Talking About Detective Fiction [Hardcover]

My best birthday present this year is this well written little book by a master [mistress?] of detective fiction. James argues that detective fiction is most popular during difficult times -- reason and ingenuity may again prevail.

"Whether we live in a more violent age than did, for example, the Victorians is a question for statisticians and sociologists, but we certainly feel more threatened by crime and disorder than at any other time I remember in my long life. The detective story deals with the most dramatic and tragic manifestations of man's nature and the ultimate disruption of murder, yet the form itself is orderly, controlled, formulaic, providing a secure structure within which the imaginations of writer and reader alike can confront the unthinkable."

It is great fun to read James's views on her predecessors in the detection writing trade; although most of her subjects were British, she admires Edgar Allan Poe for four great contributions to the form: the locked-room, armchair detection, cryptography and the unlikely perp. (For Kindle owners, Classic American Literature: The Works of Poe, Raven Edition, all 5 volumes in a single file, with active table of contents is a marvelous bargain at only $.99.)

James is troubled that Agatha Christie has eclipsed so many of her contemporaries.

"Agatha Christie hasn't in my view had a profound influence on the later development of the detective story.... She wasn't an innovative writer and had no interest in exploring the possibilities of the genre." She goes on: Christie "is a literary conjuror who places her pasteboard characters face downwards and shuffles them with practiced cunning." Nonetheless, James especially likes female detective writers, especially Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers and Sara Paretsky.

James finds Dr. Watson a much more honorable and realistic figure than Sherlock Holmes; she bangs away at many of the weaknesses of the series with all the fervor of the most committed Baker Street Irregular. (Sherlock Holmes By Gas Lamp: Highlights from the First Four Decades of the Baker Street Journal contains a number of similar analyses. The first Comment contains a detailed discussion of what troubles James.)

James praises The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins because it introduced elements of everyday life into detective stories. She discusses the influence of real crime stories on the genre (including details about the unsolved murder and investigator that inspired Collins), the popularity of books sold in train stations (quoting the "Times" of London "on the assumption that persons of the better class who constitute the larger portion of railway readers lose their accustomed taste the moment they enter the station,") and the importance of magazines.

She particularly praises the the demise of "the omni-talented amateur with apparently nothing to do with his time but solve murders which interest him." She believes this has occurred "partly because his rich and privileged lifestyle became less admirable, and his deferential acceptance by police less credible, in an age when men were expected to work."

James is particularly compelling when she writes about her own work. An interview on CBCNews is a fair example of her style in this book:

"Q: What has it been like to have Adam Dalgliesh in your life for so long?

"A: When I began, I didn't know he'd be a serial character, and of course there's the challenge of having readers suspend their disbelief. He hasn't aged that much over 40 years and each novel is set in the time of its writing. But I did try to create a character that was someone I'd really like. I gave Dalgliesh the qualities I admire in both men and women: he's good-looking, highly intelligent, compassionate but not sentimental, and reserved. It was important too that he was a character who could develop. I never wanted to know him too well. I think Agatha Christie got rather fed up with Hercule Poirot at the end, because she had made him both too old and just too bizarre."

(She might have said the same of Sherlock Holmes; Sir Conan Doyle certainly complained in public about the great detective's amazing popularity and the later stories show some of his dislike for the character.)

James emphasizes the humanity of the characters and the writers she praises. "Before he even planned the Father Brown stories, Chesterton wrote that `the only thrill, even of a common thriller, is concerned somehow with the conscience and the will.' Those words have been part of my credo as a writer. They may not be framed and on my desk but they are never out of my mind."

James enlives the book with delightful cartoons; for example, the caption for a butler bearing a tray, "Your red herring. My Lord."

The jacket oversells the book -- "[James]" examines the genre from top to bottom." The book is too short to do that, of course, but this is a marvelous sampling of many significant writers, characters and developments in my favorite escapist genre.

Robert C. Ross 2009

Imagine Copernicus explaining astronomy to you, or Einstein teaching you physics, or Moses clarifying difficult biblical passages that confused clergy and prompted discord and even wars. Imagine also that the expert could write clearly, interestingly and with wit, such as Sigmund Freud explaining the principles of psychology with examples from fascinating case studies.

This is what happens with P.D. James marvelous book. James is the queen of modern detective fiction, certainly, without any doubt, one of the royal family.

James states that mystery novels are composed of several basic elements: a crime, usually murder; a small circle of suspects, each having a motive to commit the crime; opportunity; a detective; and a solution that is inserted into the novel with deceptive cunning, but with fairness. The last point means that readers will realize when they hear the detective's solution that the solution fits what was disclosed previously in the novel.

James describes the differences between detective stories, thrillers and horror tales. Each genre has its own elements and its own purposes. A reader who knows the elements and purposes can appreciate the tale better. Detective stories, she writes, do not, or at least should not, investigate a murder or another crime; nor should they dwell on the bizarre happenings; they should focus on the tragic fate of the people involved.

James describes the history of detective fiction and introduces her readers to over a dozen of the best writers, generally focusing on British women. She gives special attention to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh. She discusses the strength and weaknesses of these stories, their history, psychology and sociology.

James is not reluctant to reveal her opinions on the authors she dislikes. She describes Agatha Christie disparagingly. She states that her style is neither original nor elegant and she is not a very good writer. Her characters are pasteboards. James writes cleverly: "Perhaps her greatest strength was that she never overstepped the limits of her talent."

Scholars, she reveals, differ as to who wrote the first detective story. Some say it was Caleb Williams in 1784. Some insist it was Edgar Allan Poe who invented the genre in1841 with The Murder in Rue Morgue. Others vote for Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone in 1860. James prefers the latter. She tells the fascinating true story that prompted The Moonstone.

James identifies the first great detective as the iconic Sherlock Holmes who Conan Doyle introduced in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle was so enthralled and naïve that he sold his rights to this masterpiece for twenty five pounds.

James awards second place to G. K. Chesterton who began his Father Brown series in 1911. The tales were so delightful that few readers realized that they were never told the priest's first name.

James' book addresses many interesting questions. Why do some critics disparage some or all detective stories? What about these books attracts readers? Can people read detective stories more than once with pleasure? Do Protestants enjoy the books more than Catholics? How do readers experience relief of tensions? Why do many people like to read these tension filled novels in bed before sleeping? How do today's detective stories differ from those written in the past?

Those readers who enjoy deductive fiction will enjoy James' perceptive descriptions of it written with the same verve that she employs in her dramas.

A typically well-written book by James, though it nowhere comes close to replacing Julian Symons' classic "Bloody Murder" as a comprehensive survey of the detective fiction genre, being quite short (almost pamphlet size) and selective in its coverage. A great deal of "Talking About Detective Fiction" is given over to authors from the so-called British Golden Age of detective fiction (roughly 1920 to 1940), particularly the Crime Queens (Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Marsh and sometimes Tey). James touches on some writers who may not be familiar to her readers, like Gladys Mitchell and Cyril Hare, as well as the American hardboiled triumvirate of Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald, but many significant names are left out (such as S. S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen, Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles, Freeman Wills Crofts and John Dickson Carr), giving a rather narrow picture of the period. Her readers, for example, might come away with the impression that no American wrote traditional puzzles during the Golden Age, or that British women detective novelists outnumbered the men. Neither impression would be accurate.

As one reviewer has noted, James is rather disparaging toward Christie, though this is nothing new for James, who has been rather disparaging toward Christie for decades now. What is new is that James admits rereading some Christie and finding some of her works, like A Murder Is Announced, better than she recalled. One wishes James had gone back and read, say, Five Little Pigs, And Then There Were None, Endless Night or The Hollow; she might have altered her assertion that Christie simply creates pasteboard characters in whom the reader can have no possible interest apart from their contribution to the puzzle. Christie's continued great sales decade after decade would suggest that many readers are finding something in her books besides puzzles, for many ingenious puzzler contemporaries of Christie's have been forgotten. In Five Little Pigs, for example, Christie clearly has moved closer to a novel of character while at the same time providing readers with a teasing puzzle. Endless Night, published late in Christie's life, actually is more a "crime novel" in the modern mold. Even some of what are commonly seen as her pure puzzles, such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Murder at the Vicarage, are village satires with clever first person narration. And of course many of her "mere puzzles," like The ABC Murders, are sheer brilliance. And dare I say that Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, mannerisms and all, are more memorable characters than James' poet-policeman, Adam Dalgleish? Time will tell on that one ultimately, but in the meantime to conclude that Christie was not an innovator and that she had no interest in exploring her chosen genre seems simply wrong to me.

It should surprise no one who has followed James' career over the decades that she is a great admirer of Dorothy L. Sayers, long the pretender to Christie's throne. James not only admires Sayers' novels (though she criticizes some of the murder methods in them on grounds of realism), she emulates Sayers as a critic, elevating, as Sayers did, the Victorian sensation novels of Wilkie Collins as the model for the modern detective novel. Like the novels of Sayers, the novels of James have grown longer and longer over the years, with more and more emphasis on character study and description of place and less and less emphasis on clever puzzle mechanics. James sees this "realism" as making the detective novel stronger, something closer to the mainstream novel. Some mystery fans might feel that James' later books have become too much like mainstream novels and prefer earlier ones where the author placed more emphasis on providing her readers with a clever puzzle. Still, there is no question but that the Baroness remains, at nearly ninety years of age, an articulate and charming writer in "Talking About Detective Fiction"; and her admirers should enjoy this little book.

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