It’s a Mystery

Detective fiction gained almost instant popularity in 1841 when Edgar Allan Poe, better known for his tales of supernatural horror, published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The short story helped to pioneer a genre that is now an extremely lucrative market. Every year, new mysteries top the New York Times bestseller list and are routinely turned into blockbuster movies; ABC even has a popular TV show, Castle, about a mystery writer who also helps solve crime.

Some fictional detectives are so famous that their names and professions are common knowledge. The best known of these, and the first name that comes to mind when talking about detective fiction, is Sherlock Holmes: “The world’s only consulting detective,” Holmes was created by English author Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sherlock Holmes made his print debut in 1887 in the short story in A Study in Scarlet. The adventures of Holmes and his sidekick Dr. John Watson captured the imagination of the public. Conan Doyle would eventually publish four Holmes novels and 56 short stories. To this day, Holmes scholars and enthusiasts pour through supposed unreleased stories, hoping to find the genuine article.

More often than not the story is a fake, but this level of dedication illustrates the popularity of the character.

Another popular literary detective of the early twentieth century is Agatha Christie’s prim and prickly Belgian, Hercule Poirot. Like Sherlock Holmes before him, Poirot assists the police in solving crime and does so primarily through his heightened powers of observation and clever thinking.

Christie was a popular and productive mystery writer, and is also famous for her creation of the fictional character Miss Marple.

The “Golden Age” of detective fiction is generally thought to span from 1920 to 1940. It is often characterized by “noir,” or hardboiled elements that were not greatly prevalent in the writing of earlier authors.

Two characters who exemplify this theme are Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe. These two literary detectives are similar in many ways, and their differences are often muddled by the fact that Humphrey Bogart portrayed both characters in film versions of novels.

Spade’s only appearance in a novel was The Maltese Falcon 1930; Marlowe first appeared in The Big Sleep in 1939. The books are part of the literary detective canon, and they mark a shift in the way literary detectives operated.

Unlike their predecessors, Spade and Marlowe often use violence in their attempts to solve or prevent crime. There are also many more elements of sexuality, and the morals of the characters are often ambiguous.

Many enthusiasts consider this style of writing and this era to be the peak of the genre. However, detective fiction has continued to grow in popularity. Michael Connelly’s Hieronymous Bosch novels have been translated into over 35 languages.

A popular contemporary series are the Prey novels by John Sandford, featuring Minneapolis police detective, Lucas Davenport. The first book in the series, Rules of Prey, was published in 1989 and achieved a good deal of commercial and critical success. In the 22 years since its inception, Sandford has published 20 more Prey novels in the series.

The series incorporates elements from earlier eras of detective fiction to create a modern, likeable character. Davenport solves crime by utilizing a wide variety of techniques, not always legal, and the novels feature a great deal of violence.

Lee Child is a British novelist famous for his Jack Reacher series of novels. The first book in the series, Killing Floor, was published 1997; it introduced readers to the vagabond former military police officer, Jack Reacher. After a life devoted to the military, Reacher chooses to live off the grid and drift from town to town across America, finding trouble as he goes.

Child’s mix of first-person and third-person narration can be jarring to some readers, but it allows him to exploit the strengths of each form without being too hampered by the weaknesses of them.

Other popular fictional detectives include V.I. Warshawski by Sara Paretsky, Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Harry Dresden by Jim Butcher, Simon Templar by Leslie Charteris, and Alex Delaware by Jonathan Kellerman, among others.

Detective fiction has come a long way in the approximately 170 years it has been in existence and widely read. The characters have changed, the plots have become more complex, but one thing has never changed: the enjoyment readers get when they crack the spine of a good mystery and take it all in.