Mystery Book Chat

Norwich Public Library Monday, February 23 at 11:00 A.M. Sheldon Novick, Host

The Mystery Book Chat is a conversation about Mystery . The host is not an expert, but he is an author and a library patron who likes mystery stories, and welcomes other Mystery lovers to share their favorite novels and authors at the Book Chat.

A Little Background Publishing is a business but literature is not—the distinguishing characteristic of “literature” is that each book is unique, a work that will be unfamiliar and surprising—the opposite of products for a mass market. Some literary fiction breaks into the mass market, but this is the exception. The hallmarks of a genre like mystery and crime novels, by contrast, are formulas in which plot, characters and setting are repeated, and an accessible style. The formula (and a familiar author’s name) makes it easier for people to find books they will like, easier for publishers and authors to market and distribute them. We classify genre works according to their formula. Novels are often mysteries—the plot is structured around a search of some kind—and so authors of literary fiction also sometimes write stories, but the point of departure for this conversation will be books in the murder mystery genre. We can save thrillers and suspense fiction, spy stories, action adventures, true crime, and other genres for future conversations.

There is any number of ways to classify murder mysteries, but the New York Times Book Review uses the rubric “Mystery and Crime” for the books that Marilyn Stasio regularly and reliably reviews for them, so let’s start from that point. The common element in such books is that a search is prompted by a murder, and the protagonist is an investigator of some kind who searches for the killer. Nearly all books in this genre are in a series, in which a particular variation of the formula is repeated—publishers view the authors and their particular series as brands, and rely on the loyalty of readers to ensure sales. We can classify the sub-genres of murder mysteries by author, by intended audience, by elements of the formula (type of investigator, geographic setting, historical setting, types, etc.). Some authors write books in several genres—James Patterson titles reportedly receive about one-fifth of all book-sale revenues—and are brand names themselves. Here are some classifications used in online discussion and print media that seem to help people find the sort of books they will like. I would like to share favorites; maybe your own choices don’t fit into any of these categories, or into all of them.

Cozies This is probably the largest category by number of books and authors, and one of the oldest traditions. The formula often involves a village setting, the “detective”

Mystery Book Chat Survey by Sheldon Novick Page 1 and the other residents of the village are ordinary people, and the principal characters are repeated in each book, with additions and subtractions. Much of the interest lies in the relations of the characters, and there are subplots that carry over from one book to the next in which character and relationships develop. There is not much violence or sex, no gory details. The Cozy mostly dates from English novels in the 1920s and 1930s; was the premier practitioner of this and other genres—the series sets the pattern, an amateur detective in an English village. Modern Cozies are placed in every imaginable setting, foreign or domestic, present or past (historic settings are popular) and may involve pets, recipes, particular kinds of amateur sleuths (Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi David Small series, e.g., Friday the Rabbi Slept Late). E-books can be self-published on Amazon.com and sold for very little or given away, and so a Cozy series can be specialized for a narrow audience. Popular sub-genres are set in particular historical periods, Victorian , World-War London, etc. Locally popular series include one written by Charles Todd (a mother-and-son team) whose WWI veteran policeman visits a different English village in each . There is a whole sub-genre of paranormal mysteries, often with female protagonists, that are set in realistic settings but have vampire and other mythical creatures, magicians, psychics as characters.

A popular Web site lists dozens of authors and classifications: “Cozy Mystery List” (http://www.cozy-mystery.com). Let us know about your favorites.

Gentleman

Another English mystery genre which arguably begins with ’s, , and The Woman in White in the 1860s. Collins established the formula of the English country-house setting, the brilliant genteel detective and the bumbling constables, with red herrings and subplots to provide interest as the investigation proceeds. These are also Cozies, but are an older form. Sleuth, criminal and victim are all gentlemen. One strand in the tradition began with . had studied medicine, and the model for Holmes was one of his teachers, a diagnostician who made seemingly miraculous deductions by observing details of a patient’s appearance. (American doctors assigned to Ellis Island in the 1890s cultivated a similar mastery of diagnostic detail.) The TV series House is a sort of homage to this origin of the brilliant, troubled sleuth, drug addiction and all. Edgar Allen Poe contributed another strand of this tradition with his character C. Auguste Dupin, most famously in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and in . Dupin established the tradition of the rational genius who proceeds by intellection in the French manner (unlike the more blunt and British Holmes style). His most famous heir is Agatha Christie’s Poirot, of course, who exercises his little grey cells. An American heir was Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series, which ran from the 1930s to the 1970s. There were several popular English mystery series based on gentlemen detectives in the 1930s, what literary historians like to call the Golden Age of detective stories. In addition to Agatha Christie, mistress of every genre, there was Dorothy L. Sayers, , and .

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This particular tradition seems to have lapsed, except for mysteries with a historical setting, maybe because aristocratic manners and conventions have gone out of fashion. In historical settings the detective still pursues aristocratic ; a locally popular series is the Charles Todd mysteries in which Ian Rutledge is the detective (so this is also a Procedural—lots of arrows in their quiver). A remarkable and unusual variant is Jason Goodwin’s “Investigator Yashim” series, in which the protagonist is a eunuch in 1830s Istanbul. The host’s personal favorite is Quirke, the investigator in Benjamin Black’s series set in 1950s Dublin. What are some other favorite gentlemen detectives?

Private Eyes

This is a distinctive American sub-genre—the proletarian sleuth. The Private Eye was a tough guy, drawn from the same social milieu as the criminals he pursued, a man (always a man, in the early days) not too concerned about the niceties of law. Unlike the gentleman detective, the private eye has no sidekick to narrate the story, and lots of sex and violence bobs in his wake, but no graphic gore (American protagonists and villains are armed with pistols which don’t lend themselves to the lingering sadism one finds in some European crime novels.) Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler made this formula into a serious literature; John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, is successful with his Gentlemen Detective “Quirke,” a coroner in Dublin, his character written as an homage to Raymond Chandler set in 1950s Los Angeles (The Black Eyed Blonde). There have been many lesser practitioners (remember Mickey Spillane?). Ross Macdonald was an important successor to Chandler. Modern Private Eyes are sometimes former Marines or Special Forces veterans, and martial arts replace or supplement the guns. Lee Child’s Reacher series is the run-away best seller in this subgenre (Reacher is a retired Marine MP). Female authors entered the genre in recent years, for example, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, Amanda Cross, and Sue Grafton. The modern superstar of the private-eye genre is Janet Evanovich. Her Stephanie Plum is a blue-collar bounty hunter from New Jersey.

Police Procedurals

In which the detective is, well, a detective. This is a relatively recent form—in the nineteenth century and then the Golden Age novels, the police were stolid and unimaginative, often stupid, buffoons to provide contrast to the amateur gentleman with his effortless superiority. An unusual early example of a capable police detective is Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket of the , in Bleak House. The great modern master and originator of the police procedural was Georges Simenon, perhaps the most prolific writer of modern times, who is credited with 350 novels and novellas, of which 78 are murder mysteries solved by Commissaire Maigret of the Sureté. Maigret is the progenitor of numerous European policemen, a serious person who walks home to a lovingly described lunch prepared for him by his wife. The Maigret series began in 1930, before the elaborate procedures of modern Mystery Book Chat Survey by Sheldon Novick Page 3 investigation were in place, and his methods (and Simenon’s plots) didn’t differ much from the amateur sleuths of the day. Simenon had been a crime reporter, however, and lived an adventurous life—the settings and characters are persuasively drawn. Louise Penny and Donna Leon are in this popular tradition, what one might call the European police procedural. The protagonist of some British mysteries is in the gentleman-detective tradition, they are high-ranking police officials; a notably example is police commander , aristocrat and poet, in the late P.D. James’s novels, which make use of her knowledge of police forensics and investigation procedures. Donna Tartt’s novels are set in Dublin police units; Benjamin Black (John Banville) writes wonderful procedurals whose protagonist, Quirke, is a coroner rather than a policeman.

American police procedurals begin with Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, set in New York City, beginning in the 1950s, and are closer to the gritty, proletarian tradition of the private eye. (McBain also wrote as Evan Hunter, of Blackboard Jungle fame.) Protagonists are sometimes prosecutors rather than detectives, women as well as men; often there is no mystery, properly speaking—the murder is described in the opening pages, and the plot is a contest between the murderer and the agent of justice. These are crime novels. Scandinavian settings are a recent, popular variant. Henning Mankell’s Inspector Wallander novels launched the vogue for Swedish policemen, depressed and agonized, whose drinking problems, failed marriages and struggles with police bureaucracy, provide the human interest. At least a dozen series from the Scandinavian countries and Iceland have been translated into English. In recent years some Scandinavian police procedurals, like Jo Nesbo’s, have included increasingly graphic descriptions of brutality against women, bordering on pornography but with a surface of disapproval.

Bad Girls

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a gentleman-detective story with the protagonist as an attractive journalist, but his sidekick, the woman with the eponymous tattoo, is the character that made this series a remarkable success, and spawned what might be thought of as a new genre of bad-girl investigators—women who have suffered abuse and are fighting back—something like the proletarian (guy) private eyes of yore. Lots of sex and violence, investigations featuring computers and social media, and male villains who abuse women. A leading example is the skillful series (closely modeled on the Dragon Tattoo formula adapted to a Portland, Oregon setting) just launched by Chelsea Cain, with her abused and vengeful protagonist, Kick Lannigan. Other recent examples are noted on the Mystery Scene Web blog and magazine, http://mysteryscenemag.com/from-the-editor/4712. Any favorites in this new genre?

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