Detective Fiction

Please Note: I am presenting the history of detective fiction through an overtly Western lens. Europeans and North Americans are not the only ones with a rich and detailed history of crime literature, but since this is where my knowledge lies it is the singular area explored in this article.

Introduction

Detective fiction is often considered somewhat of a sub-genre of the crime and mystery genres and usually centres around a murder. The genre came to fruition — certainly in the sense that we understand it — in the 19th Century, an era in which literature developed significantly as many genres evolved and new ones emerged. Famous examples of fictional detectives include Miss Marple, C. August Dupin, and of course, Sherlock Holmes, but detective fiction has not been limited to adults, and Nancy Drew and the Famous Five have helped bring mystery fiction to children, too.

The History of Detective Fiction

Early Works

Some historians have been able to date detective fiction right back to Biblical times, identifying the Old Testament story of ‘Susanna and the Elders’ as an early example of literature featuring some elements of the genre. Voltaire’s ‘Zadig’ is another early example, though published much later in 1748, because the main character exhibits common traits of detective characters in his analytical tendencies.

Pinpointing the first book in the modern detective novel genre has been highly contentious. Some suggest that E. T. A. Hoffmann’s ‘Das Fräulein von Scuderi’ (1819) was the first, as the main character establishes the innocence of the prime suspect in the police’s murder investigation, displaying some of the key features of the detective novel. This story highly influenced Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Morgue’ (1841) which is more widely agreed upon as the first of its kind. It’s generally considered to mark the inception of the genre as a wider body of work; although there had been the odd text here and there in the past that featured some crime novel conventions, this is the book that established it as an actual genre.

Edgar Allen Poe’s stories placed truth as the ultimate objective: both the method used to discover the truth and the truth itself were explored in great detail. Poe’s methods tended to be complex, combining logic, deductive skill, and inference in an endeavour to unravel the mystery the stories set up, which helped to characterise the ideal protagonist in a crime novel. He also helped establish the convention of telling the story in a practical, logical manner, tending to leave emotion out of it.

Poe also explored true crime in his body of work: his story ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ (1843) was a barely fictionalised version of his theory as to what happened to the real life Mary Cecelia Rogers, an American murder victim whose death went unexplained and became a famous media sensation.

Louisa May Alcott is often credited with the second detective novel, helping to further found the genre with her short story ‘V.V., or Plots and Counter Plots’ (1865). Amusingly, her main character Antoine Dupres was intended as a parody of Poe’s main character Auguste Dupin.

Charles Dickens actually included elements of detective fiction in a subplot in his novel Bleak House (1853), in which his character Inspector Bucket must comb through a host of suspects after a cunning lawyer is killed in his office. He left a mystery novel unfinished at the time of his death, but interestingly, his protégé and collaborator, Wilkie Collins,’ novel ‘The Moonstone’ (1868) was labelled ‘the first, the longest, and the best of modern England detective novels… in a genre invented by Collins not Poe’ by TS Eliot. Dorothy L Sayers — another famous crime novelist — named it ‘probably the very finest detective story ever written’.

It’s been awarded such a title and has so frequently been credited with the initiation of the genre because his work managed to establish a wealth of key features of detective novels which were adhered to by most subsequent authors:

• the country house robbery
• red herrings
• useless local police
• false suspects — a convention likely inspired by Dickens’ subplot in Bleak House
• reconstructions of the crime
• least likely suspects as the culprit
• plot twists.

Sherlock Holmes was created by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, and his name quickly became synonymous with detective fiction. His character was inspired by Dr Joseph Bell with whom Doyle worked at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and was known for deducing a lot by observing a little, Holmes’ most famous trait.

The Golden Age

Female writers grew in popularity significantly within the genre during the Golden Age. Famous authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers shot to popularity and were known for their incredible writing beyond the confines of their genre, a trait that men like Doyle would have envied — he famously resented his creative restriction to within the bounds of crime fiction and, more specifically, Sherlock Holmes himself.

The introduction of the mass produced paper back book helped writers in this period grow wealthy fast, and with the huge and ever increasing popularity of the crime novel, the genre became an incredibly lucrative industry. At the time of Agatha Christie’s death in 1976, she was the best-selling novelist in history.

The Golden Age also helped to solidify the conventions of detective fiction, and some were even codified by author Ronald Knox in his ‘decalogue’ of rules for writing in the genre. It became fairly commonly agreed upon that these works should operate on the principle that superficial, seemingly convincing evidence often ends up being irrelevant and clues should always be presented to the reader at the same time as the sleuth. This led to a wealth of highly standardised but excellently written and well-loved works being written in this period of time.

Sub-Genres of Detective Fiction

• Whodunnit: the most common and arguably most popular sub-genre of crime fiction, in which the readership follow along with a detective as a mystery is unravelled. The primary goal is to figure out how the crime was committed and who the culprit is. This was the most common way to write crime fiction from 1920–1950.
• Inverted Detective: this method of writing begins the work by depicting crime being committed and identifying the criminal. The rest of the text then follows the detective as they have to work it out, thus focusing more on the investigative methods than the crime itself.
• Police Procedural: works in this genre have actual police officers as the protagonists, playing the heroes instead of the bumbling, useless force needing to be rescued by the detective. This is the most common genre in modern TV series and is incredibly popular, especially in the US.
• Court Room: this genre hones in on the legal aspects of criminal cases, often having the lawyers investigating the crime beyond what the police have done, sometimes working to prove the innocence of a suspect and finding the true culprit.
• Cosy Mystery: incredibly popular with female authors and consumers, works in this genre tend to take place in a small village and are slow-paced and light-hearted, rather than the tense, suspense-filled atmosphere encouraged by works in other genres whose authors tend to cultivate thriller-like experiences for their readers.
• Occult: defying one of the most important conventions codified by Knox in his decalogue, works in the occult genre bring in an aspect of the supernatural, employing their detectives in cases involving ghosts, demons, spirits, curses, vampires, magic and more.

Plausibility and Coincidence

While detective fiction is still very much well-loved, modern literature experts now tend to shine a more critical light upon it. For example, plausibility and coincidence is now examined more closely. Agatha Christie’s ‘Miss Marple’ dealt with around 2 murders a year, making her small village violent and detestable, akin to ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’, according to De Andrea. Jessica Fletcher, TV heroine of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ stumbled across dead bodies wherever she went, and around 2% of the population of her home town was murdered over the duration of the series. The TV series ‘Monk’ acknowledged the implausibility of the main character constantly coming across murder victims by labelling him a ‘murder magnet’ and specifically making it a joke in the show. Because of these irregularities, detective fiction often requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader or consumer.

Furthermore, the progression of the mystery novels and the method used to uncover the plot and the culprit is best when fully reliant on the skills of the detective, not on happy coincidences. Knox actually addressed this in his decalogue as Commandment no 6: “No accident must ever help the detective” as it detracts from both the character and the flow of the story and unravelling of the mystery.

Conclusion

Detective fiction is a popular and well-loved genre of literature, and has been for centuries now. Whether it was initiated by Edgar Allen Poe or Dickens’ prodigy Wilkie Collins is ultimately a moot point: it is now an established genre with a set of conventions to follow which produces highly engaging and well-written novels. Furthermore, the evolving state of the genre and the development of new ones all the time widens its accessibility, opening it up to an even wider viewership to enjoy. Whether you prefer your detectives witty and sharp like Sherlock Holmes or quiet and intelligent like Miss Marple, the wide range the genre encompasses ensures you can find something for you.