Edgar Allan Poe | CW Hawes

The Detective Novel

Last week we looked at the mystery vs the thriller. And we all know the thriller is hot, hot, hot these days. The traditional mystery? Not so much. Although the mystery in its chick lit cozy form is doing very well. This probably has something to do with the chick lit element, more than the mystery.

In any case, I’d like to take a look today at the detective novel. That form of the mystery that started the mystery craze, and in effect defined the mystery genre.

Crime stories go all the way back to the Arabian Nights. However, the crime story as we know it today, comes from the fertile imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, with his creation of C Auguste Dupin in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, published in 1841.

Poe even invented the word “ratiocination” for the thinking process that Dupin used to solve crime.

If Poe invented the detective story, and all detective stories ever since have more or less followed Poe’s formula, it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that made the detective story a mainstay of the literary scene.

I find it of interest that Dupin and Holmes are not professionals. They’re amateurs. The police are at best bumblers who know when they’re licked and need to call in the brilliant amateur specialist. And this is a feature of most mysteries that have an amateur sleuth.

Of course CSI-type forensics were a long ways off and the solution of crimes often did require the exercise of those “little grey cells”, whether or not the sleuth was a professional or amateur.

The 1930s are often called The Golden Age of the mystery, by which we mean the detective story. During that time, scores of amateur and professional sleuths appeared and disappeared. A few became household names: such as Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, and Ellery Queen.

Others have faded to near oblivion. Sleuths such as Miss Silver, Mr & Mrs North, The Thinking Machine, Dr Thorndyke, Asey Mayo, and Loveday Brooke.

These sleuths, and many others, used ratiocination to solve the crimes that frequently baffled the police.

Today, however, the amateur is, or seems to be, very much out of his depth. DNA. Advanced surveillance equipment. Hacking of phones and computers. Traffic and surveillance cameras. Highly advanced crime labs. All these things are beyond the amateur sleuth, and even small town police departments.

Which may explain the rise of the modern chick lit cozy craze, that unlikely fusion of chick lit and the cozy mystery, and the vintage mystery, which is set in the pre-CSI past.

The vintage mystery, if well done, can be a very satisfying read, taking us back to The Golden Age — our glamorized view of the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.

The chick lit cozy, focuses on a small town, or a small circle of people within a large city, crafts and small businesses, women’s issues, and at some point the crime. These reads are very popular. They’re not officially labelled “chick lit cozies”. That is a term I adopted from another writer who used it to differentiate them from traditional cozies. They’re simply called cozies and have essentially taken over that sub-genre.

Personally, I’m not fond of the chick lit cozy. Generally, there is more chick lit than cozy mystery in these books. Particularly the sweet romance element. Which probably explains why the sub-genre is dominated by women writers and readers.

However, they may end up being the mystery genre’s salvation. Mystery readers are aging. A fact brought vividly home to me recently when a Facebook ad for my Justinia Wright mystery omnibus was almost totally served to those 65 and over. And in that group, overwhelmingly to women.

The mystery is essentially a puzzle. A problem, the crime, that needs to be solved. It is a riddle, and we want to know the answer.

Which, to my mind, means that for all the sophisticated data gathering equipment available to the professionals, it still takes ratiocination, those little gray cells, to make sense of all the data and determine motive, means, and opportunity.

This fact actually makes the detective story very modern. A part of our ongoing discussion concerning the role of people and machines. The detective story clearly comes down on the people side of the equation.

The detective story is a human story. It is a story about righting wrongs. Wrongs done to people and society at large. The detective story focuses on a small group of people to find a killer and bring that killer to justice. It’s personal. It’s about bringing balance and order to the world of a group of people that has gotten out of balance and lacks order due to the violent crime.

Which is why I do think the mystery will endure. What it will take to bring it back into popularity, I don’t know. But the success of series such as Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone give me hope. Lots of hope.

We all know the big names of the mystery genre, even if some of us aren’t mystery fans. Next week, though, I’d like to focus on some of the lesser lights and their creators, and even a few of the new kids on the block.

Comments are always welcome, and until next time — happy reading!

Share This!

Mystery vs Thriller

These days the term “thriller” is pretty much used indiscriminately. Indie writers are especially guilty of this abuse, but traditional publishers are in nowise innocent.

I suppose, in order to get us readers to buy books, the term “thriller” is plastered all over the book, used throughout the description, and liberally sprinkled in the advertising. The idea being that the book will “thrill” us. And who doesn’t want a few thrills in life?

But that isn’t at all what a thriller is. At least technically speaking. And if we readers don’t want to read thrillers, it would be very helpful if writers and publishers stopped calling everything a thriller when it isn’t.

Let’s take a look at what constitutes a mystery, a suspense novel, and a thriller.

What Is a Mystery?

A mystery is essentially a puzzle. The form we are most familiar with is the detective novel, which was invented by Edgar Allan Poe and popularized by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In a typical mystery, there is minimal action. The sleuth goes about sleuthing to find the solution to the puzzle, which is some type of crime, usually murder. The detective is not often in danger, although other characters often are.

The suspense is usually minimal — although the author may crank it up near the end of the story.

The mystery novel is more or less an intellectual read. It’s appeal is the solving of the puzzle by the reader before the detective, or enjoying the detective’s process in solving the case. The traditional mystery is definitely not an action-packed read.

Recently I re-read Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout. It’s the first Nero Wolfe mystery.

I was surprised at how little action there was in the book, which was published in 1934. Wolfe, who in some books weighs a seventh of a ton, sits, drinks beer, questions people, tends his orchids, eats, and thinks. That’s it.

Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s assistant who tells the story, drives from NYC to White Plains numerous times. He questions people for Wolfe, makes wisecrack remarks, gives us his observations, and also thinks about the case.

The only “action” occurs towards the end of the book when Wolfe stages a robbery to get a person to talk. Wolfe’s life is threatened once, also near the end of the book. And Archie punches a cop. That’s it. Definitely not action-packed, although the suspense does ramp up a bit at the end; yet the book is a thoroughly delightful read. Stout achieves this by the use of plenty of humor, interesting characters, and the laying out clues for our consideration.

What Is A Suspense Story?

A story of suspense may be a mystery, but the difference is that the reader knows more than the protagonist. Frequently, the reader knows who the bad guy is long before the good guy does. And because we, the reader, know things the hero doesn’t — suspense is created.

Will the hero realize there is a viper in the basket? Will he or someone else open the basket and get bit? That’s the creation of suspense.

The suspense novel also has a limited scope. The protagonist, the hero or heroine, is the one who’s primarily in danger.

A classic example of the suspense story is Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest. The story is about a man who is mistaken for someone else: a man trying to foil a plot to steal government secrets. Plenty of suspense is generated as the good guy tries to escape the bad guys. Especially because he has no idea who is after him and why.

What Is A Thriller?

At the risk of oversimplification, a thriller is a suspense tale on steroids.

Whereas a suspense novel is generally focused on the protagonist and if he or she will beat the villain, the thriller has much higher stakes. The villain is going to destroy the city, or country, or world. The protagonist must not only stop the villain, but must stop the series of events the villain’s set in motion that will take down the world’s economy, for example.

Thrillers are usually villain-driven. The villain shares the stage with the hero.

A classic example of the thriller is the film Die Hard. We have the villain seize control of a corporation’s headquarters and hold hostage those inside the building, who are at the company Christmas party, in order to steal a fortune in bearer bonds. There is only one man in the building who can stop the villain and save the hostages.

There is plenty of suspense; some mystery, because we don’t know at first what the real goal of the terrorists is; and loads of action. That’s the thriller: suspense, action, and high stakes.

Novels such as The DaVinci Code and The Hunt for Red October raise the stakes even higher.

Mixing It Up

People being who they are, like to mix things up. There may be elements of mystery in both suspense and thriller tales, as noted above, but it isn’t the main element.

There may be plenty of suspense in a thriller, but the nature of what is at stake is different from that in a pure suspense story.

Lee Child, for example, writes what are essentially action novels, even though they are labelled thrillers. The stakes in a Reacher novel are small, at least the ones I’ve read. Either Reacher has to get himself out of a predicament or decides to get someone else out. There is nothing big, like the destruction of the world’s economy, at stake. Which means, technically, the books aren’t thrillers. But in the process of getting out of trouble, there is loads of action. Bodies litter the ground before we close the book. Which makes the books in actuality action novels.

So even though the word “thriller” is applied to Child’s novels by his publisher, they don’t conform to the thriller formula. It is this blurring of distinctions, for the sake of marketing, that in my opinion does a disservice to readers. I guess action novels just don’t sell as well as thrillers.

Popular Tastes

Today the “thriller” — whether the book actually is one or not — is hot. A book labelled a thriller is sure to sell.

Even many writers of detective novels are trying to jump on the thriller bandwagon by ramping up the action and claiming that the “pages turn themselves”, which is of course utter nonsense. And action alone is not the sole hallmark of a thriller anyway.

To my mind, this is a shame. When the thriller reader picks up a mis-identified book, he or she ends up disappointed and may even negatively review it. And the mystery reader will shy away from such books thinking they’re thrillers, when in fact they aren’t.

The quest for the almighty dollar is no excuse, in my mind, to mislead us readers.

I read mysteries because I like the more sedate pace and the intellectual aspects of the story. I don’t particularly like thriller novels because they are often too long and have the inevitable slow spots, which make for boring reading and thus ruins the whole thriller aspect. I’d rather watch a thriller movie, if I’m in the mood for a thriller.

The best part of the indie revolution is that there are far more published authors now then there were pre-Kindle. And while many writers have jumped on the thriller bandwagon, there are also many, who, like me, write the traditional mystery. Some are:

It’s a great day for readers. Many writers — good writers — who would never have been tapped for membership in the hallowed halls of traditional publishing, can now share their gems with us. Writer and reader are all the richer for this new age.

As usual, comments are always welcome, and, until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Book Review: Daddy’s Girl by Ben Willoughby

Horror tales come in all shapes and sizes. They can be visions of great cosmic terror or they can be the evil wishes of a child. The story can be one of psychological torment, or one of unfathomable gruesomeness. There are some who don’t see horror as a separate genre, but as a particular effect given to a story of dark fantasy, or science fiction, or slice of life.

And whether or not we like to read stories that frighten us, or listen to them told around a campfire, many of us do. Enough so that horror has gotten its own BISAC genre code and is exceedingly profitable to publisher and writer alike.

My first foray into the realm of the horror story was by means of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Not much later came the stories of Saki. And then those two gothic adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”. From there I read Dracula and Carmilla and discovered the work of HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard’s weird fiction.

I’ve even ventured into the realm of the weird and terrible with a few tales of my own. However, there are a few writers today who write doggone good horror stories and unfortunately remain for the most part unseen. One of those writers is Ben Willoughby and I hope this review, and upcoming reviews of his work, will help to bring him a broader audience.

Mr Willoughby has five books out now in the horror genre. I’ve purchased them all and read two. (He’s writing them faster than I can read them!) Today I want to talk a bit about his novella Daddy’s Girl, which is a ghost story that is very well done.

The ghost story is perhaps the most venerable form of the supernatural horror tale. Certainly it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest within this category. The ghost story plays into our beliefs about life after death. Even today, where the Western world has moved beyond Christianity and pretty much any traditional religion, the ghost story still works. Still plays upon our imagination. I think this is because it’s primal. It taps into the core of our hopes and fears surrounding the greatest of all mysteries — death. And no matter how materialistic we’ve become, few of us want to die. Even believing in an afterlife, few of us want to end our existence here. It is what we know. We fear the unknown.

Mr Willoughby’s tale, Daddy’s Girl, plays on our emotions from two directions. The first is the child’s need for and love of his or her parents. We children may dislike our parents telling us what to do, but when they aren’t there we crave for someone to step in and take over that role. Many of us don’t ever grow out of that need for someone to watch over us. Politicians and demagogues use this to gain control. They feel our pain and tell us lies so we feel good. The bond of child to parent is ever with us.

The other bond is that of parent to child. We as parents will do anything to spare our children at the very least the hardest knocks of life. We teach them and guide them and support them. Children a visible form of eternal life. Through them we in a sense live forever.

Mr Willoughby has combined these two powerful bonds into a tale of parent-child love. The parent’s watchful eye, ever present, protecting his little girl.

I don’t want to spoil the story and so I will leave the storyline alone. Do, though, get yourself a copy of Daddy’s Girl. The book will tug your heartstrings and give you something to think about. As well as scare you into the realization your determination may be stronger than you even realize.

What I like about Ben Willoughby’s writing is that he has a simple and straightforward way to tell a story. It unfolds before us on the page and does so without a mass of purple prose. There is an economy of words in his style and to my mind that allows me the reader to participate in the story. He isn’t telling me everything. Just what I need to know. Which means he is able to paint the atmosphere and mood and generate empathy for the characters without excess verbiage. And that is the hallmark of a good writer.

I very much recommend Daddy’s Girl. I also recommend Raw Head, which I hope to review in a future post. And I look forward to reading his other offerings in the realm of terror.

Ben Willoughby is a fine example of the good things the indie revolution has to offer. If only we take a chance and are willing to read widely.

Comments are always welcome! Until next time, happy reading!

Share This!