Detective fiction of twentieth century

Assignment Paper 9

The Modernist Literature

Ajit A. Kaliya

M.A. Sem. 3

Roll No.1

Enrollment No. 2069108420170013

Batch: 2016-18

Email- kaliyaajitbhai@gmail.com
Department Of English, MKBU

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Introduction

In literature what is the element which attracts readers and keep them reading? It is the feeling of excitement. Which type of stories children like the most? They like the stories which are full of excitement. They like when a magician make a prince frog, they like when giant monster attack on village and hero go for fighting with the giant. This excites them. This excitement is natural instinct and always remains within us. As we grow, we like murder mysteries, crime stories, and detective stories. In films, T.V. serials, newspapers, magazines, there are always crime stories can be found, and they used to be very popular also among the people. So, Feeling of excitement, thrill, fear, mystery has been always liked by people in literature.

Detective and crime fiction is not so old genre. Detective fiction in the English-speaking world is considered to have begun in 1841 with the publication of Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) featuring "the first fictional detective, the eccentric and brilliant. Auguste Dupin". When the character first appeared, the word detective did not even exist.  (Wikipedia, Detective Fiction)

So it is quite a new genre, and made its place in literature.

Definition and characteristics of detective fiction

Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective either professional, amateur or retired —investigates a crime, often murder.  (Wikipedia, Detective Fiction)

So, here detective fiction is different from crime fiction and mystery fiction. It has some characteristics which makes it different from other.

Ø  Detective

Ø  Investigation

Ø  Crime

Ø  Complexity

Ø  A celebrated, skilled, professional investigator

Ø  Bungling local constabulary

Ø  Detective inquiries

Ø  Large number of false suspects

Ø  The "least likely suspect"

Ø  A reconstruction of the crime

Ø  A final twist in the plot  (Wikipedia, Detective Fiction)

Detective fiction became very famous during 20th century. Let us see some of the famous writers and their books.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. Originally a physician, in 1887 he published, A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr. Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. (Wikipedia, Arthur Cocon Doyle)

Sherlock Holmes

The author is famous because of this work. This work is a collection of fifty six stories and four short novels.

The story of how Arthur Conan Doyle developed the character of Holmes has been told many times. Conan Doyle trained as a doctor at Edinburgh University and received a medical degree in 1881, but he did not have a lot success as a doctor, and he took to writing partly as a pastime but also in the hope of supplementing his income. The first Holmes story was a novella, A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual (1887), which was followed in 1890 by another novella, The Sign of the Four, first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. From the beginning, the character of Sherlock Holmes is a contradictory mixture of a man with amazingly unemotional scientific rationality, who also is a dreamy romantic violinist and drug taker. In this, he differs from his predecessor Auguste Dupin, who is wholly the rational man, which is the image that Holmes also projects to the clients and the police. But to Watson and the reader, he shows his other side as a man susceptible to boredom and at times emotionally reactive to his clients. Holmes is presented as a misogynist, but, in a contradiction, he keeps the photograph of Irene Adler, who bested him in the very first Holmes short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” and, as Watson tells the reader, was always “the Woman” to Holmes. Holmes’s insistence on rationality and denial of emotion makes him at times seem cold, but in fact his enthusiasm (“the game is afoot”), his love of disguises, his single-mindedness, and his amusing patches of ignorance do charm the reader. (Encyclopedias)

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Herculec Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap, and six romances under the name Mary Westmacott. In 1971 she was elevated to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature. (Wikipedia, Agatha Christie)

As Sherlock Holmes was Doyle's detective, Christie has Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Hercule Poirot appeared in 33 novels and 54 stories, while character of Miss Marple appeared in 12 novels and 20 stories.

1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Hercule Poirot has retired to the village of King's Abbot to cultivate marrows. But when wealthy Roger Ackroyd is found stabbed in his study, he agrees to investigate. A typical village murder mystery; or so it seems until the last chapter with its stunning revelation. This title would still be discussed today even if Christie had never written another book. An unmissable, and still controversial, milestone of detective fiction.

2. Peril at End House (1932)

The impoverished owner of End House hosts a party where fireworks camouflage the shot that kills her cousin. Which of the other guests is a murderer? Perfectly paced, with subtle and ingenious clueing, and an unexpected but totally logical solution. Of its type, perfection; this is how the classic detective story should be written.

3. Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

The glamorous Orient Express stops during the night, blocked by snowdrifts. Next morning the mysterious Mr. Ratchett is found stabbed in his compartment and untrodden snow shows that the killer is still on board. This glamorous era of train travel provides Poirot with an international cast of suspects and one of his biggest challenges. Predicated on an inspired gimmick, this is one of the great surprise endings in the genre.

4. And Then There Were None (1939)

Ten people are invited to an island for the weekend. Although they all harbor a secret, they remain unsuspecting until they begin to die, one by one, until eventually … there are none. Panic ensues when the diminishing group realizes that one of their own numbers is the killer. A perfect combination of thriller and detective story, this much-copied plot is Christie's greatest technical achievement. (theguardian)

These are few examples of her work. This time is called golden time of detective fiction.

Margery Allinghom

Margery Louise Allingham(20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English writer of detective fiction, best remembered for her "golden age" stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.

Her notable works are the crime at black Dudley, mystery mile, look to the lady, police at the funeral, sweet danger, death of a ghost, flowers for the judge etc.  (Wikipedia, Margery Allinghom)

Dorothy Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers(13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and Christian humanist. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day.

Her famous detective fiction are whose body, Gaudy nights, murder must advertise, the nine tailers etc. (Wikipedia, Dorothy L. Sayers)

Arthur Morrison

When Conan Doyle decided to kill Sherlock Holmes and end the series, the editors of the Strand scrambled to find a substitute for the popular series. They found Arthur Morrison, who is known now mainly for novels of London poverty. His detective was Martin Hewitt, whose first case, “The Lenton Croft Robberies,” a locked-room mystery, appeared in the Strand in March 1894, three months after Holmes’s supposed demise in “The Final Problem” in December 1893. Twenty-four of Morrison’s Martin Hewitt stories followed (not all in the Strand), ultimately nineteen of which were collected into three volumes Martin Hewitt, Investigator (1894), The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1896), and The Adventures of Martin Hewitt (1896), the next six in The Red Triangle, Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1903), which also featured Morrison’s answer to Holmes’s Moriarty, Mayes the master criminal. (Encyclopedias)

L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

These two writers together created John Bell, a “ghost exposer” who uses Holmesian techniques to unmask fake ghosts; these stories were collected in A Master of Mysteries in 1898. The two authors, both together and separately, created a number of other detectives, a few of them women, like Detective Florence Cusack (Meade) in “Mr. Bovey’s Unexpected Will” in Harmsworth Magazine in 1899, and Detective Norman Head in the 1899 volume The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings(Meade and Eustace). They both often used the locked-room mystery format; for example, in The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings, the detective Norman Head solves “The Mystery of the Strong Room” when a diamond is stolen from a locked room by one of what was a new development, a villainous woman, Madame Koluchy, the head of an Italian criminal gang. (Encyclopedias)

Some other writers

Catherine Louisa Pirkis created the character of Loveday Brooke, a lady detective and wrote seven detective fictions. Austin Freeman published first series featuring doctor detective in 1909. His detective is Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, first appears in eight stories in which he uses his medical skills and diagnostic technology—like the microscope and chemical analysis—aided by his laboratory assistant, Nathaniel Polton, and his friend Christopher Jervis, the narrator of the stories, to solve crimes. Freeman is generally considered the first to use the “inverted” detective story, where the crime and usually the perpetrator are known from the beginning and the suspense in the rest of the tale is discovering how the detective solved the case. G.K.Chesterton's Father Brown detective stories are also famous. (Encyclopedias)

  

Conclusion

Those were some of the authors of detective fiction during the time of early 20th century, which is considered as golden period of the detective fiction. So many writers tried this genre, many characters they created. From its born this genre has never died and today also film adaptation of these detective stories has been made. This genre is very popular in TV serials, newspaper stories, movies, comics and even in cartoons also for example Scooby Doo, Tintin and anime series Detective Conon. We can say that this genre has still great future.

Works Cited

Encyclopedias, Oxford Research. British Detective Fiction in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. 2017. 26 October 2017 <http://literature.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-240?rskey=kSP2z5&result=1>.

theguardian. The top 10 Agatha Christie mysteries . 16 September 2009. 26 October 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/15/top-10-agatha-christie-novels>.

Wikipedia. Agatha Christie. 24 October 2017. 26 October 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie>.

—. Arthur Cocon Doyle. 23 October 2017. 26 October 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle>.

—. Detective Fiction. 11 October 2017. 26 October 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction>.

—. Detective Fiction. 11 October 2017. 26 October 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction>.

—. Dorothy L. Sayers. 23 October 2017. 26 October 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_L._Sayers>.

—. Margery Allinghom. 14 October 2017. 26 October 2017 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Allingham>.

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