Detective Fiction

1. Detective Fiction
http://brainteaser.narod.ru

2. Detective
Story
type of popular
literature dealing
with the step-by-
step investigation
and solution of a
crime, usually
murder.

3. The traditional elements of the
detective story
the seemingly perfect crime;
the wrongly accused suspect at whom
circumstantial evidence points;
the bungling of dim-witted police;
the greater powers of observation and superior
mind of the detective (sleuth);
the startling and unexpected denouement, in
which the detective reveals how the identity of
the culprit was ascertained.

4. Categories of crime fiction
• The whodunit
• Locked room mystery
• Cozy
• The historical whodunnit
• Spoofs and parodies
• The inverted detective story or "howcatchem"
• The American hard-boiled school
• The police procedural
• The legal thriller
• The caper story
• The spy novel
• The psychological suspense novel
• The criminal novel (novels told from the point of view of criminals such as The
Godfather)

5. The first
detective story
“The Murders in
the Rue Morgue”
by Edgar Allan Poe,
published in April
1841.
French detective,
C. Auguste Dupin

7. Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone (1868)
remains one of the finest English
detective novels and is generally
considered as the first detective novel in
the English language
the rose-loving sleuth Sergeant Cuff was
patterned after the real-life Inspector
Wicher

8. Sherlock Holmes
The greatest of all fictional detectives
• the first appearance in
Arthur (later Sir Arthur)
Conan Doyle's novel A
Study in Scarlet (1887)
• The Memoirs of
Sherlock Holmes (1894)
• Hound of the
Baskervilles (1902).

9. Prototypes
• Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk
at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was
noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest
observations.[
• Sir Henry Little-John, Lecturer on Forensic Medicine
and Public Health at the Royal College of Surgeons, is
also cited as a source for Holmes. Little-John served as
Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health to the
City of Edinburgh, Scotland, providing for Doyle a link
between medical investigation and the detection of
crime.

10. Some facts from Sherlock Holmes’ Bio
• studies chemistry at Cambridge
• spends the six years following university working as a
consulting detective
• moves into 221B Baker Street to share the flat with Dr. John H.
Watson
• retires to a bee farm on the Sussex Downs, where he takes up
the hobby of beekeeping as his primary
occupation, eventually producing a "Practical Handbook of
Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of
the Queen".
• His brother, Mycroft, seven years his senior, is a government
official, even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of
observation and deduction, but lacking Sherlock's drive and
energy

11. Habits and personality
Although in his methods of thought he was the
neatest and most methodical of mankind ... [he]
keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in
the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his
unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-
knife into the very centre of his wooden
mantelpiece ... He had a horror of destroying
documents.... Thus month after month his papers
accumulated, until every corner of the room was
stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on
no account to be burned, and which could not be
put away save by their owner

12. He is famous for
• his Science of Deduction
• wearing his deerstalker
and cape
• smoking his pipe and
using cocaine
• love for forensics, poisons
and ciphers
• home-chemistry
experiments
• playing the violin
• boxing

13. One quote often heard from Holmes
"When you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth"

14. Knowledge and skills
1. Knowledge of Literature — nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy — nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy — nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics — Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany — Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium and poisons
generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology — Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils
from each other. After walks, has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told
me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received
them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry — Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy — Accurate, but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature — Immense. He appears to know every
detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

16. G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of
Father Brown (1911)
• Father Brown is a short,
stumpy Catholic priest,
"formerly of Cobhole in
Essex, and now working
in London," with
shapeless clothes and a
large umbrella, and
uncanny insight into
human evil.
• He makes his first
appearance in the story
"The Blue Cross"

17. Hercule Poirot, in Agatha Christie's
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
• a Belgian detective
famous for his
moustache, and
gourmandise

18. Miss Marple, in Murder at the
Vicarage (1930)
• an elderly spinster who
lives in the village of St.
Mary Mead and acts as
an amateur detective
• dressed neatly in tweed
and is frequently seen
knitting or pulling
weeds in her garden

19. Perry Mason by Erle Stanley Gardner
• a defense attorney
(criminal lawyer) who
unravels crimes in court

20. Perry Mason about himself
• You'll find that I'm a lawyer who has specialized in
trial work, and in a lot of criminal work. ... I'm a
specialist on getting people out of trouble. They
come to me when they're in all sorts of
trouble, and I work them out. ... If you look me up
through some family lawyer or some corporation
lawyer, he'll probably tell you that I'm a shyster. If
you look me up through some chap in the District
Attorney's office, he'll tell you that I'm a
dangerous antagonist but he doesn't know very
much about me.

21. Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout
• a fat, orchid-raising
detective Nero Wolfe
and his urbane assistant
Archie Goodwin

22. Nero Wolfe about himself
• I suggest beginning with autobiographical sketches
from each of us, and here is mine. I was born in
Montenegro and spent my early boyhood there. At
the age of sixteen I decided to move around, and in
fourteen years I became acquainted with most of
Europe, a little of Africa, and much of Asia, in a
variety of roles and activities. Coming to this country
in nineteen-thirty, not penniless, I bought this house
and entered into practice as a private detective. I am
a naturalized American citizen.

23. Mr. and Mrs. North by Frances and
Richard Lockridge
• a bright married couple,
who solve crimes
together

24. Inspector Maigret by Georges
Simenon
• Is famous for his pipes,
his mixed approach to
detecting (at times
relying on pure
intuition, at times on
method), and his
fondness for alcohol

25. The best detective stories of the XXI
century (the Times)
• Stieg Larsson*
• 2000 — David Peace (Nineteen Seventy-
Seven, The Damned Utd (2006)
• 2001 — Dennis Lehane (Mystic River)
• 2002 — Sarah Waters (Fingersmith)
• 2003 — Andrew Taylor (The American
Boy )
• 2004 — Don Winslow (The Power of the
Dog)
• 2005 — Cormac McCarthy (No Country
for Old Men)
• 2006 — Peter Temple (The Broken Shore)
• 2007 — Fred Vargas (Wash This Blood
Clean from My Hand)
• 2008 — Frances Fyfield (Blood from
Stone)
• 2009 — Arnaldur Indridason
(Hypothermia).

27. Fin )