Detective fiction
[20] Literary critic Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Louisa May Alcott with creating the second-oldest work of modern detective fiction, after Poe's Dupin stories, with the 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots."
Ross Nickerson notes that many of the American writers who experimented with Poe's established rules of the genre were women, inventing a subgenre of domestic detective fiction that flourished for several generations.
[29][31] Literary critics Chris Willis and Kate Watson consider Mary Elizabeth Braddon's first book, the even earlier The Trail of the Serpent (1861), to be the first British detective novel.
Detective fiction aimed at young male readers emerged as a distinct and highly popular subgenre in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, particularly in British and American boys' weekly magazines.
Notable among these was Nelson Lee, created by John William Staniforth (writing as Maxwell Scott), who shared Blake's penchant for globe-trotting adventures and narrow escapes.
[38] The genre was characterized by several consistent features: most detectives had young assistants (like Blake's aide Tinker), operated from London addresses, and engaged in both domestic and international pursuits.
"[42] Another common convention in Golden Age detective stories involved an outsider–sometimes a salaried investigator or a police officer, but often a gifted amateur—investigating a murder committed in a closed environment by one of a limited number of suspects.
Western detective fiction that was translated often emphasized “individuality, equality, and the importance of knowledge”,[45] appealing to China that it was the time for opening their eyes to the rest of the world.
"Sadiq Mamquli, The Sherlock Holmes of Iran, The Sherriff of Isfahan" is the first major detective fiction in Persian, written by Kazim Musta'an al-Sultan (Houshi Daryan).
Famous authors of this movement include Soji Shimada, Yukito Ayatsuji, Rintaro Norizuki, Alice Arisugawa, Kaoru Kitamura and Taku Ashibe.
His adventures typically unfold against the backdrop of Calcutta, tackling a range of crimes, from intricate murder mysteries to drug trafficking, reflecting societal issues of the time.
Accompanied by his loyal friend and chronicler, Ajit Kumar Banerjee, the stories are written in a blend of formal and colloquial Bengali, making them accessible to a wide audience.
[50] Hemendra Kumar Roy was an Indian Bengali writer noted for his contribution to the early development of the genre with his 'Jayanta-Manik' and adventurist 'Bimal-Kumar' stories, dealing with the exploits of Jayanta, his assistant Manik, and police inspector Sunderbabu.
Other examples of early Russian detective stories include: "Bitter Fate" (1789) by M. D. Chulkov (1743–1792),[55] "The Finger Ring" (1831) by Yevgeny Baratynsky, "The White Ghost" (1834) by Mikhail Zagoskin, Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Popular pulp fiction magazines like Black Mask capitalized on this, as authors such as Carrol John Daly published violent stories that focused on the mayhem and injustice surrounding the criminals, not the circumstances behind the crime.
[60] His style of crime fiction came to be known as "hardboiled", a genre that "usually deals with criminal activity in a modern urban environment, a world of disconnected signs and anonymous strangers.
[61] Chandler's stories were noted for their evokations of the American criminal underworld, including dark alleys and tough thugs, rich women and powerful men.
The "hardboiled" 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.
An inverted detective story, also known as a "howcatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning,[64] usually including the identity of the perpetrator.
Cozy mysteries feature minimal violence, sex, and social relevance; a solution achieved by intellect or intuition rather than police procedure, with order restored in the end; honorable characters; and a setting in a closed community.
These stories frequently show the activities of many members of a police force or government agency in their efforts to apprehend a killer who is selecting victims on some obscure basis.
Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
Even if they do not mean to, advertisers, reviewers, scholars and aficionados sometimes give 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.
[72] Similarly, TV heroine Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote was confronted with bodies wherever she went, but most notably in her small hometown of Cabot Cove, Maine; The New York Times estimated that, by the end of the series' 12-year run, nearly 2% of the town's residents had been killed.
As global interconnectedness makes legitimate suspense more difficult to achieve, several writers—including Elizabeth Peters, P. C. Doherty, Steven Saylor, and Lindsey Davis—have eschewed fabricating convoluted plots in order to manufacture tension, instead opting to set their characters in some former period.
[81] The detective's adventures spanned multiple formats including comic strips, novels, radio serials, silent films, and a 1960s ITV television series, reaching audiences across Britain and internationally in various languages.
Initially conceived as a Victorian gentleman detective, Blake evolved significantly over time, acquiring now-iconic elements like his Baker Street residence, his young assistant Tinker, his bloodhound Pedro, and his housekeeper Mrs. Bardell.
Blake had many rivals and imitators: Nelson Lee, Dixon Hawke, Carfax Baines, Kenyon Ford, Stanley Dare, Ferrers Locke, and many others now long forgotten.
C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the prototype for many fictional detectives that were created later, including Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie.
