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Detective Fiction: from Victorian Sleuths to the Present Professor M Detective Fiction: From Victorian Sleuths to the Present Professor M. Lee Alexander The College of William and Mary Recorded Books™ is a trademark of Recorded Books, LLC. All rights reserved. Detective Fiction: From Victorian Sleuths to the Present Professor M. Lee Alexander Executive Editor Donna F. Carnahan RECORDING Producer - David Markowitz Director - Ian McCulloch Podcast Host - Gretta Cohn COURSE GUIDE Editor - James Gallagher Design - Edward White Lecture content ©2010 by M. Lee Alexander Course guide ©2010 by Recorded Books, LLC 72010 by Recorded Books, LLC Cover image: © Bruce Rolff/shutterstock.com #UT149 ISBN: 978-1-4407-2547-0 All beliefs and opinions expressed in this audio/video program and accompanying course guide are those of the author and not of Recorded Books, LLC, or its employees. Course Syllabus Detective Fiction: From Victorian Sleuths to the Present About Your Professor ..............................................................................................................4 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................5 Lecture 1 Mysterious Origins..........................................................................................6 Lecture 2 Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and the Victorian Era....................................................................................13 Lecture 3 The Queen of Crime:Agatha Christie and the Golden Age......................................................................................21 Lecture 4 Gifted Amateurs:Academics to Zoologists.............................................28 Lecture 5 Private Investigators and Hard-boiled Heroes.......................................35 Lecture 6 Cops, Capers, and Police Procedurals......................................................42 Lecture 7 Spies Among Us: Espionage and Techno-thrillers...................................48 Lecture 8 In the Teeth of the Evidence: Lawyers and Legal Eagles.......................56 Lecture 9 Medicine for Murder:The Medical Mystery ...........................................63 Lecture 10 Probing the Past: Historical Detective Fiction .......................................69 Lecture 11 Women of Mystery: Beyond Female Intuition........................................75 Lecture 12 International Intrigue: Detective Fiction Goes Global .........................83 Lecture 13 Investigating Identity: Ethnic Sleuths .........................................................91 Lecture 14 Regional Sleuths and Future Trends in Detective Fiction....................99 Course Materials..................................................................................................................108 Course Terminology ............................................................................................................110 3 About Your Professor © Jenkins Studio M. Lee Alexander Dr. M. Lee Alexander is a visiting assistant professor of English at the College of William and Mary. She teaches detective fiction, creative writing, and “Tolkien and His Circle,” a course on the Inklings authors. She also teaches English as a second language courses for the graduate school. Professor Alexander is the author of numerous scholarly articles and poems, and a chap- book of poetry, Observatory (2007). Dr.Alexander has presented scholarly papers on the subject of detective fiction with an emphasis on links between modern popular culture and the classic tradition at international conferences, including “Mr. Monk Meets Sherlock Holmes: Disability and the Consulting Detective” at Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes:Their Cultural Afterlives Conference at the University of Hull, England (2009), and “To Make a House a Holmes: Sherlockian Subtext of House, MD” at Sherlock Holmes:The Man and His Worlds Conference, Bennington College,Vermont (2010). She has also taught “Detective Fiction as Art and Social Commentary” at the George Washington University. Dr. Alexander resides in Williamsburg,Virginia. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Mack Lundy, systems librarian at the College of William and Mary and detective fiction aficionado, for his knowledge of the field and research savvy, and student assistant Shelly Holder, who is worth her weight in gold.Their willing efforts helped make this course possible. ~M. Lee Alexander 4 © Bruce Rolff/shutterstock.com Introduction In this course, we will explore together the intriguing world of the fictional sleuth. It has been estimated that about a quarter of all books published in English today fit into this broad category—that’s an extraordinary statistic and we will discover why so many people enjoy mysteries and what lies behind their popular and diverse appeal. During the course we will cover a number of key topics.We will examine origins and history of the genre from the pre-Golden Age to the present day; look at the distinct approaches to detection in subgenres, including amateur, PI and hard-boiled, police procedural, espionage, medical, legal, historical, eth- nic, and international; and finally consider current and possible future trends for this most enduring and delightful form of fiction as well as the multiple and not always obvious reasons for its increasing popularity. As we proceed through the lectures several course themes will become apparent: 1) the artistic merit of detective fiction, including plot elements, character development, literary devices, and writing style; 2) ways in which understanding the authors’ life stories further illuminates the works they have composed; and finally 3) the significant role detective fiction plays, because of its unique subject matter and focus on crime and justice, to act as commen- tary and sometimes criticism on the society, times, and culture that it reflects. So now, without further ado, let us enter into the fascinating world of the fictional detective—the game is afoot! 5 Lecture 1 Mysterious Origins The Suggested Readings for this lecture are Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, edited by John Sutherland, and Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter” in Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. he most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” ~Albert Einstein What Is Detective Fiction? A basic description of the term is that it is a narrative in which a main character solves a crime, usually, but not always murder, by examining multiple clues and considering a closed circle of suspects. In a classic “whodunit,” the reader tries to solve the crime along with the detec- tive. Detective fiction by definition contains a sleuth, a villain, and a vic- tim or victims of a crime, usually murder. Classic works have a closed circle of suspects; there are of course exceptions to this classic formula, increasing- ly so in modern writing.The solving of the crime is the driving force for both plot and character. The approach to the genre in this course will be historical. The history of detective fiction will be traced from its early roots in Victorian literature through today’s modern trends to discover why it remains so enduringly pop- ular, often of high literary merit, and reflective of and responsive to society. Popularity © Earl Lamson/shutterstock.com It is one of the most popular genres in the twentieth century, and increasingly so in the twenty-first.An estimated one-quarter of books published in the English language today are in the detective fiction genre. Reasons for this pop- ularity include the following: there is much pleasure derived from reading this type of fiction; a sense of justice is usually involved; detective fiction restores a sense of order; it explores the human condition; it demands both interesting characters and well-crafted plots in intriguing settings; it contains suspense and mystery; and it functions to comment on society. It has equal appeal to men 6 and women (though some subgenres differ), and it also appeals to teens and younger children.A wide variety of subtypes means there’s something for everybody. Detective fiction also adapts well to new media as they appear: print, radio, television, film, graphic novel, computer games, virtual reality—and to new crime-solving technologies. Types There are three major types of detective fiction, and these are usually ranked by the sleuth involved.The amateur sleuth uses skills from other walks of life: religious, animal, academic, art/antiques expert, journalist, culinary, or house- wife, for instance.There are usually no realistic counterparts. The private investigator (or private eye) sleuth, of which the “hard-boiled” type is the most well-known, does have a real-life counterpart in Pinkerton’s Detective Agency and other similar examples. The protagonists in police sleuth stories have some official capacity.They are police officers (most often detectives), crime scene investigators, coroners, and medical examiners. In police procedurals, readers follow the methods of the police as they unravel the case. Subtypes A list of popular subtypes in the detective fiction genre include “cozy” (cozy mysteries began in the late twentieth century as a reinvention of the Golden Age “whodunit”; these novels generally shy away from violence and suspense and frequently feature female amateur detectives), hard-boiled, espionage, techno-thriller, historical, medical, legal, ethnic,“whodunit,” “whydunit,” “how- catchem” (inverted),
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