Do you love a good mystery novel? Well, you’re not alone. The crime novel, be it in print, or adapted to the screen or internet, continues to be one of the world’s most beloved genres.
So over the next five posts, we’re going to investigate what’s lurking behind its popularity.
The British Grandfathers:
Historically, the mystery novel began in the mid 1800’s with Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins. Many say The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is one of the first novels of detective fiction ever written.
It’s a spooky and romantic tale, told through multiple POV narratives and is intriguing from the get go: “This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.”
221B Baker Street:
The English plot thickened with Arthur Conan Doyle’s splendid consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes; he of the deerstalker hat, the 7% cocaine solution and the famous phrase, “Elementary, my dear, Watson.”
The English Roses:
Rebecca (photo - K. Lapierre)
Not long after, the women took the reins, plotting and scheming at a raging gallop into the twentieth century.
These early queens of the so-called cozies were: Daphne du Maurier, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.
The Nine Tailors (photo: J. Gardner)
Settings were often a small English village where evil lurked in the library but was never seen.
Amateur sleuths, like Jane Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey, used their personal insight and intellect to nab the killers, leaving the police plods in their wake.
In the end, though, you knew very little about the sleuths or murderers themselves, no one in the stories seemed changed and life went on as usual.
The excitement and drama of the puzzle, the chase and the unmasking of the murderer spread beyond British shores, all the way to the mean streets of America…where we’ll reveal up more clues in the next post.
(Thanks to Katya Lapierre and Jim Gardner for the cover shots.)
Tags: crime fiction, detective fiction, mystery, writing how to