I thought it might be trifling, but fun to cite interesting detective stories. It is might be worthwhile to start with this old joke including Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they laid down for the night, and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.
"Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."
Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars."
"What does that tell you?"
Watson pondered for a minute. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?"
Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. "It tells me that someone has stolen our tent."
Thinking back to my first years of reading fiction, the hook that got me going was detective fiction. It feels so much like chewing bubble gum now, after all these years. One would not consider this 'protien-aceous' consumption; detective fiction. However it has its delights and certainly it commands its share of popularity; not to mention shelf space in your average bookstore (at least, those that are left standing anymore).
Historically speaking, 'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins (which has an Indian connection) is considered the first and finest of the detective genre. However, for our contemporary tastes it might be a bit dated. But it is certainly reading. Many of the tropes in the detective genre can be seen there. Big house. Dark nights. Lightning. Detectives visiting. Exotic connections. Assembling the housing staff for questioning, and so on.
There are big names, globally popular in this genre that we are all familiar with - Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett , Ellery Queen, PD James, Georges Simeon, Thomas Harris
Nothing is most enticing than find a rainy day weekend afternoon, getting some hot snacks ready (pakoras anyone?), seasoned with spicy ketchup and lay on your favorite chair - and enjoy a nail-biting mystery.
Here is a list of my top 10 detective stories that I have enjoyed:
10. Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett.
This playwright creates an all star cast of characters. You fall in love with the whole stinkin' lot of them. Uses the 'ragmuffin' device that Alfred Hitchcock talks about. ie the thing around which the plot revolves, but in of itself has no value to the story - that would be the Maltese Falcon. Played to perfection by Humprey Bogart. This is in league with Casablanca for wistfulness and crackling dialogue.
9. Silence of the lambs - Thomas Harris.
What a sensation when this came out. Hannibal Lecter immortally sketched by Anthony Hopkins. Toe-to-to is Clarice Starling. A great psychological thriller that got the first ever trifecta of oscars - best director, best actor and best actress.
8. Blood Work - Michael Connolly.
Made into a movie recently starring Clint Eastwood. The satisfaction of a good detective thriller is that the puzzle is fair and the answer to the puzzle is unique and creative. Michael Connolly is a fair purveyor of his genre and his lead detective is a character that can draw you in.
'Check the tape!'
7. Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie.
A nice parlour game - suspense novel. Made into a 'talky' movie. i.e. more talk, less action. As much as the setting should have been interesting and exotic, quite characteristics of stories from that time, the story stays with the cast of characters and stays very British.
6. Body Farm - Patricia Cornwell.
Kay Scarpetta is the medical examiner in the state of Virginia. Riverting, gory medical and police procedural. She was inspired by Thomas Harris to write this series with Kay Scarpetta. And I think Body Farm is the best of the bunch.
5. Ten Little Indians - Agatha Christie.
There is no getting around the ingeniousness of this wildly and often imitated plot.
4. Hound of Baskervilles - Conan Doyle.
A Sherlock Holmes story. No reading of this series is complete without the story that created the immortal "the dog that did not bark" line.
3. Alienist - Caleb Carr.
Turn of the century New York and gruesome murders. With Teddy Roosevelt as the real police commissioner at that time. Does not get more moody or atmospheric that this. Detective fiction as hight art.
2. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler.
The is my all time favorite hard-boiled detective novel starring Philip Marlowe. Later played to perfection by Humphrey Bogart on the big screen. The tough guy exterior, but heart of gold persona starts here. Anyone who has fun with dialogue with double meaning / double entendre should check out the dialog between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall at the restaurant - it can make telephone pole blush.
1. Day of the Jackal - Fredrick Forsythe.
I am sure that you will agree, this is the most crackling suspense thriller of all time, that combines elements of intrigue, espionage, suspense, gory murder, police procedural, great characters all rolled into one roller coaster of an entertainer. Also one of those rare creations that manages equal quality on the page and on the screen. This feat is yet to be duplicated in my estimation.
The dominant classification of this movie would be espionage. However I like it because it is a superb detective story as well. It narrates how the character of Inspector Claude unravels the plot - painstakingly, procedurally, boldly and with flashes of inspiration. I happened to see it for maybe the 10th time recently - and the move counter move plotting was pitch perfect.
---
We are all hooked by stories. The easiest ones are where there is a clear good and bad. And even better when there is someone we can trust who will put the bad away (we know because we follow the series!)
It seems to me that what really hooks us is that the author does not insult our intelligence. The author works hard within the constraints of the genre to keep us guessing or shocked or titillated till the denouement.
Notes:
- A couple of honorable mentions in the TV genre, are Foyle's War and Prime Suspect.
- I once wrote a ditty for fun on this genre: http://agingonthevine.blogspot.com/2003/03/poem-whodunit.html
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they laid down for the night, and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.
"Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."
Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars."
"What does that tell you?"
Watson pondered for a minute. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?"
Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. "It tells me that someone has stolen our tent."
Thinking back to my first years of reading fiction, the hook that got me going was detective fiction. It feels so much like chewing bubble gum now, after all these years. One would not consider this 'protien-aceous' consumption; detective fiction. However it has its delights and certainly it commands its share of popularity; not to mention shelf space in your average bookstore (at least, those that are left standing anymore).
There are big names, globally popular in this genre that we are all familiar with - Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett , Ellery Queen, PD James, Georges Simeon, Thomas Harris
Nothing is most enticing than find a rainy day weekend afternoon, getting some hot snacks ready (pakoras anyone?), seasoned with spicy ketchup and lay on your favorite chair - and enjoy a nail-biting mystery.
Here is a list of my top 10 detective stories that I have enjoyed:
10. Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett.
9. Silence of the lambs - Thomas Harris.
What a sensation when this came out. Hannibal Lecter immortally sketched by Anthony Hopkins. Toe-to-to is Clarice Starling. A great psychological thriller that got the first ever trifecta of oscars - best director, best actor and best actress.
8. Blood Work - Michael Connolly.
'Check the tape!'
7. Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie.
6. Body Farm - Patricia Cornwell.
5. Ten Little Indians - Agatha Christie.
4. Hound of Baskervilles - Conan Doyle.
A Sherlock Holmes story. No reading of this series is complete without the story that created the immortal "the dog that did not bark" line.
3. Alienist - Caleb Carr.
2. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler.
1. Day of the Jackal - Fredrick Forsythe.
I am sure that you will agree, this is the most crackling suspense thriller of all time, that combines elements of intrigue, espionage, suspense, gory murder, police procedural, great characters all rolled into one roller coaster of an entertainer. Also one of those rare creations that manages equal quality on the page and on the screen. This feat is yet to be duplicated in my estimation.
The dominant classification of this movie would be espionage. However I like it because it is a superb detective story as well. It narrates how the character of Inspector Claude unravels the plot - painstakingly, procedurally, boldly and with flashes of inspiration. I happened to see it for maybe the 10th time recently - and the move counter move plotting was pitch perfect.
---
We are all hooked by stories. The easiest ones are where there is a clear good and bad. And even better when there is someone we can trust who will put the bad away (we know because we follow the series!)
It seems to me that what really hooks us is that the author does not insult our intelligence. The author works hard within the constraints of the genre to keep us guessing or shocked or titillated till the denouement.
Notes:
- A couple of honorable mentions in the TV genre, are Foyle's War and Prime Suspect.
- I once wrote a ditty for fun on this genre: http://agingonthevine.blogspot.com/2003/03/poem-whodunit.html
3 comments:
Great reading list recommendation. I am yet to read most of them but
certainly inspired now. The name Fredrick Forsyth rings a bell; I read
some of the stories from his short story collection, "No Comebacks" -
more focused on the Hitchcock-like twists in tales than a conclusive
endings.
For "defective" fiction I want you to read and listen to the current political campaigns - particularly Obama. You might find them amusing to say the least.
I notice your list (like I supposed most detective genre fiction fans’) revolves around the two poles of the genre: the paean to rationality and reason found in the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie at one extreme and the darker (or noir) vision of the human condition – indeterminacy, incompleteness and epistemological fog – from the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This perspective was brought to my attention a couple of decades ago by (what else) a philosopher turned private eye named Josiah Thompson in his book Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye.
In Sam Spade, then, we have a portrait of the detective as fully worldly, as literally awash in the world. Is this what Raymond Chandler meant when he said Hammett took murder out of the drawing room and put it in the alley where it belonged?
Think of the structure of the standard detective novel. Think of Conan Doyle or Dorothy Sayers or any of the others. Think of the primacy they give to reasoned judgment. The detective judges with heroic incisiveness and power. At the outset, he is presented with a fiction. No matter, he’ll figure it out. He’ll find that one something that doesn’t “fit.” A clue, and expression on a character’s face, a letter with a wrong date starts his mind churning. He pursues this clue. He investigates, pries, searches for the truth. And finally, at the end of a long process of reasoning, he makes a breakthrough. The case is “broken,” the fiction is seen through, and behind it the truth is discovered. Either the butler did it or he didn’t. But it is the detective’s power of judgment – his reason – that “cracks” the case. The standard detective novel is really a product of the eighteenth century, a celebration of the power of reason.
We haven’t moved from illusion to truth. We haven’t seen Spade “crack the case.” Rather, we’ve watched Spade participate in a series of events that break up the initial illusion only to replace it with another. There’s no truth anywhere in the story, only ambiguous half-truths, only a face seen darkly in a mirror, a figure disappearing around a corner.
And that, I said to myself, is how it seems to be.
For a species whose survival depends on a uniquely (as far as we know) sophisticated understanding of what-follows-what, a dense network of causal connections extending temporally and widely, believing in our ability to do so is quite soothing. The rationalists paint a comforting picture of reason conquering all. The pragmatists offer us less comfort – hey, the best you can do is just throw a monkey-wrench and react to what happens after that the best you can. But don’t think you see, understand or can control reality. It’s called ‘noir’ for more reasons than the ‘dark’ cinematography. And we understandably don’t like dark, foggy, illusory conditions.
That’s why we, despite modern physics and cognitive neuroscience, still like our rationalist fictions. And not only from the likes of Doyle and Christie – but also from our political leaders. As we see in the news of the day, we still want to believe in Sherlock Holmes. And this is so even against an economic/political backdrop that screams at us that believing in an unbounded ability to “figuring things out leads only to error.”
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