Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. It is closely related to mystery fiction but generally contains more of a puzzle element that must be solved, generally by a single protagonist.

A common feature of detective fiction is an investigator who is unmarried, with some source of income other than a regular job, and who generally has some pleasing eccentricities or striking characteristics. He or she frequently has a less intelligent assistant, or foil, who is asked to make apparently irrelevant inquiries and acts as an audience surrogate for the explanation of the mystery at the end of the story.

Whodunit?

The most widespread subgenre of the detective novel is the whodunit (or whodunnit), where great ingenuity may be exercised in narrating the events of the crime and of the subsequent investigation in such a manner as to conceal the identity of the criminal from the reader until the end of the book, when the method and culprit are revealed.

Early archetypes of these stories were the three Auguste Dupin tales by Edgar Allan Poe: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1843), and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). Poe's detective stories have been described as ratiocinative tales ^{[citation needed]}. In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is through a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. As a consequence, the crime itself sometimes becomes secondary to the efforts taken to solve it. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" is particularly interesting, as it is a barely fictionalized analysis of the circumstances of the real-life discovery of the body of a young woman named Mary Cecilia Rogers, in which Poe expounds his theory of what actually happened. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, makes it a precursor if not the inspiration of the stories about the most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who in turn set the style for many others in later years, including Holmesian pastiches such as August Derleth's Solar Pons.

Another early archetype of the whodunit is found as a sub-plot in the vast novel Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens. The conniving lawyer Tulkinghorn is killed in his office late one night, and the crime is investigated by Inspector Bucket of the Metropolitan force. Numerous characters appeared on the staircase leading to Tulkinghorn's office that night, some of them in disguise, and Inspector Bucket must penetrate these mysteries to identify the culprit.

Dickens's protégé, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), is credited with the first great mystery novel, The Woman in White. He is sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of English detective fiction." His novel The Moonstone (1868) was described by T. S. Eliot as "the first and greatest of English detective novels" and by Dorothy L. Sayers as "probably the very finest detective story ever written". Although technically preceded by Charles Felix's The Notting Hill Mystery (1865), The Moonstone can claim to have established the genre with several classic features of the twentieth-century detective story:

A country house robbery
An 'inside job'
A celebrated investigator
Bungling local constabulary
Detective enquiries
False suspects
The 'least likely suspect'
A rudimentary 'locked room' murder
A reconstruction of the crime
A final twist in the plot

Some readers have suggested even earlier prototypes for the whodunit, most notably the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (Daniel 13; in the Protestant Bible this story is found in the apocrypha) and the story of the dog and the horse related in the third chapter of Voltaire's Zadig (1747).

The Private Eye Novel

Although the British private eye Martin Hewitt (by Arthur Morrison) had already appeared by 1894, the genre was adopted wholeheartedly by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, and were considered novels of the proletariat, exploring "mean streets" and the underbelly of corruption within the United States. Several movies have been based on his work, including three versions of The Maltese Falcon and a series of movies based on The Thin Man.

Raymond Chandler updated the form with his private detective Philip Marlowe, who brought a more intimate voice to the detective than Hammett's distant-third viewpoint. His cadenced dialog and cryptic narrations were musical, evoking the alleys and tough thugs, rich women and powerful men about whom he wrote. Laced with commentary, his books still hold up. Several feature and television movies have been made about the Phillip Marlowe character.

James Hadley Chase wrote a few novels with private eyes as the main hero, including "Blonde's Requiem" (1945), "Lay Her Among the Lilies" (1950), and "Figure It Out for Yourself" (1950). Heroes of these novels are typical private eyes which are very similar to Philip Marlowe.

Ross Macdonald, pseudonym of Kenneth Millar, updated the form again with his detective Lew Archer, while still writing in what is considered the PI's Golden Age of detective fiction, begun by Hammett. Archer, like Hammett's fictional heroes, was a camera eye, with hardly any known past. "Turn Archer sideways, and he disappears," one reviewer wrote. Two of Macdonald's strengths were his use of psychology and his beautiful prose, which was full of imagery. Like other 'hardboiled' writers, Macdonald aimed to give an impression of realism in his work through violence, sex and confrontation; this is illusory, however, and any real private eye undergoing a typical fictional investigation would soon be dead or incapacitated. The movie Harper starring Paul Newman was based on the Lew Archer character.

Michael Collins, pseudonym of Dennis Lynds, is generally considered the author who led the form into the Modern Age. His PI, Dan Fortune, was consistently involved in the same sort of David-and-Goliath stories that Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald wrote, but he took a sociological bent, exploring the meaning of his characters' places in society and the impact society had on people. Full of commentary and clipped prose, his books were more intimate than his predecessors, dramatizing that crime can happen in one's own living room.

The PI novel was a male-dominated field in which female authors seldom found publication until Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton were finally published in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Each author's detective was brainy, physical, and could hold her own. Their acceptance then success caused publishers to seek out other fine female authors.

The PI today is rich in variety. The strongest characteristic that binds them is that the detective now has a past and a life, while solving cases. The premier authors' organization of PI writers is the Private Eye Writers of America.

English Golden Age detective novels

English readers, in their own Golden Age of detective fiction between the wars generally preferred a different, but equally implausible, type of detective story in which an outsider - sometimes a salaried investigator or a police officer, but more often a gifted amateur - investigates a murder committed in a closed environment by one of a limited number of suspects. These have become known as 'cosies' to distinguish them from the 'hard-boiled' type preferred in the USA^{[citation needed]}. The most popular writer of cosies, and one of the most popular writers of all time, was Agatha Christie, who produced a long series of books featuring her detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, amongst others, and usually including a complex puzzle for the baffled and misdirected reader to try and unravel. The 'puzzle' approach was carried even further into ingenious and seemingly impossible plots by John Dickson Carr, who also wrote as Carter Dickson, and is particularly noted for "locked room puzzles" and Cecil Street, who also wrote as John Rhode, whose detective Dr. Priestley specialised in elaborate technical devices, while in the US the 'cosy' was adopted and extended by Rex Stout and Erle Stanley Gardner. The popularity of cosies has declined in the last four decades, perhaps partly due to attacks on their 'unrealistic' approach; although given that their primary goal is to present a puzzle, one might as well attack a crossword or a chess problem for its unrealism.

This emphasis on formal 'rules' during the British Golden Age produced a variety of reactions. Most writers were content to follow the rules slavishly, some flouted some or all of the conventions, and some exploited the conventions with genius to produce new and startling results. The "Golden Age" also displayed many elements typical of escapist writing and this was attributed to its popularity at the time as many wished to escape the depression of World War I and its aftermath.

Police procedural

Many detective stories have police officers as the main characters. Of course these stories may take many forms, but many authors try to go for a realistic depiction of a police officer's routine. A good deal are whodunits; in others the criminal is well known, and it is a case of getting enough evidence.

Some typical features of these are:

The detective is rarely the first on the crime scene - it will be milling with uniform, paramedics and possibly members of the public.
Forensic reports - and the wait for them.
Rules and regulations to follow - or not.
Suspects arrested and kept in custody - sometimes wrongly.
Pressure from senior officers to show progress.
A large investigating team - two, three or four main characters, plus other officers to order about.
Pubs - places to discuss or think about the case - especially in the Inspector Morse mysteries.
Informants - to lean on.
Political pressure when the suspects are prominent figures
Internal hostility from comrades when the suspects are fellow police officers
Pressure from the media (tv, newspapers) to come up with an answer
Interesting and unusual cars driven by the principal detective

Other subgenres

There is also a subgenre of historical detectives. See historical whodunnit for an overview.

Suspense - the core tenet of detective fiction

A beginner to detective fiction would generally be advised against reading anything about a piece of detective fiction (such as a blurb or an introduction) before reading the text itself. Even if they do not mean to, advertisers, reviewers, scholars and aficionados usually have a habit of giving away details or parts of the plot, and sometimes -- for example in the case of Mickey Spillane's novel I, the Jury -- even the solution. (After the credits of Billy Wilder's film Witness for the Prosecution, the cinemagoers are asked not to talk to anyone about the plot so that future viewers will also be able to fully enjoy the unravelling of the mystery.)

The unresolved problem of plausibility and coincidence

Up to the present, some of the problems inherent in crime fiction have remained unsolved (and possibly also insoluble). Some of them can be dismissed with a shrug: Why bother at all, even if it is obvious to everyone that an ordinary person is not likely to keep stumbling across corpses? After all, this is just part of the game of crime fiction. Still the fact that an old spinster like Miss Marple meets with an estimated two bodies per year does raise a few doubts as to the plausibility of the Miss Marple mysteries. De Andrea has described the quiet little village of St. Mary Mead as having "put on a pageant of human depravity rivaled only by that of Sodom and Gomorrah". Similarly, TV heroine Jessica Fletcher is confronted with bodies wherever she goes, but over the years people who have met violent deaths have also piled up in the streets of Cabot Cove, Maine, the cosy little village where she lives. Generally, therefore, it is much more convincing if a policeman, private eye, forensic expert or similar professional is made the hero or heroine of a series of crime novels. On the other hand, who cares for authenticity?

Also, the role and legitimacy of coincidence has frequently been the topic of heated arguments ever since Knox categorically stated that "no accident must ever help the detective" (Commandment No.6).

Technological progress has also rendered many of plots implausible and antiquated. For example, the use of mobile phones by practically everyone these days has significantly altered the dangerous situations that investigators traditionally find themselves in. Some authors have not succeeded in adapting to the changes brought about by modern technology; others, among them Carl Hiaasen (born 1953), have.

Proposed rules

A number of writers and others have proposed rules by which detective fiction should be governed.

S. S. Van Dine

According to "Twenty rules for writing detective stories," by S. S. Van Dine, "The detective story is a kind of intellectual game. It is more--it is a sporting event. And for the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws--unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding; and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them. Herewith, then, is a sort Credo, based partly on the practice of all the great writers of detective stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest author's inner conscience."

As enumerated by Van Dine, these are the 20 rules that govern the writing of detective fiction:

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It is false pretenses.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.

8. The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, Ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic séances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.

9. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader does not know who his coeducator is. It is like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story — that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest.

11. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion.

12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.

13. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds.

14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure.

15. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent — provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face-that all the clues really pointed to the culprit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying.

16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no "atmospheric" preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

17. A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by housebreakers and bandits are the province of the police departments — not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities.

18. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader.

19. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plotting and war politics belong in a different category of fiction — in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader's everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions.

20. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author's ineptitude and lack of originality. (a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect. (b) The bogus spiritualistic séance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away. (c) Forged fingerprints. (d) The dummy-figure alibi. (e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar. (f)The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person. (g) The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops. (h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in. (i) The word association test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.

Father Knox's Decalogue

According to Father Ronald A. Knox, these 10 rules applied to Golden Age detective fiction:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.

6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.

8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton encouraged detective fiction authors to follow this oath, which he wrote in the form of a question: "Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?"

Grobius Shortling

Grobius Shortling has offered these recommendations:

1. The criminal must be somebody mentioned in the story. (This is absolutely essential, otherwise the book cannot be called a detective story. The other bit about 'sharing thoughts' is too strict, but a writer should still be cautious because an outright authorial deception must be avoided.)

2. Supernatural elements are allowable for atmospheric or plot reasons, but they must play no part in the actual solution of the mystery.

3. Secret passages or hidden rooms are all right (if the setting allows it), but do not deserve to be used as an explanation of the murder method.

4. Avoid unknown Amazonian arrow poisons or newly invented Death-Ray machines, unless as an author you are qualified (scientifically) to justify it (that is, if Newton had written a mystery based on his laws of Optics, that would be OK, but do not presume to invent a poison if you do not even know that aspirin can be fatal.)

5. Do not use 'foreigners' or other aliens as major characters unless you have some real understanding of their culture and mind-set, and they have some relevance to the plot beyond exotic obfuscation.

6. Avoid accidental solutions, as they are hardly fair in a story of deduction and the presentation of real clues. And please do not inflict on the poor reader one of those mid-book "Mon dieu, how could I not have seen that before" exclamations which sit like undigested food until the end of the mystery.

7. The criminal should not be someone you have intentionally presented as totally trustworthy. (If he/she is a liar, at least provide some clue to give the reader a chance to spot that.)

8. All clues must be revealed, although it is perfectly legitimate to disguise them. (But I would draw the line at basing a clue on some misspelling of a word, American vs. British usage, for example, because most books are hardly proofread any more.)

9. There should but does not have to be a 'Watson' or some observing point of view that sees but misinterprets the events under investigation. (Only common sense, otherwise where is the drama?)

10. Do not try to fool the reader with improbable impersonations, such as a woman posing as a man or vice versa and getting away with it by consummate acting ability, especially when they are deceiving people who know them well. (This does not even work in Shakespeare.) Especially avoid wigs and false whiskers!

Later, Shortling added still additional rules:

1. Do not try to confuse the reader with elaborate timetables based on train schedules, etc., as there is no guarantee that things like that would ever work out for even the carefullest murderer. (Sod's or Murphy's Law.)

2. Avoid having your Prime Suspect turn out to be the culprit after all, because this is ultimately disappointing (unless you are clever enough to totally reshuffle motives and alibis).

3. Do not present an 'impossible crime' situation without at least attempting to verify its plausibility by experiment. Also try to avoid using an accomplice to abet the criminal's illusion. (That's OK for stage magicians with their assistants, but spoils a mystery plot where the villain has to deceive the detective, almost, but without cheating. It makes a lot of sense, too, if you are a villain, not to risk collaboration.)

4. The murderer should never turn out to be somebody incapable of committing the crime, at least as presented in the lead-up (that is, invalids in wheelchairs, morons, a person in an intensive-care ward, an astronaut who happened to be in orbit at the time).

5. A conspiracy involving a hired hit-man, or a mysterious Illuminati cartel, does not belong in a true detective novel. This also includes situations where several suspects are independently up to no good and just happen to be on the scene at the relevant time. (Sod's Law, again, and a very mechanical manipulation of coincidence for supposedly dramatic purposes -- this will not fool anybody and should be dismissed as mere padding.)

6. No faking of fingerprints or other forensic details. In spite of their portrayal, even the police a hundred years ago were not as incompetent as they were made out to be. Nowadays, if you want to commit a murder, forget trying such a thing, unless you can afford a good lawyer to screw up the expert witnesses at your trial!

7. If you are going to talk down to the reader (who is an ignoramus, whereas you are a genius), via your detective, make sure your facts are correct. Twaddle about Egyptology (curse of the pharaoh, etc.) is unacceptable. Informative facts about some obscure subject, however, are beneficial.

8. Do not present your detective as an ineffectual fool or allow him or her to show any signs of not being superior to the reader or the 'Watson' (except to the extent that the detective can have misjudgements and miscalculations for the sake of 'bonding' with the reader). An incompetent detective is an actor in a comedy, not a detective story.

9. Get your details of real police policies and forensic science up to date as far as you can. Unless the book takes place in the classic stranded house-party tradition, there is no way an author can get away with ignoring public procedures, no matter how gifted the detective.

10. Finally, a personal peeve: Don't have a large cast of characters and refer to them all by their Christian names, such as Evelyn, Jane, Meg, Charles, and Chris. Who in the hell are you talking about?

Howard Haycraft

Howard Haycraft suggested these rules:

1. Structure and Sources: Mainly keep in mind that the plot comes first and that the actions of the characters are 'retrofitted' into it, which is how a detective story differs from a crime novel where of course the characters themselves drive the plot. Any central pivot, such as an expertise about some unusual subject, is up to the author--as long as it is accurate.

2. The Need for Unity: In other words, make the story fit the devised crime. A person--detective, suspect, witness--should not act out of 'character' just because the plot demands it. In that case, it is better just to redesign the character.

3. The Detective: This is almost axiomatic--one must have a detective who is distinctively defined, preferably a series detective (which saves having to create a new one for each book--easier that way both for the writer and the reader and engenders a familiarity that ensures comfort and a market for new books). Initially defining a detective whom readers can 'identify' with as a familiar friend is one of the hardest things, apart from plotting, for a detective novelist to do, but once done removes the burden of re-explication.

4. Watson or Not?: Discouraged now because it is trite, but if you have to have one, make him a total opposite of the detective--for example, Archie Goodwin vs Nero Wolfe.

5. Viewpoint: Standard literary practice, whatever the genre. There has to be a consistency of delivery for the story, no matter what technique is used (first person, omniscient, point-of-view, whatever).

6. The Crime: There really must be a murder, or at least a major felony--otherwise, what's the point? Who's ripping off the hand towels at the Dorchester Hotel is hardly the business of a mystery novel.

7. The Title: "The best advice to the author faced with the selection of a title is not to worry about it." Having a good title and basing the book on it is like the tail wagging the dog. 'Nuff said.

8. The Plot: Keep it flowing from one thing to another and do not get sidetracked into dead-ends. Well, that's common sense for all fiction.

9. "Had I But Known": That has always been a bugaboo among mystery fans since Mary Roberts Rinehart and earlier. It is the ditzy heroine sneaking into Bluebeard's chamber even if she has been repeatedly warned not to. It is the kid's action when told "Whatever you do, do not climb on the railway tressle." Does not belong in a detective story. (Can be fun enough in a gothic romance or horror novel or something of the sort.)

10. Emotion and Drama: Of course for dramatic reasons there has to be some of this for the sake of interesting the reader, but for the most part remember that this is a novel of detection, not a love story.

11. The Puzzle Element: Don't make that the whole story; this is not a crossword puzzle.

12. Background and Setting: Basically, the author should be familiar personally with the location. If you were in Aruba for three hours on a cruise ship trip, do not set your novel in Aruba based on that. Use real settings when possible, for verisimilitude, and be accurate. And, PS, do not borrow somebody else's setting, such as Wuthering Heights.

13. Characters and Characterization: Not all of the players need to be fully defined--puppet roles are fine (cops, servants, etc.)--but at least the detective, the murderer, and preferably the victim should be convincingly realized. Is this obvious or what? But a lot of formula mysteries totally ignore this precept.

14. Style: Avoid corniness, pretentiousness, and overwriting. 15. The Devices of Detection: Don't be so elaborate as to make the dénouement incomprehensible. Beware of ignorance of the simple rules of evidence and forensics. (Then follows a whole list of things to avoid, like tobacco ashes, locked rooms, footprints, etc., but that is just HH's judgment based on what were clichés then. If it works, then it is OK, right?)

15. Physical Boundaries: This is basically advice on how long a mystery novel or story should be. Times change--sometimes very lengthy, sometimes very short, now lengthy again (because of the high cover cost of a book these days--padding out an extra couple hundred pages, which is not that more expensive production-wise, makes the reader think it is worth the money).

16. Some General Considerations: Basically extols the existence of bodies like The Detection Club in England, which encouraged new ventures in this genre, and was a professional forum for both established and hopeful writers. MWA encourages this now in the US (but not so much back then).

Famous fictional detectives

The full list of fictional detectives would be immense. The format is well suited to dramatic presentation, and so there are also many television and film detectives, besides those appearing in adaptations of novels in this genre. Fictional detectives generally fall within one of four domains:

the amateur or dilettante detective (Marple, Jessica Fletcher);
the private investigator (Holmes, Marlowe, Spade, Rockford);
the police detective (Ironside, Kojak, Morse);
more recently, the medical examiner, criminal psychologist, forensic evidence expert or other specialists (Scarpetta, Quincy, Cracker, CSI).

Notable fictional detectives and their creators include: