Sunday Thoughts – The Whodunit Edition

Warning: The following contains some opinion stated as fact, which doesn’t mean it isn’t open to reasonable discussion.  While frequently thought of as being one and the same, the Detective Story and the Whodunit actually are two different items whose histories admittedly overlap frequently but are nevertheless separate. A Detective Story can do without the …

Some Thoughts on the Least Likely Person

Our ancestors had it so much better than we do when it comes to crime fiction. Readers were much less jaded and familiar with the tropes of the genre and so they got fooled more easily, and writers in turn didn't have to rack their brains to find some new trick or a clever way …

The Clandestine Plotters

While we are repeatedly told by critics that crime fiction is about character and social comment, many of us readers keep ranking writers the old way, that is, by their plotting skills. There are a few great plotters, some good ones, many that are just average and a long, long succession of mediocrities - and …

A Matter of Interest

Ever since the genre began crime writers have been tighttrope walkers, trying to find the right balance between the two basic elements of mystery fiction that are plot and character. Whether the criminal or human interest should prevail is ultimately for the writer only to decide, but depending on the period the average answer was, …

Miss Potts is Home Again

 Because of its lack of rules and even of a standard definition, "Suspense", whether you call it psychological or domestic, was a very peculiar genre that was home to some very peculiar writers - and Jean Potts may have been the most peculiar of them all. If Ursula Curtiss as I once said occupied the …

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

The definition of the Golden Age and how long it lasted are issues I've been pondering for years. I first outlined my thoughts in a well-received series in which I tried to distinguish between the different stratas of the period but while I still think there is merit to this approach I also think it …

The Mischaracterization of Charlotte Armstrong

Perhaps one of the weirdest stories of riches to rags in the crime fiction genre is that of Charlotte Armstrong. A towering force both critically and commercially in her lifetime and a perennial Anthony Boucher's favourite, she progressively faded into obscurity after her untimely death and is now known only to the diehard vintage mystery …

The Problematic Cop

To say that crime fiction long had, and to some extent still has, a police problem may seem rather odd at a time when police procedurals are the most frequent and popular form of the genre. The problem I'm discussing here is not the old political one of knowing whether crime fiction should lionize law …

Soyez modernes, lisez des vieilleries!

Cela ne vous aura sans doute pas échappé depuis le temps, mais je lis et je parle essentiellement de la littérature policière vintage - des trucs pas trop récents, écrits par des gens qui ont rejoint depuis longtemps le royaume de l'inconnue dimension. Ce n'est pas que je sois particulièrement passéiste, même si je ne …

Sunday Thoughts, The Ranting Edition

Warning: The following contains some strong opinion stated as fact.  I've said it before and I say it again: I am empathetically not a crime fiction purist. I don't think the rules must be followed to a T or that a really good mystery must read like it was written by Agatha Christie in her …