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Detective Literature
Reading detective and deductive novels is one of my hobbies. ... I read the first detective novel, it is abbreviate for children. Then I want to become a detective. ... I told my self don¡¯t worry, a good detective must be calm at the very time. ... From then on, I found the power of detective novel and expect to study detective literature more.
The detective story originated in the mid-nineteenth century. ...
The Detective Story is a specific type of mystery. ... Detective stories share the traits listed here. Most mystery fans feel that if any of the traits is altered--if there is no detective, for example, or if the identity of the murderer is known early on, then a story is a mystery story, not a detective story.
At the center of most detective fiction is a murder which serves as a catalyst to answer several character motivations, problems, and fears. The reader is taken by the hero he detective in a journey which involves he most essential and urgent problems in the human situation. ... Dupin, the first-ever fictional detective. ... His contributions to literature and the mystery genre cannot be underestimated. ... Conan Doyle was so impressed that he used these same principles when creating his famous detective. ... " (The Literature of Crime and Detection)
From 1891 to 1893, Strand published stories featuring Holmes and Watson, all avidly followed by the public. ... It was while working in a hospital during the war that Christie first came up with the idea of writing a detective novel. ... Born in England in 1893, she received her degree at university in medieval literature. Following her graduation, besides publishing two volumes of poetry, she began to write detective stories to earn money. ...
Sayers was well known for "combining detective writing with expert novelistic writing," and the imaginative ways in which her victims were disposed of. ...
Later on in her life, Sayers gave up detective fiction to pursue her other interests. She spent the last years of her life working on an English translation of Dantes Divine Comedy, having always claimed that religion and medieval studies were subjects more worthy of her time than writing detective stories. ... His son Ellery, an intellectual and writer of detective novels, would then collect and analyze the clues, ultimately solving the crime. ... Still published today, EQMM continues to showcase the best of current detective fiction. ...
Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)
Samuel Dashiell Hammett is recognized as the first master of hard-boiled detective fiction. ... At 21, he was hired by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an "operative. ... ] The magazine stories, featuring detective Sam Spade or the Continental Op, drew from his wealth of on-the-job experience. ... He is Charlie Chan, the detective whose adventures still fascinate mystery-lovers of the present. ... The author Earl Derr Biggers fashioned him after a real-life detective in Honolulu named Chang Apana. ... Charlie Chan was probably the widest-traveled detective in fiction. ...
An honest fearless champion of good, Mason took on cases with the help of his friend, Paul Drake, owner of a detective agency in his building, and Della Street, his fiercely loyal secretary. ... Fair, Gardner also published more than 25 novels featuring the detective team of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. ... " The opening lines of the "Detective Story" program captivated listeners and are instantly recognizable even today. Originally the narrator of the series of macabre tales, the eerie voice known as The Shadow became so popular to listeners that "Detective Story" was soon renamed "The Shadow," and the narrator became the star of the radio series, which ran until 1954. ... Taffner Press Release)
The adventures of Leslie Charteris the Saint, have continuously appeared since 1928, making Simon Templar the longest running character in contemporary detective fiction. ... Teal, a droopy eyed detective who looks perpetually bored, spends most of his career attempting to arrest the Saint. ...
"I was always sure that there was a solid place in escape literature for a rambunctious adventurer such as I dreamed up in my own youth," commented Charteris, "I still cling to that belief -- that there will always be a public for the old-style hero, who had a clear idea of justice, and a more than technical approach to love, and the ability to have some fun with his crusades. ...
TRAITS OF DETECTIVE STORIES
*a detective who is either a police investigator or a private detective hired by an ordinary citizen
*a crime, usually a murder, committed by an unknown person.
*a set of clues that let the detective--and the reader--logically determine who the criminal is
*use of literary devices, such as suspense, irony, and surprise endings, to weave interesting and perplexing cases.
SUSPENSE
Suspense is the key element of detective fiction because it gets the reader involved in trying to crack the case right along with the detective. For this reason, the crime usually occurs early in a detective story. ... Detective writers also sometimes introduce a clue called a "red herring" --something that seems important, but that leads to a wrong conclusion or a dead end. ... These are all tricks that detective writers play to sustain suspense so that the reader stays involved.
The ideal detective story
There has been some renewal of debate on the problem of the problem story; some times called the police novel, because it now consists chiefly of rather unjust depreciation of the police. ... There is one aspect of the detective story which is almost inevitably left out in considering the detective stories. ... If I say there is in the abstract something quite different, which may be called the ideal Detective Story, I do not mean that I can write it. I call it ideal Detective Story because I cannot write it. ...
The detective story differs from every other story in this: that the reader is only happy if he feels a fool. ... There is no reason why the hero who turns out to be a villain, or the villain who turns out to be a hero, should not be a study in the living subtleties and complexities of human character, on a level with the first figures in human fiction, It is only an accident of the actual origin of these police novels that the interest of the inconsistency commonly goes no further than that of a demure governess being a prisoner, or a dull and colorless clerk painting the town red by cutting throats, There are inconsistencies in human nature of a much higher and more mysterious order, and there is really no reason why they should not be presented in the particular way that causes the shock of a detective tale. There is electric light as well as electric shocks, and even the shock may be the bolt of Jove, It is, as I have said, very largely a matter of the mere order of events, The side of the character that cannot be connected with the crime has to be presented first; the crime has to be presented next as something in complete contrast with it; and the psychological reconciliation of the two must come after must come after that, in the place where the common or garden detective explains that he was led to the truth by the stump of a cigar left on the lawn or the spot of red ink on the blotting-pad in the boudoir. ...
A Defence of Detective Stories
In attempting to reach the genuine psychological reason for the popularity of detective stories, it is necessary to rid ourselves of many mere phrases, It is not true, for example, that the populace prefer bad literature to good, and accept detective stories because they are bad literature,. ... Bradshaw¡¯s Railway Guide contains few gleams of psychological comedy, yet it is not read aloud uproariously on winter evenings, if detective stories are read with more exuberance than railway guides, it is certainly because they are more artistic. ... A good detective story would probably be even more popular than a bad one. The trouble in this matter is that many people do not realize that there is such a thing as a good detective story; it is to them like speaking of a good devil. ... To persons of somewhat weak sensibility this is natural enough: it must be confessed that many detective stories are as full of sensational crime as one of Shakespeare¡¯s plays.
There is, however, between a good detective story and a bad detective story as much, or, rather more, difference than there is between a good epic and a bad one. Not only is a detective storying a perfectly legitimate form of art, but it has certain definite and real advantages as an agent of the public weal.
The first essential value lf the detective story lies in this, that is the earliest and only form of popular literature in which is expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life. ... Of this realization of a great city itself as something wild and obvious the detective story is certainly the ¡®lliad. ... But since our great authors (with the admirable exception of Stevenson) decline to write of that thrilling mood and moment when the eyes of the great city, like the eyes of a cat, begin to flame in the dark, we must give fair credit to the popular literature which, amid a babble of pedantry and preciosity, declines to regard the present as prosaic or the common as commonplace. ... A rude, popular literature of the romantic possibilities of the modern city was bound to arise; It has arisen in the popular detective stories, as rough and refreshing as the ballads of Robin Hood.
There is, however, another good work that is done by detective stores, While it is the constant tendency of the Old Adam to rebel against so universal and automatic a thing as civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, The romance of police activity keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. ... When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves¡¯ kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and p9oetic figure; while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. ...
The detective literature is an exotic flower in all kinds of literary genre that is popular with readers.
Approximate Word count = 8785
Approximate Pages = 35.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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