Detective story is a work of fiction about a puzzling crime, a number of clues, and a detective who solves the mystery. In most detective stories, the crime is murder and the clues lead to or away from the solution.
The pattern
of most detective stories is the same, whether the tale is a novel, a novelette, or a short story. The author presents the crime, the detective, and several clues and suspects. The detective follows the clues and may even discover additional crimes. The climax of the story comes when the detective reveals the criminal and tells how the mystery was solved.
Certain conventions have developed from the detective story pattern. The author is expected to “play fair” with the reader. That is, the reader should be given exactly the same information that the detective uses to find the criminal. Readers can treat the story as a battle of wits between themselves and the detective.
The detective need not be a professional police officer. Many are private consultants, like Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, a gourmet and intellectual, or gifted amateurs, like S. S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance, a sophisticated socialite. Some are lawyers, such as Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason. G. K. Chesterton’s Roman Catholic priest Father Brown was the first in a long line of clergy detectives. Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret is perhaps the most famous police detective. Maigret appeared in many stories from the 1930’s through the 1960’s. A number of police detectives gained popularity during the late 1900’s and early 2000’s, including Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch.
History
of the detective story began with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). With this story, as well as “The Purloined Letter” (1845) and “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1850), Poe created the literary tradition of detective fiction. His detective was C. Auguste Dupin, a brilliant amateur who uses logic to solve mysteries.
In England, Charles Dickens tried the new form in Bleak House (1852-1853) and in his unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) was one of the most important early detective novels. Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case (1878) was a pioneering American novel, introducing police detective Ebenezer Gryce, who appeared in a series of books into the 1900’s. Sherlock Holmes and his comrade, Dr. John Watson, appeared in 1887 in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. Holmes is the most famous character in detective fiction—and perhaps in all fiction.
The early 1900’s were a period of excitement and originality in detective fiction. In The Singing Bone (1912), the English author R. Austin Freeman introduced the inverted detective story, in which the criminal is known from the beginning. The mystery is whether—and how—the criminal will be uncovered. The American writer Jacques Futrelle created a character called the Thinking Machine, and the Hungarian-born Baroness Orczy introduced the Old Man in the Corner, an early example of the “armchair detective” who solves the mystery without ever actually visiting the scene of the crime. The period from 1925 to 1935 brought the publication of the first or major works by such masters as Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Nicholas Blake, John Dickson Carr, Dame Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Michael Innes, Msgr. Ronald Knox, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Dorothy L. Sayers, Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, and S. S. Van Dine.
In the 1920’s, Black Mask magazine introduced a distinctly American style of mystery, often called “private eye” or “hard-boiled” mysteries. These stories focused on a tough detective hero and featured action and violence and a colorful narrative style. Dashiell Hammett was the leader of this style in the 1920’s, followed a decade later by Raymond Chandler. The style continues to enjoy great popularity today. Today’s private eyes include such female characters as Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski.
From the mid-1900’s to the early 2000’s, a new generation of writers gained popularity. They included James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Tony Hillerman, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Ed McBain, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, and Robert B. Parker of the United States; Alan Bradley and Louise Penny of Canada; Dick Francis, P. D. James, Peter Lovesey, Ian Rankin, and Ruth Rendell of the United Kingdom; Janwillem Van de Wetering of the Netherlands; and the Swedish team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. For most of its history, the detective story mostly took place in the present day. Since the late 1900’s, more detective stories have been set in the past. Important writers of historical mysteries include Steven Saylor (ancient Rome), Peter Tremayne (Ireland in the 700’s), Ellis Peters (medieval Britain), Anne Perry (Victorian England), Barbara Hambly (the United States in the 1800’s), and Max Allan Collins (the United States in the mid-1900’s).
Since 2000, the most noteworthy development in detective fiction has been the increasing popularity of works written in Europe, especially Scandinavia. The popularity was stimulated by the international success of the “Millennium” trilogy by Sweden’s Stieg Larsson, beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005). Other notable new European detective and mystery writers include Henning Mankell from Sweden, Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo from Norway, Arnaldur Indridason from Iceland, Fred Vargas from France, and Andrea Camilleri from Italy. Nearly all of these writers have featured police detectives whose increasing prominence increases the illusion of reality. Amateurs still exist, however, particularly in so-called “cozy” detective stories, which often feature women with unusual occupations or specialized interests.
