Gavin Holman - April 1981
The detective story in its various forms is one of the major fields of work in contemporary English literature. As popular fiction it is read by most people to some extent, and enjoys a great following of dedicated readers. The detective story lies within the genre of thriller fiction, a vague term covering anything from international spy intrigues to Gothic mysteries. However, the detective story should be differentiated from the other aspects of thriller fiction so that a clear idea of what is being discussed can be formed.
The detective story is one in which the primary interest lies in the methodical discovery by rational means of the exact circumstances of a mysterious event or series of events, usually posing a puzzling problem concerning a crime. The mystery and crime stories are often considered analogous to the detective story although, ideally, they should be considered as separate.
Crime stories are tales of criminals and the crimes they commit, with emphasis in the plot on the crime itself and events leading up to it, with attendant causes and effects. They provide the reader with as escape or insight into the world of the criminal, which may consist of an adventurous, dazzling exploit or a mundane description of the life of the majority of real criminals and their natural enemies, the police force.
Mystery stories are those which have some mystery at the core of the story, but which is either not resolved, or is revealed by change or with little or no solution by the investigator. They are purely escapist stories dealing with the unknown or unimaginable, often with a grand climax in which wrongs are righted and the truth is disclosed to all.
However, with the detective story, the requirement is not a fast moving piece of descriptive writing or an unresolved mystery. The interest is an intellectual one. The mystery exists, the crime or event has taken place and it is the detective's job to unravel the mixture of threads surrounding the truth to solve the mystery. in providing the initial mystery the author is challenging the reader to use his own powers of deduction, logic and reason to establish the true sequence of events and thence the ultimate solution, before his own detective does. If the reader fails, a case which is hoped for by the author or his sales would soon drop, the reader does not lose anything. The revelation he receives as the detective lays bare the facts of the case can often be more satisfying than solving it himself.
The general thriller story is usually an adventure type of story in which some unstable situation is unfolded and eventually resolved, to the good or not. Any crime or detection involved is purely of a secondary nature and does not form part of the plot in any major way. Perhaps the most common type of thriller over the last thirty years is that of the spy or political thriller in which the hero is used as a pawn or puppet in the struggle between two large powers.
Having separated the detective story from its close relations we can investigate it by itself. There are three basic elements to detective fiction:
• The crime or event which forms the mystery basis for the story. The crime is usually murder, probably due to the extreme emotions that murder causes amongst the general public, and the wealth of motives, opportunities and methods available to the author. However, it is not exclusively murder, the next most favoured event is the theft of some article. Whatever the event that forms the mystery, it has a perpetrator, normally a single person, whose identity is hidden to the reader amongst other characters in the plot.
• The detective. This character may be someone with acute perception, unlimited knowledge, undaunted perseverance, which enables him to expose the criminal and to reveal the method by which the crime was committed. He may be a more mundane type of character, relying on technique and footwork rather than flashes of inspiration and genius. A second character, the detective's assistant or confidant, may also be present. Usually of "normal" intelligence, perhaps a little slow, he acts as a buffer between the brilliance of