The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction (2017)
elizabethspanncraig.com
elizabethspanncraig.com
Contemporary mystery authors too often feel the need to create the illusion of depth by having alcoholic protagonists with messy personal lives. It’s cliche, and it put me off the genre for good about a decade ago.
Indeed, what a line!
> Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a reason for it in our western habit of assuming that the Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals.
Knox is criticizing this assumption, not endorsing it.
> I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention of ‘the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo', you had best put it down at once; it is bad.
I definitely agree with Knox's harsh judgment of the books that used to include such lines! I am reminded of the many ridiculous and racist caricatures of Chinese, African, Native American, and many other cultures in the (otherwise fairly wonderful) Tintin comics by Hergé.
Of course, writing a rule against including any Chinese people in detective fiction is going much too far, and is also racist; but no doubt Knox's writing here is a product of his time.
In fact, the first detective novel I ever read was "Walking Shadow" by Robert B. Parker, where his tough PI Spenser and his comrades Hawk and Susan Silverman go up against some Boston area tongs, and the Chinese people in that book are interesting, "round" characters; so I'm glad Parker had either never heard of this particular rule and chose to ignore it.
From what I remember of the Blue Lotus, it was the Japanese antagonists who got the short end of the stick in that regard, so at least the book in China avoided that issue (unlike the books set in the US and Africa)
"He committed Finnish suicide"
"What's that?"
"He drank himself to death"
Later on...
Detective to the pathologist as they stand over the body of completely naked woman in the morgue:
"What can you tell me about this woman?"
"Judging by her perfect white teeth I'd say she's American"
I'm thinking it goes back at least as far as Inspector Morse, although I'm not sure whether we'd say he had a dependency on real ale or Mozart....?
Perhaps a certain lack of joy?
I agree with you. Messy personal lives and often sex scenes or gore that add nothing to the story. I find it off-putting and disturbing (not necessarily morally disturbing, more as noise or feeling disconnected from the author: I don't get why are you telling me this, am I missing the point, should I be enjoying this?) and find myself retreating to old classics like Poirot, Father Brown, Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes again and again
https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/i-cant-stop-thinking-abo...
It's been a while since I last read 'Red Harvest' but I remember an awful lot of laudanum.
It's a trope that makes some sense though. People who are doing work that requires them to travel for long periods of time, spend lots of time alone, or where they obsess over every detail of something for days on end could easily strain relationships and cause issues in their personal lives, while constantly dealing with cases involving horrible things can easily lead to drugs/alcohol use. It's still a cliche and it's sure to get old, but I almost feel like you'd need a good explanation for avoiding it. How does a character who has spent years seeing the worst things have zero issue dealing with it? How does a person whose income in inconsistent, whose lifestyle has them disappearing for days at a time, and whose work consumes them not have issues with their personal life?
Not that you can't have a detective who is independently wealthy or works as part of a team, or who never travels, or never deals with the kinds of cases that would cause them to have trouble sleeping at night, but if you do have that kind of character the rest of it just sort of follows.
"Walter Sobchak: What the f** are you talking about? The chinaman is not the issue here, dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please."
https://www.openculture.com/2016/02/20-rules-for-writing-det...
I've often been annoyed at modern police shows like law and order that I think fail to introduce the suspects sufficiently. The modern formula seems more like one suspect leads to another then another then another then the confession. There's seldom any way for the viewer to suspect who's actually guilty early on, unlike murder she wrote or columbo, so there's no payoff when you find out who it was.
At some point, I realized that Watson is much less dumb, then submissive and constantly verbally bullied. Or rather, that we perceive him through the way Sherlock (or his equivalent) constantly puts him down, even when his reactions are not dumb at all. And since Watson equivalent never stand up for himself, he is dumb for reader who don't think about him.
And once you notice it, it is quite frequent in literature. When character gets insulted by other characters without standing up for himself, people will take from it that character is stupid - even in cases where that character was completely normal or even for right all along.
It actually works the same way in real life too.
> science
Interestingly, when you look at detective stories with scientific accuracy, the evidence detectives use is super shoddy. Most of it is at bike-marks accuracy at best - guaranteed to imprison innocents often.
All this is because I read too many of detective stories.
> the reader deserves a fighting chance to solve the mystery without the author’s use of cheap tricks.
though I found he frequently didn't leave much (any?) chance for the reader to solve the mystery, though for me the mystery and its solution was never really the focus of the stories anyway.
Ironically, Raymond Chandler - whom I imagine many such modern authors are trying to imitate - commented somewhere in his letters that the detective should almost never get the punchline. He pointed out that it was more effective to have the bad guy deliver the zinger, and the detective just take it on the chin and shrug it off, leaving the heel unsure whether to try to top his own line or just awkwardly make his exit.
Violation of this rule ruined an otherwise amazing PC game for me, which shall remain nameless to avoid spoilers.
It was borderline silly to have the detective you played for 90% of the game narrating his thoughts on what clues meant, and on who the culprit might be, only to then turn out to be the murderer ...
I'm trying to discover which one you mean - I remember one which matches somewhat, but in which you control so many characters that you definitely don't spend 90% of the time controlling the one that ends up being the culprit.
(But that game also just threw a handful of red herrings at the wall that ended up being completely meaningless, so it was a bit of a lame duck, rushed into release like all the releases by this "auteur" have been before and since)
Apart from that, on the not strictly speaking detective side of things, there is also Planescape: Torment which pulled this whole idea off spectacularly (to the point that it has become tropey in the other direction again).
I was talking about this one: https://bit.ly/3uvMGst
Yes, Planescape Torment is amazing, but at the same time, the whole "it was you all along" is clear from the beginning of the game, the game doesn't try to mislead you in any way.
As an aside, I've never seen anyone do a better job of describing the very specific feeling of long walks in Manhattan. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't understand the joy I find there.
The appropriate punishment might be more suitable to a fantasy novel: To sentence the writer live for a time as a character in a world built by an even more arbitrary, capricious and inscrutable author than Jehovah.
I'd read that.
I don't like this saying, because in literature and art generally it leads to formulaic repetitive stories. If you dont break rules before learning them, you will never learn to break them. And when it is most common advice there is, we get the situation in which you can predict the rest of average book or movie after first 10 minutes.
It is much better when authors treat rules as optional formulas - follow or not and be aware there is a lot more to choose from.
Maybe not hundreds, but I bet many good authors started by writing a few dozen formulaic stories first. Humans learn through mimicry, and I don't think storytelling is any different.
> If you dont break rules before learning them, you will never learn to break them.
If you're good at your craft, you end up learning the rules regardless; the only question is how efficient are you at doing do? The best way to learn is through mistakes, but you can choose to learn from others' mistakes, so you don't need to make them yourself.
That's what the "rules" are: things other people have done, that didn't work. They aren't absolutes, but they're good starting points, and until you have some sort of intuition about things, breaking the rules should at least make you stop and consider why you're doing so, and if you're doing so in a way that will work.
I don't think this is true based on authors I know. The ones I know that started with dozen formulaic stories wrote formulaic stories whole their lives. They might have been good formulaic stories, but still.
The ones who did not wrote formulaic, were going outside formulaic from the beginning.
> Humans learn through mimicry, and I don't think storytelling is any different.
Mimicry of formulaic story is exactly same formulaic story. Yes, you will learn how to wrote that one formula if you go this way.
> The best way to learn is through mistakes, but you can choose to learn from others' mistakes, so you don't need to make them yourself.
That does not imply you should write few dozen formulaic stories before attempting to create something else. You can study other writers without writing formulaic stories.
Watson was not stupid and I wouldn't trust an author who read him that way. Matched with
> Thou shalt strive to create a detective who has flaws.
it suggests audiences who must be spoon-fed or they will be lost and confused. "The Detective Solves Crimes To Ease The Guilt Over His Tragic Loss And The Side Character Has No Backstory So Don't Waste Any Mental Space On Him!!"
Also, there is, for those not big on detective fiction, Edmund Wilson's essay "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"
See also Who Killed Roger Ackroyd by Pierre Bayard, in which the author argues for a different outcome to the case.
Dirk Gently[0] would like a word...
[0]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently_(pilot_episode)
A reasonable point. Although I'd say that humor (if done well) is a boon, rather than a detriment to mysteries (most fiction, actually).
And cats always make things better[2]!
As someone who enjoys mystery novels, I've noted that minor mysteries are often used as a device to bring the detective into situations where larger issues may be afoot[0][1].
It seems to me that if a mystery is engaging, the underlying "crime" isn't as relevant as the storytelling, clue planting and the thought process of the detective.
At the same time, mysteries generally deal with serious crimes (especially murder), as it amps up the (fictional) stakes and provides a reason for the interest and participation of the detective.
But that needn't be the case -- as long as the mystery is interesting, the prose is of good quality and the characters engaging. At least that's my take.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Clapham_C...
[2] cf. Lillian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who..." mysteries[3].
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Who_series
Edit: Fixed reference indices.
A violation of Knox Rule number II.
"You're talking about your dog? I don't do dogs." I said.
At this point, the husband slid an envelope across the desk filled with cash. It was at least twice my daily rate.
"Look," he said, "I need this done, and I need it done discreetly. Find the dog, or bring me its collar." The woman began to object, but a glare from her husband stopped her.
This was more than a missing dog case. It had to be, no one put up that much, in cash, up front just for a dog. You put up posters in the neighborhood, you don't hire a PI. Alarm bells were ringing in my head, but the rent was due, and Aberlour isn't cheap.
I opened my desk drawer and casually slid the envelope into it. "Do you have a picture of..."
"Beaumont. His name is Beaumont," the woman supplied.
...
(looking at you, Metal Gear Solid 4)