Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not invent the mystery genre. That honor goes to Edgar Allan Poe.
But Doyle did make the nascent genre extraordinarily popular. Once Sherlock Holmes caught on with the public, there were dozens of imitators all vying for attention.
The Sherlock Holmes Mystery Formula
The formula that Doyle created for his genius sleuth endures to this day. It’s the formula all traditional mysteries follow. With stylistic variations, of course.
Here’s Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Mystery Formula:
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- We meet the detective at home or in his office and learn that he is a genius.
- The client enters, tells the detective a tale of woe, and the detective decides to take the case.
- The detective hunts for clues to solve the murder (or other crime, if the story isn’t a murder mystery).
- The detective, having gathered enough clues finally knows who did it, and either catches the killer himself, or tells the police how the murder was done.
The significance of the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Formula is that the story’s focus is on the sleuth and the puzzle he is trying to solve.
Mysteries are Cerebral
At base, mysteries are cerebral, not visceral, reads.
Mysteries are a puzzle. The author is challenging the reader to see if he can figure out who did it before the detective’s great reveal at the end of the book.
By comparison, thrillers are visceral reads. They are packed with emotion. Their goal is to keep you on the edge of your seat, chewing on your nails.
Thrills and Spills
That doesn’t mean there can’t be thrills in a mystery, because there certainly are thrills. Often plenty of them. Car chases. Kidnappings. Shootouts. And lots more. They just aren’t the main course. The puzzle is.
My own Justinia Wright Private Investigator Mystery series follows, more or less, the Sherlock Holmes formula.
If your reading diet is mainly thrillers, you might find the mystery pacing too leisurely, or sedate. At least initially.
But hang on to your hat, because by the middle of the book things are heating up and heating up fast.
Real People
My Justinia Wright series was patterned after Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin mysteries.
Like Wolfe and Goodwin, sister and brother Tina and Harry Wright are people. They have lives apart from being private investigators.
Chandler gives us little glimpses into the private life of Philip Marlowe. And I can see why the glimpses are brief. Marlowe’s personal life is rather boring. He does play chess, but it’s games out of a book.
Tina and Harry, on the other hand, have interesting lives — and I share their lives with you. They are, after all, real people. At least I think they are.
So the lives of my detectives get intertwined with the mystery to provide a seamless window into the world of Tina and Harry Wright, and the people and critters they care about.
Get in on the Fun
If you like books about people, if you like Wordle or other puzzles, then you’ll like the world of Tina and Harry Wright.
You can find all of the many cases in the Justinia Wright Private Investigator Mystery series on Amazon.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.
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