Mystery Literature

How do you begin a love affair with a particular kind of literature?

For me, one began on an early spring day, sunny but brisk and windy, when I was bored out of my mind. I had gone to Boston with my father, and he was off meeting someone he had to meet, so I had nothing to do in a sophisticated city where I knew no one. I wandered aimlessly around, until I found myself in a bookstore.

Instinctively I gravitated to the cheap paperback section. Something caught my eye – a book cover that pictured a man in a hat and raincoat, peering into the darkness. The book was The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, one of the all-time great American detective novels, but I didn’t know that then. I saw only that it didn’t look like anything special, yet it looked nothing like any book on the approved list of vegetables. I opened it, and found myself drawn into a world of hidden secrets, fast action, weary idealism, colourful descriptions and dialogue. I bought the book and, reading as I walked, made my way to a park bench, where I sat for the next two hours, unconscious of everything save the story before me.

I was hooked.

Mystery literature tends to do that. There’s some deep connection between the human imagination and stories about people who probably have done something wrong and certainly have something to hide. We all have secrets and hidden fears, and perhaps we get a vicarious thrill from reading a story in which people do and say things that just don’t fit into normal, civilized life. Then there’s the pleasure of studying the clues and sifting the evidence. And the compulsion to find out what happens next, and whodunit, and how, and why. Ultimately, the mystery story usually provides something else, too: the triumph of human reason over the darker impulses toward violence and disorder.

This theme, and just about every other notion important to the art of mystery writing, can be found in the very first mystery story, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, published in 1841. Poe’s achievement was to combine a modern faith in the scientific method with his gothic imagination. His detective, Auguste Dupin, is eccentric, but his mental powers make him vastly superior to the plodding police. Sound familiar?

Yet the very familiarity of theme and situation that has made mysteries so popular caused many critics to label them as mere “entertainment”, not real “literature”. Only in the past generation or so have influential critics conceded that fine mystery writing is the same as any kind of fine writing. And the best of any kind writing is literature, no matter where you find it.

Which is really what I discovered on that spring day when I wandered into a bookstore, picked out a cheap-looking book, and found writing that carried me to a new place…

By David Goddy

Literary Cavalcade, vol. 45 № 5, 1993

Ex. 15. Answer the questions.

1. What are the distinctive features of the detective genre?

2. Why does the detective genre appeal to readers?

3. What was the origin of the detective genre?

4. Do you agree that detective stories should be labelled as “entertainment”?

5. Do you enjoy reading detective stories? Who is your favourite detective story writer?

6. What is a typical detective like? Is he/she opposed to the police?

7. Who is your favourite detective (Hercules Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, the lawyer Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe)?

Ex. 16. Develop a project/prepare a report. Choose the topic.

1. Classical detective story and its variations (Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Leigh Sayers, Gilbert Keith Chesterton).

2. “Hard-boiled” detective style (Caroll John Daly, Raymond Thornton Chandler, Samuel Dashiell Hammett).

3. Detective story writers and their creations: images of great detectives and criminals (A. Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, Professor Morriarti).

4. The development of the detective genre in Belarus.

5. The new detective genre started by Umberto Eco (“The Name of the Rose” by U. Eco, “The Vatican’s Mystery” by Frederick Tristan).

Ex. 17. What do you know about William Shakespeare? Check your knowledge by fulfilling the following tasks.

A. Answer the questions.

1. What do you know about William Shakespeare’s family?

2. What facts from his biography do you remember?

3. What jobs did Shakespeare try his hand at?

4. When did he start writing?

5. How was Shakespearean theatre organized?

6. What is the fate of his books in the modern world?

7. What is your favourite play by Shakespeare? Why?

B. What are the Russian/Belarusian names of these plays?