by Doctor Science
I used to be a voracious reader of mystery novels. I quit kind of abruptly about 15 years ago (or was it 20?) because I had become irrecoverably sick of mystery stories that failed my "One-Body Test". Here's the test:
Is there more than one murder? If so, you fail.
I mean, I still used to read them, but as far as I was concerned they were failures. I felt that way partly because I think murder should be taken more seriously than that, even in fiction. Also, it seemed to me that Agatha Christie failed the OBT so egregiously because she was making a political point: that capital punishment was justified because a murderer would also murder again. I read a lot of Christie in my teenage years, but the OBT only crystallized in maybe my early 30s (1990 or so), as full-on serial killers were becoming more common in the genre.
The other reason I developed the OBT was because of my love of Sherlock Holmes. If you look at e.g. Conan Doyle's first set of Sherlock Holmes stories, only 3 of the 12 involve any murder at all (Boscombe Valley, Five Orange Pips, Speckled Band). Most of the stories are just *puzzles*, mysteries of human behavior in general, not just murderous behavior in particular. I really *like* that, and I kept hoping I'd find mystery stories that were Sherlockian in that way -- and kept being disappointed.
But I kept reading mystery stories in spite of my disappointment. I think what sent me over the edge into I'm Just Not Going To Bother Anymore Land was when I was reading a new Tony Hillerman novel and discovered I was detecting the writer too easily.
"Detecting the Writer" is a phrase from Dorothy Sayers' introduction to Great Short Stories Of Detection, Mystery And Horror, and anthology she edited in 1928 and which is still golden, if you can find it. She wrote:
The mystery-monger's principal difficulty is that of varying his surprises. "You know my methods, Watson," says the detective, and it is only too painfully true. The beauty of Watson was, of course, that after thirty years he still did not know Holmes's methods; but the average readers is sharper-witted. After reading half a dozen stories by one author, he is sufficiently advanced in Dupin's psychological method ‡ to see with the author's eyes. He knows that, when Mr. Austin Freeman drowns somebody in a pond full of water-snails, there will be something odd and localised about those snails; he knows that, when one of Mr. Wills Croft's characters has a cast-iron alibi, that alibi will turn out to have holes in it; he knows that if Father Knox casts suspicion on a Papist, the Papist will turn out to be innocent; instead of detecting the murderer, he is engaged in detecting the writer.[bold mine]
‡ As outlined in "The Purloined Letter"
Reading the Hillerman book, I reached a middle chapter, where our detective was meeting a particular white character for their first significant conversation. "He's the murderer", I thought -- based on nothing more than when he appeared in the book.
I was right.
I was reminded of this because I just broken my long no-mysteries drought to read Spider Woman's Daughter, Anne Hillerman's continuation of her father's series. The sentences don't flow as well as Hillerman Sr.'s did, but it's a pretty good pastiche. To my surprise, it passes the OBT! which is enough for me to plan on looking for the next one. I can also detect-the-writer with the same algorithm I used for her father -- which may just mean that it's a particularly *faithful* pastiche.
But I still yearn for mystery stories more like "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Blue Carbuncle", or "The Red-headed League": ones which recognize that death isn't the only thing worth investigating.
I love the OBT and will immediately begin using it. Currently, my test is How Many Women Die. I am so over stories that use the tragic/hideous death of a woman (or more commonly, women) to get things started.
which recognize that death isn't the only thing worth investigating
YES. Thank you for putting this into words.
Posted by: Mirabile-dictu | August 17, 2014 at 05:02 PM
One of the things I disliked about a lot of mystery novels was the writer hiding things from the reader.
Posted by: CharlesWT | August 17, 2014 at 05:57 PM
So, double murders are right out?
There goes Poe ;-)
Agreed, serial killings are more suitable for black comedies.
Posted by: Hartmut | August 17, 2014 at 07:19 PM
Hartmut:
Double murders are OK, but I side-eye them as heading for the slippery slope of "reducing the list of suspects by having them killed off, one after another".
Posted by: Doctor Science | August 17, 2014 at 09:21 PM
Dorothy Sayers has a couple where the "murder" turns out to not be a murder.
I'm pretty omnivorous about murder mysteries. It is a genre' that lends itself to travelogue. For example: Andrea Camiliear's books about Sicily, Cotteril's books set in Laos, Barbara Nagel for Turkey, Kaminsky for Russia, Kwei Quarley for Ghana.
In my opinion the best mysteries are the one where, after reading, I remember the book vividly but don't care who did it.
Posted by: Laura Koerbeer | August 17, 2014 at 09:28 PM
I wonder how much of the problem stems from an increased exposure (sometimes even first hand) of mystery writers to news reporting. If your experience is heavily weighted to "If it bleeds, it leads," you are going to be inclined to go for murders. Preferably gory ones, and lots of them.
It's not that mystery writers today couldn't write about anything else. They just don't
P.S. As I think about it, I wonder if the problem is really the authors. Could it be that the editors/publishers came from that kind of news background, and just won't buy anything else....
Posted by: wj | August 18, 2014 at 09:51 AM
I suspect that the trend towards murder mysteries rather than other sorts of mysteries is motivated by the same basic reason as "If it bleeds, it leads": People, in general are just more interested in reading it.
The further away from murder you get, in general the lower the stakes and the greater the risk that it will seem a waste of the incredible mental abilities of the detective to undertake such a painstaking examination. The Red-Headed League is tolerable as a short story, but would you want to read a novel with stakes that low?
Of course, there are other advantages to an investigation of murder. The victim cannot give any evidence, and the heightened emotion makes it all the more plausible for long-hidden secrets to come out.
Mirabile-dictu:
"[T]he death...of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world"
- Edgar Allen Poe
For good or for ill, Poe appears to have seized upon a popular taste, albeit primarily among men.
Posted by: Pejar | August 18, 2014 at 10:23 AM
If you've never read Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe mysteries, you might want to give them a try. They follow the traditional police procedural setup, but wind up turning it on its ear. The mysteries are extremely clever: sometimes it's a standard case; sometimes the killer gets away with it; sometimes there wasn't really a crime in the first place. The writing is both erudite and also very down-to-earth. Reginald Hill is lauded in the UK, but very underrated in the US.
Posted by: Lisa | August 18, 2014 at 11:16 AM
Greg Iles writes murder/suspense/mystery type stuff with fairly high body counts. It tends to be a case of witnesses getting bumped off, not suspects. Regardless, a good read is a good read, regardless of an author's plot devices. Iles' stuff is very, very good. Plus his current main protagonist is a lawyer who practiced in Houston for a time. That can't be all bad.
Posted by: McKinneyTexas | August 18, 2014 at 07:38 PM
I've not been a mystery fan, it is usually particular detectives that I've liked. A rather short list, Sherlock (though I suspect I'm a fan of Watson), Caedfael, Marlowe and one or two others whose names don't come to mind. I think it is pretty mundane, you find characters you like and you want to see how they cope with different things.
I recently got my wife and daughter hooked on Sherlock, through the BBC series, which on one hand is great, because it's this character that provides an entry into so many things about British culture and because they are embedded into the stories, when she asks about them, it's not like a lecture ticking off facts, it is out of some sense of curiousness. However, I've found myself put off a bit by the male-centric nature of the BBC series, though I'm at a loss as to how they could add a strong female character (when they did add one, in the form of John Watson's fiance, she turns out to be a CIA agent experienced in wet work).
Of course, the dynamic of detectives works in the West because we don't have much problem with people telling (or showing) everyone else how smart they are. I don't think there are many Japanese detective figures. The main one I know about is Kogoro Akechiand the one that perhaps is the most famous, called Detective Conan, part of the shtick is that he is a detective who was forced to take a poison that didn't kill him, but turned him into a child, so he has to constantly hide his ability. Strangely enough, the manga is hugely popular in Vietnam.
After writing this, I realized that there is another manga character, Arsene Lupin III who is the grandson of Arsene Lupin, a French fictional 'gentleman thief', so now I'm wondering if mystery novels are an Anglo-American thing or if they approach the same popularity in non English speaking countries.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | August 18, 2014 at 09:06 PM
Probably not before someone else does, I'll suggest Judge Dee to LJ; not just van Gulik's stories, but his translation of a traditional Chinese original. It does fail the OBT--and I agree with DS's desire for something other than murder.
Posted by: DCA | August 18, 2014 at 09:29 PM
I found Van Gulik because he was next to Van de Wetering in the mystery section. Van de Wetering, I am pretty sure, wrote a number of mysteries that pass the OBT. I'm not sure they follow Father Knox's rules, but the wackiness in them is so delightful I recommend them anyways. Those books made me want to visit Holland all by themselves.
Posted by: JakeB | August 19, 2014 at 01:44 AM
Thanks DCA, that really looks interesting. I've spent a morning reading about it and it looks fascinating. Who are the detective characters in other countries?
Posted by: liberal japonicus | August 19, 2014 at 01:58 AM
I have the whole van Gulik Judge Dee series (including the mentioned translation of the Chinese original that inspired him) on my bookshelf (front row) plus his one contemporary novel (and his biography written by van de Wetering). All of them read several times. There are at least some 'there was no murder actually' cases in them but still most of the books have 'murder' in the title (standard: The Chinese [insert noun*] murders)
*from memory: lake, bell, maze, nail, gold...
Posted by: Hartmut | August 19, 2014 at 03:23 AM
Synchronicity alert, was doing some reading on Pierce and came across this article
Wouters, E. (2000). Detective fiction and indexicality. Semiotica, 1, 143–154. Retrieved from http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/semi.2000.131.issue-1-2/semi.2000.131.1-2.143/semi.2000.131.1-2.143.xml
Academic, but may be of interest to some folks.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | August 19, 2014 at 06:34 AM
Laura Koerbeer, have you visited Venice in the extremely literate company of Donna Leon and Commissario Brunetti? If not, you have a treat in store, although she doesn't always adhere to the OBT (usually does).
And I second the recommendation of Reginald Hill, the outstanding British crime novelist of the last fifty years.
Posted by: chris y | August 19, 2014 at 07:18 AM
And if you want to mix a little fantasy with your mystery, you might try Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series. Note that they are mostly short stories, rather than full-length novels.
The stories have the interesting feature that, while magic works in that universe, it is seriously constrained magic -- and the detective has to work around its limits, not just wave a wand to solve everything. Not to mention the occasional story where magic turns out not to have been involved in the murder. And, as I recall most, if not all, of them do meet the OBT criteria.
Posted by: wj | August 19, 2014 at 10:00 AM
My wife owns several thousand mysteries, all of which (I believe) she has read, many of which I have. So I hardly know where to begin. Maybe by location?
Besides those mentioned, be aware of Nicholas Freeling on the Netherlands (van der Valk series) and France (Henri Castaing); Sjowall and Wahloo onn 1970s Sweden, with sardonic asides on the welfare state; Peter Corris on Australia; Alexander McCall Smith on Botwsana; someone whose name escapes me - but will come back - on apartheid South Africa; Martin Cruz Smith on post-Soviet Russia; Colin Cotterill (mentioned above) on contemporary Laos . . .
. . . and almost every state of the Union AND on almost every time period from at least ancient Rome (Lindsay Davis) through the middle ages (many besides Cadfael) to the present and beyond. Humorous; dark. Totally implausible to impressively "realistic."
I haven't looked at most of these in terms of the OBT, though Alexander McCall Smith certainly qualifies, but everyone should be able to find something to their taste.
I feel like the proprietor of a delicatessen who's been asked "What's good here?" It depends on what you're hungry for.
Posted by: dr ngo | August 19, 2014 at 01:23 PM
A few more notes, semi-random:
- on apartheid South Africa, it's James McClure. For a humorous take on modern India, try HRF Keating's "Inspector Ghote" series.
- Southern California (my homeland): Ross MacDonald, T. Jefferson Parker, the Kellermans (Jonathan and Faye), and Walter Mosley (strong *black* writer & protagonist)
- Florida: John D. MacDonald (incurably sexist) and humorists Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen. Read the latter two for wild plots and amusing dialogue, though what sounds like the authentic voice of crime and law enforcement comes through better in the Boston novels of George V. Higgins.
- Louisiana: Julie Smith (N.O.) and James Lee Burke (beyond N.O.)
- Alaska (Dana Stabenow)
- classics: Sayers herself; Josephine Tey; possibly Rex Stout and Ellery Queen, though EQ in particular tends toward the "puzzle" rather than any attempt at reality.
- police procedurals: Ed McBain (AKA Evan Hunter, under which name he writes very differently), Joseph Wambaugh.
- spy novels: Eric Ambler (classic), John LeCarre (worthy of his reputation), Len Deighton (very versatile writer)
- medieval: Ellis Peters (Cadfael); Candace Robb; Sharon Newman
- humorous: Donald Westlake above all, one of the funniest writers in any genre
- US civil war: Owen Parry
- military history: Anthony Price
And this is from a very quick perusal of our shelves, mostly just those in front (our mystery collection is double-shelved)
Further comments to follow.
Posted by: dr ngo | August 19, 2014 at 01:56 PM
I haven't really tried to address the OBT theory or "detecting the writer," as posed by DocSci in the original post. Besides the responses to the OBT thoughtfully posted by others in this thread, I might note that the length of a novel makes it hard - by no means impossible, but hard - for a writer to focus on a *single* crime for 250 pages. (Note that the best known Sherlock Holmes tales are short stories, not novels.) So if you start with murder - because it's dramatic, because it's bloody, because it's universally acknowledged as a serious crime (unlike, say, fraud or light-hearted theft), because it's so Final (you can't restore the victim to wellness, as the criminal might have to in financial crime) - it's almost necessary to continue with another murder just to sustain the narrative. Or so I would imagine, never having tried to write one.
As for "detecting the writers," yes, that's a problem, but it's far worse watching TV, which my wife and I do a lot, in part because the writers are not just composing in haste, but they often have less than an hour to wrap things up. I'm not bad at figuring out "who did it" early, based on such clues as the actor they cast, but my wife is downright spooky in her suspicions. Not only is the suspect going to be shot (as I had already opined) in the next couple of minutes, but his life is going to be saved by the lucky silver dollar we saw him insert in his breast pocket just before the commercial! Right, of course.
The problem here is not with mysteries, per se. It is with bad writing, which can be found in all genres. It's more obvious in mysteries, because the reader is supposed to "guess" what's going to happen, but it's not unique. The antidote to bad writing is identifying and locating good writing.
I hope some of my suggestions above are helpful, but de gustibus non disputandum est.
Good hunting.
Posted by: dr ngo | August 19, 2014 at 02:10 PM
The Judge Dee novels are quite uncommon in that the detective has to deal with usually three cases at the same time and an important part is to sort out whether they are connected or not.
Posted by: Hartmut | August 19, 2014 at 02:37 PM
i've been singing "watching the detectives" ever since this post went up.
Posted by: cleek | August 19, 2014 at 03:25 PM
Laurie King is mostly known for her Sherlock books, but I actually prefer her Kate Martinelli series. Kate is a San Francisco cop, and though the series fails the OBT, the novels are terrific character studies and cultural observations, with many continuing secondary and tertiary characters whose lives impact Kate's in vital ways.
Besides the other "historical era" mysteries already mentioned, I recommend Elizabeth Eyre's murder mysteries set in Renaissance Italy, with Sigismundo as the roguish sleuth and his sidekick Benno. Great fun.
Posted by: CaseyL | August 19, 2014 at 11:56 PM
Let me put in a word for the Dave Brandstetter mysteries by Joseph Hansen. They are set in Southern California in the 60's through 90's (when they were written) and are beautifully written. The first two are Fadeout and Death Claims.
Posted by: etv13 | August 20, 2014 at 03:40 PM
One thing I wish mystery writers would try more often is non-murder mysteries. Say money laundering, arms smuggling, fraud. Have you seen any fiction about the financial crisis at all? Some wish-fulfillment fiction about some highly placed bankers as bad guys could be pretty popular. "How the Banka Did It" as fiction for the millions. Grisham, Turow, (hell, Dave Barry or Christopher Buckley) are you listening?
Posted by: amorphous | August 26, 2014 at 12:06 AM
However, I've found myself put off a bit by the male-centric nature of the BBC series, though I'm at a loss as to how they could add a strong female character (when they did add one, in the form of John Watson's fiance, she turns out to be a CIA agent experienced in wet work)....
Indeed, that was pretty egregious.
There is, obviously Irene Adler - who rather ridiculously appeared naked as a dominatrix in the series.
The problem is, I think, that the BBC does not / cannot afford to use teams of writers, and any given series tends to be dominated by the preoccupations of a single writer.
My children reliably inform me that series creator Steven Moffat (also responsible for much of the current Dr Who) is something of a misogynist...
Posted by: Nigel | August 26, 2014 at 01:46 AM
Great lists, dr ngo
(my spellcheck wants to render you as NGO: non-governmental organisation )
I've read a disconcerting number of them, and you have provided some fruitful avenues of investigation.
I'll check my own shelves, but one I remember fondly is Michael Dibdin's often frustrated Italian detective Aurelio Zen.
Posted by: Nigel | August 26, 2014 at 01:56 AM