raise the level of awareness of their contributions to the field, and promote the professional advancement of women who write mysteries."

Marcia Muller (1944--)

  • In 1977, Marcia Muller's first Sharon McCone novel published (Edwin of the Iron Shoes).
  • The very first hard boiled private eye book written by a woman featuring a female detective.
  • Called the Mother of the Modern Female Sleuth.
  • Sharon McCone, generally credited with being the first liberated female private detective of the modern era, paving the way for Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky.
  • McCone, pretty level-headed investigator who sometimes gets a bit too involved in her cases.

Sara Paretsky (1947- )

  • Creator of tough, street-wise, half-Polish, half-Italian, feminist detective V. I. Warshawski.
  • Indemnity Only (1982) first of the series.
  • Wanted to create such a character "to try to combat some of the typical sexual stereotypes in literature"
  • Warshawski's distaste for house-cleaning, dish-washing, and bill-paying are noted as hallmarks of her liberation.

Sara Paretsky (1947- )

  • Adapted her idealistic detective as a vehicle of social and political comment.
  • Paretsky's descriptions of Chicago freeways, the lakefront, the Loop, and famous buildings are as distinctive as Chandler and Macdonald's evocations of L.A.
  • Gives readers a view of the family, friends, and personal problems of the detective.

Sue Grafton (1940--)

  • Sue Grafton’s for women everywhere. "Your homicidal urges can be turned to good in this world. Don't let that ex-husband get you down! Just start a whole new job."
  • Best-known for her alphabet series.
  • Introduced her tough, feminist detective, Kinsey Millhone in A Is for Alibi (1982).
  • More conventional than Paresky’s heroine--a traditional heroine: a loner, with a code, who works for just causes, less violent (sometimes considered soft-boiled).
  • 2005: S Is for Silence (her 19th in the series)

Soft-boiled Private-Eye Mysteries

  • Gentler mystery than hard-boiled.
  • Still has some bite to it.
  • May be some violence and a hint of blood.
  • But the description of it will never be explicit.
  • Sometimes the stories will take on a somewhat sinister overtone, but there are often comic moments throughout.
  • Notable soft-boiled writers include Janet Evanovich and Sharyn McCrumb.

Soft-boiled vs. Hard-boiled

  • The more typical hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake): “I peeled off my coat and tie and sat down at the desk and got the office bottle out of the deep drawer and bought myself a drink. It didn’t do any good.”
  • John Rebus (Ian Rankin’s Strip Jack): “ He lay down in the foaming bath and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, the way his doctor had told him to. Relaxation technique he called it. He wanted Rebus to relax a bit more. High blood pressure, nothing serious, but all the same. Of course, there were pills he could take, beta-blockers. But the doctor was in favour of self-help. Deep relaxation. Self-hypnosis.”

Police Procedurals

  • A mystery that offers a step-by-step, in-depth look at the personnel and methods used in the investigation of a crime, including detailed information about procedures.
  • The protagonist is usually a police officer, although he or she is sometimes a private detective.
  • The stories tend to balance character and plot.
  • Notable police procedural writers include Ed McBain (fictional 87th precinct), Joseph Wambaugh, and Tony Hillerman.

Forensic

  • Utilize the crime-solving aspects of pathology and physiology, anthropology or archeology, psychology and behavioral analysis.
  • Utilize trace evidence processing, fingerprinting, ballistics, document analysis, composite image production, and computer technology (e.g. digital photo enhancement, computer virus detection, etc.).
  • Usually has a moderate to extreme gore factor, with or without much actual violence.
  • Rarely light or humorous.

Forensic

  • Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem (1990)
  • Jeffrey Deaver, The Bone Collector (1997), The Coffin Dancer (1998)
  • Kathy Reichs, Cross Bones (2005)

Historical Crime Novel

  • Includes novels set in the past.
  • Includes novels that explore the past to explain the present.
  • May also be in the traditional vein.
  • Elizabeth Peters’s series about Amelia Peabody, a Victorian archeologist.

Legal Mysteries

  • Invariably feature a lawyer as the protagonist.
  • The most famous legal detective of all time, the early Mason was a hard-eyed tough-guy with a law degree, who won at all costs; he mellowed considerably as Earl Stanley Gardner's audience widened.
  • Many include unprecedented levels of introspection, social commentary, and a wider range of investigative actions.
  • Examples include

Philip Margolin’s After Dark (1995)

Scot Turow’s Presumed Innocent (1987);

John Grisham’s The Street Lawyer (1998)

Traveler’s Crime

  • Sense of place is important.

Sara Paretsky’s Chicago

Marcia Muller’s San Francisco

Francine Mathew’s cranberry bogs in Nantucket.

  • Setting is an integral/essential part of the story.

McCrumb’s novels of Southern Appalachians.

Peters’s Victorian Egypt.

  • The best offer insights into people and places.
  • May overlap with other categories (cozy, hard-boiled)

Caper/Comedy

  • Defined by their humorous narration.
  • Scrambling action.
  • Bumbling but lovable characters.
  • Sheer fun.
  • Protagonists need not be super-realistic.
  • Comedic effect is the primary goal.

Caper/Comedy

  • Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Wasn’t There (1996).
  • Janet Evanovich, One for the Money (1994), Two for the Dough (1996), Three to Get Deadly (1997).
  • Charolotte MacLeod, Rest You Merry (1978).

Mystery vs. Suspense Thriller

  • Mystery emphasizes the puzzle aspect of the plot—Whodunit?
  • In suspense, the essential question is not necessarily whodunit, but rather will they catch the villain before he strikes again?
  • Thrillers are

fast-moving.

propelled by action, chase scenes, and violence.

and frequently involve larger-scale villainy such as espionage, terrorism, and conspiracy.

  • Tom Clancy’s work or Dan Brown’s Deception Point.

1920s and the Masked Detectives

  • In the late teens and early 1920s, disguise became for many pulp heroes not just a tool of investigation but their defining identities.
  • The stock market crash of 1929 made the dimes required to by pulp magazines scare.
  • In the 1930, detective fiction found a new home in the burgeoning medium of radio.
  • On July 31, 1930, The Detective Story Hour first aired, initially not dramatized but merely read aloud.

Early Radio Detectives

  • Ultimate detective superhero—the Shadow.
  • Trained in the Orient to cloud men’s minds.
  • A master of disguise, maintaining several identities.
  • Overcame any criminals stupid enough to take him on.
  • In 1936, Orson Wells took over the roll for a year, remaining on the air until 1954.

10 Fun Radio Detective Shows

  • The Shadow
  • Adventures of Sam Spade
  • Casebook of Gregory Hood
  • Ellery Queen
  • I Love a Mystery
  • Mr. and Mrs. North
  • Pat Novak, for Hire
  • Richard Diamond, Private Detective
  • Sherlock Homes (with Basil Rathbone)
  • Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (selected by Leonard Maltin)

Death Blow to Pulp Fiction and Radio

  • Television in the mid-fifties.
  • Pulpy private-eye television shows including Peter Gunn, Perry Mason (1957-1966), Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer.
  • Murder, She Wrote, The Saint, Lord Peter Wimsey.
  • Barnaby Jones (1973-1980), The Rockford Files (1974-1980), Magnum, PI (1980-1988)

New York Times Bestsellers: Hardcover Fiction, March 3, 2006

  • 1. "The 5th Horseman," James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (--; 1)
  • 2. "Cell," Stephen King (1; 4)
  • 3. "The Da Vinci Code," Dan Brown (2; 152)
  • 4. "The Last Templar," Raymond Khoury (5; 5)
  • 5. "Sea Change," Robert B. Parker (4; 2)

  • 7. "Memory in Death," J.D. Robb (3; 4)

  • 9. "Gone," Lisa Gardner (7; 3)
  • 10. "Mary, Mary," James Patterson (--; 14)

New York Times Bestsellers Paperback—March 5, 2006

The Closers (Harry Bosch) by Michael Connelly (detective)

4. The Broker by John Grisham (CIA)

6. The Third Secret by Steve Berry (conspiracy thriller)

7. Origin In Death by J. D. Robb (police detective)

9. Skeleton Man by Tony Hillerman (police detective)