HISTORY of CRIME FICTION

HISTORY of CRIME FICTION

Fair Play:

Meant to benefit the reader to solve the crime along with the detective:

-The criminal must be mentioned early on

- Supernatural solutions are ruled out

- Only one secret room or passage is allowed

- No undiscovered poisons are permitted

- No Chinamen should appear in the story

- The detective must not be helped by lucky accidents or intuitions

- The detective must not himself commit the crime

- Nor must he conceal clues from the reader

- The thoughts of the “Watson” must not be concealed

- There must be special warning of the use of twin brothers or doubles

HISTORICAL, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL EVENTS:

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction refers to around the time of outbreak of WWI to the start of World War II where a number of very popular writers mostly British rose, as well as a notable group of American and New Zealand writers. Female writers constituted a major portion of the notable Golden Age writers, including the four original "Queens of Crime"; Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham.

“Rules of the House” set by Thomas Godfrey states:

- House itself must have character (secrets or reports of ghosts)

- At least a few servants to vouch for people’s whereabouts at the time of the crime

- An unreliable telephone system

1890- Alphonse Bertillon discovers that each fingerprint is unique, and the use of fingerprinting in solving crimes rapidly grows.

(Expansion of Scientific knowledge)

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne, Murder for Christmas by Agatha Christie, Police at the Funeral by

Margery Allingham

• Gaboriau was a pioneer of the detective fiction genre in France
• the detective is adept at disguise, a key characteristic of detectives.
• Gaboriau's writing is also considered to contain the first example of a detective minutely examining a crime scene for clues

"The golden age of detective fiction began with high-class amateur detectives sniffing out murderers lurking in rose gardens, down country lanes, and in picturesque villages. Many conventions of the detective-fiction genre evolved in this era, as numerous writers—from populist entertainers to respected poets—tried their hands at mystery stories." - Carole Kismaric and Marvi Heiferman (Scholars)

Paradox:

• A mystery that contains contradictions and seemingly inexplicable aspects. T
• Goes hand in hand with the impossible crime
• The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton.

* with the (1864)The Revelations of a Lady Detective by W. S. Hayward

The Inverted Tale:

• Plot that is conceived so that the reader sees the criminal and sometimes the occurrence of the crime and follows the detective as he or she pieces together the events,
• or “where the perpetrator is known and the method of discovery occupies the reader” (Godfrey, 1995, p.95).
• The Singing Bone by R. Austin Freeman

1842- The Detective Division of the London Metropolitan Police was established.

English country house mystery:

• A mystery taking place in the country and at a private residence,

• The crime nearly always occurs during a weekend house party

• Either a professional or amateur detective in attendance

• Entire story is usually confined mainly to the house

• Quite often, the detective returns to the house prepared to unmask the criminal in front of a pre-assembled audience.

Crime fiction reached the peak of its success with the advent of ‘yellow backs’, cheaply produced throw-away publications which appealed to the readers at the time (middle class).(1856) Recollections of a Detective Police Officer’ Waters was reprinted as a dime novel in the US.

first appearance of female detective

THE GOLDEN AGE

(1862-63) Notting Hill Mystery

"Charles Felix" (Charles Warren Adams)

By Han Joo Ahn

(1868) In Monsieur Lecoq, Emile Gaboriau

Puzzle Novel:

A mystery involving puzzling circumstances that must be reasoned over murder

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

"…must have as its main interest the unravelling of a mystery; a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end."- Ronald Knox

1909 - The British Secret Service was formed

Who dunit Format:

- Whodunit, short for "who done it?"

- Most widespread subgenre

- The events of the crime and the subsequent events of the investigation are presented to provide the reader with clues, allowing the identity of the perpetrator of the crime to be deduced

- The solution is not revealed until the final pages of the book where the method and culprit are revealed

(1856) Recollections of a Detective Police Officer’ Waters - 'Yellowback'

The First classic rationcinative detective story created by Edgar Allan Poe and the introduction of the archetypal detective Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin.

- In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference

- a situation of an unsolved crime

- a pattern of action

- a certain group of characters and the relations between them, and

- A setting appropriate to the characters and action.

- Poe payed strict attention to detail the gradual acquisition of knowledge of the detective, utilising brief both rapid dénouements

- The characterisation of Poe’s Dupin has influenced its position as a timeless archetypal detective in classic crime fiction: Eccentricities, bi-part soul, superior intelligence and passion for intellectual challenges and ability to discern the truth

• The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842-43) by Edgar Allan Poe

• The purloined Letter (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe

The first mystery in which the person investigating the crime is the murderer

CRIME CONVENTIONS in the GOLDEN AGE

Moonstone contains a number of ideas that have established in the genre several classic features of the 20th century detective story:

- SETTING: English country house robbery

- an "inside job"

- red herrings

- a celebrated, skilled, professional investigator,

- Bungling local constabulary,

- Detective inquiries,

- Large number of false suspects,

- The "least likely suspect",

- a rudimentary "locked room" murder,

- a reconstruction of the crime,

- a final twist in the plot

AMATEUR DETECTIVES IN BRITISH MYSTERY NOVELS 1945 - 1990

(1868) The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

- An outsider (sometimes a salaried investigator or a police officer, or often a gifted amateur) investigates a murder committed in a closed environment by one of a limited number of suspects

- written in such a way that you can reach the conclusion at the same time as the detective

- Often solved by detectives who were brilliant eccentrics, gifted at getting to heart of the crime

- Detective solves crime without the help of science but wit

Significant Writers:

(1886) The Mystery of the Hansom Cab, Fergus Hume

(1862)

Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

• 1937 - Murder in Hospital - Josephine Bell

medical background

• 1945 - The Immaterial Murder Case by Julian Symons

Symons greatest contribution to the mystery genre was as a historian and critic. He was long an advocate of the crime novel as opposed to the more conventional puzzle mystery

• 1951 - Fallen Into the Pit - by Ellis Peters (Edith Mary Pargeter)

• 1957 - Summer Flight - by Margaret Yorke

stand-alone novels of crime, psychological suspense, and revenge

• 1962 - Dead Cert by Dick Francis

• 1975 - Cast, in order of Disappearance by Simon Brett

well-to-do widow of a gentleman who was engaged in some sort of criminal activity. Mrs. Pargeter has learned some interesting skills from her late husband which help with her detective activities

MODERN BRITISH MYSTERIES

Rhys Bowen, Deborah Crombie, Anthony Eglin, Kate Ellis, Charlies Finch, Christopher Fowler, Arianna Franklin, Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling), Ann Granger, Patricia Hall, Cynthia Harrods-Eagle, Jim Kelly, Morag Joss, G. M Malliet, Denise Mina, S. J Parris, Stuart Pawson, Ian Oears, Ann Purser, Christopher John , Veronica Stallwood, Charles Todd, , Nicola Upson and Minette Walters

(1841) The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe

THE POLICE DETECTIVE IN THE BRITISH MYSTERY NOVEL 1945 - 1990

(1908) The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Gaston Leroux

Death in High Heels (1941) by Christianna Band

Death and the Visiting Firemen (1959) by H. F. R. Keating

Dead Men Don't Ski (1959) by Patricia Moyes

• Who dunnit

Cover Her Face (1966) by P. D. James

• Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, Private Investigator Cordelia Gray

The Religious Body (1966) by Catherine Aird

Death of an Old Goat (1974) by Robert Barnard

• Barnard’s work incorporate the British classic style with a bit of cynicism.

Last Bus to Woodstock (1975) by Colin Dexter

The Man with a Load of Mischief (1981) by Martha Grimes

• Grimes is known for best tradition of the British mystery. She is best known for series about Inspector Richard Jury of Scotland Yard.

Knots and Crosses (1987) by Ian Rankin

• Features Inspector John Rebus of the Lothian and Borders police who tackles serious and dark social issues in the city of Edinburgh.

A Great Deliverance (1988) by Elizabeth George

• Aristocratic Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Lynley, style in traditional British mystery, excellent characterisation and complex plots

EARLY DETECTIVE FICTION

(1866)The Widow Lerouge,

Emile Gaboriau

Death at the President's Lodging (1936) by Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart)

The Dance of Death (1938) by Helen McCloy

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by (1920) Agatha Christie

The Immaterial Murder Case (1945) by Julian Symons

Unexpected Night (1940) by Elizabeth Daly

Death in High Heels (1941) by Christianna Brand

Murder in Hospital (1937) by Josephine Bell

Enter a Murderer (1935) by Ngaio Marsh

The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler

Trent's Last Case (1913) by E. C. Bentley

Murder Must Advertise (1933) by Dorothy L Sayers

1945- Beginning of WWII

1850s

The Dark Tunnel (1941) by Ross Macdonald

1950s

1900s

2000s

first book of the Golden Age of Mystery fiction

Death in the Stocks (1935) by Georgette Heyer

1800s

(1828-29)

Four volumes of memoirs by Eugene Francois Vidcoq

1914-1945 Beginning of WWI to the beginning of WWII

The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr (1935)

locked-room mystery

(1864) The Female Detective Andrew Forrester*

(1853) Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Significant Writers:

PRIVATE DETECTIVES AND POLICEMEN IN AMERICAN MYSTERY NOVELS 1945 - 1990

AMERICAN MYSTERIES SINCE 1990

• Susan Wittig Albert, Donna Andrews, Sarah Andrews, Nevada Barr, Lorna Barrett, Cordelia Francis Biddle, Dana Cameron, Caleb Carr, Beverly Connor, Barbara D’Amato, Jeanne M. Dams, Joanne Dobson, Janet Evanovich, Sara Hoskinson Frommer, Jane Haddam, Sarah J. Henry, Uarie King, Laura Lippman, J. J Murphy, Katherine Hall Page, S.J. Rozan, Lisa Scottolini , Dana Stabenow

First appearance of a detective in an English novel.

1921 - Invention of the lie detector by John Larson

(1891) The Big Bow Mystery, Israel Zangwill

- The first locked room mystery.

Martin Hewitt (1894) by Arthur Morrison

First example of the modern style of fictional private detective

Blonde’s Requiem (1945) by James Hadley Chase

The Moving Target (1949) by Lew Archer,

later developed into a film- ‘Harper’ (1966) starring Paul Newman

Lay her among the lilies (1950) by James Hadley Chase

Figure it out yourself (1950) by James Hadley Chase

Private eyes is the main hero

"Told in stark and sometimes elegant language through the unemotional eyes of new hero-detectives, these stories were American phenomenon”

(1861)Trail of the Serpent Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Dashiell Hammett, Jonathan Latimer and Erle Stanley Gardner

- SETTING: Explored the corrupt underbelly and down looked streets of the United States. This style of crime fiction became known as hard-boiled

Raymond Chandler's works

- CHARACTER: (DETECTIVE)- Chandler extended the form with his private detective, Philip Marlowe, who differed from the distanced ‘operative report’ style used by Hammett’s stories, bringing an intimate voice of the detective. His cadenced dialogue and cryptic narrations were musical, evoking dark alleys and though thugs, rich women and powerful men whom he wrote

Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar)

- CHARACTER (DETECTIVE) Macdonald's strengths were his use of psychology and his beautiful prose full of imagery

- Macdonald aimed to give an impression of realism through violence, sex and confrontation however illusory in real life

Michael Collins (Dennis Lynds)

Considered to be the author who led the form into the Modern Age

- CHARACTER (DETECTIVE) Collins’s PI, Dan Fortune was consistently involved in similar synopsises that Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald wrote.

- However, Collins took a sociological bent, exploring the meaning of his characters' places in society and the impact society had on people.

- Full of commentary and clipped prose,

- More intimate than those of his predecessors

- Dramatizing that crime can happen in one's own living room

- The PI novel was a male-dominated field in which female authors seldom found publication

Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton ( late 1970s and early 1980s)

- CHARACTER: detective (female) was brainy and physical

- Their success lead to publishers to seek out other female authors.

• Following the beginning of Prohibition, crime and accompanying dishonesty in police departments and in city hall increased
• This provided the inspiration for the fictional private eye.
• Two-fisted, hard-drinking, honest to a certain extent, the detective fought against crime and corruption.

HISTORICAL, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL EVENTS:

By the late 1920s, Al Capone and the Mob were inspiring not only fear, but piquing mainstream curiosity about the American underworld.

• Popular pulp fiction magazines like Black Mask capitalized on this
• Carrol John Daly published violent stories that focused on the mayhem and injustice surrounding the criminals,
• From within this literary environment emerged many stories and novels about private detectives, also known as private investigators, PIs and "private eyes"
• ("eye" being the vocalization of "I" for "investigator"
• In the 1930s, the private eye genre was adopted by American writers and became known as 'hard boiled'

OVERALL CRIME CONVENTIONS:

- No actual mystery focused on the restoration of justice being served and hash treatment to those who deserved it, which was written in explicit detail

- SETTING: explored the corrupt underbelly and down looked streets of the United States

- CHARACTERS: Main character is usually the private eye (private detectives, also known as private investigators), other stories concentrating not on detectives but gangsters, crooks, and other committers or victims of crimes

Establishing of police forces around the world lead to the publishing of real detective’s ‘memoirs’ which one of the most famous was Eugene Francois Vidcoq who was the first head of the French Surete in 1812.Written by two writers under the name of Vidcoq became largely successful, acquiring a legendary reputation despite the fact that they were fictional.

(1859) The Woman in white

Wilkie Collins

• 1964 - In the Last Analysis - by Amanda Cross (Carolyn Heilbrun)

• 1964 - The Transcendental Murder by Jane Langton

Feature Homer Kelley and his wife Mary, a former police detective who is now a professor of American literature as is his wife. These literate mysteries are set in and around Boston

• 1975 - The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (Barbara Mertz)

• 1984 - Sick of Shadows by Sharyn McCrumb

• 1986 - Strangled Prose by Joan Hess

Detections of Claire Malloy, the owner of a bookstore in Farberville, Arkansas, includes humour and social satire

(1887) A study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle

1850- Allan Pinkerton founded Pinkerton's National Detective Agency.

AMATEUR DETECTIVES IN AMERICAN MYSTERY NOVELS 1945 - 1990

1888- The first murders attributed to Jack the Ripper

Arthur Conan Doyle cemented crime fiction as a popular literary genre.

Doyle created 56 short stories and 4 novels including

• The Sign of the Four (1890)
• Collection of Short stories (which first appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1891 and were responsible for the dramatic rise in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes) published as collections; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901)
• The Valley of Fear, (1914)
• A brilliant London-based "consulting detective" residing at 221B Baker Street
• Holmes have gained popular interest for his intellectual prowess and is renowned for his skilful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning, and forensic skills to solve difficult cases.