http://prezi.com/9qmymultu3ap/?

utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/historydf.htm

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/goldenage.htm

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/sherlock.htm

Introduction

Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in
English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and
library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of
their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good
writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the
living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’,
Dorothy L. Sayers, complained:

It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press,
crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters,
police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95).

Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on
the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict . Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the
crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow
poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel
Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar
Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage.

Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere
between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me,
as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial
pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—
are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406).

The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers
produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new
generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin
Freeman wrote that:

By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be
conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other
persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7).

This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time,
are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how
Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse
on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined.

Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste

Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep
a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in
corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to
browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted
above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the
“taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only
wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the
demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers.

Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox  produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3
“Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers,  and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been
duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love
interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There
simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately
ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice.

In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read
crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are
story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains:

The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being
immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers
who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online).

These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our
breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-
read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others
that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst
many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language
that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim
was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between
a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1).

These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such
factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are
those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts
of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that
from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained”
(Zunshine 122).

For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is
correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the
murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production
demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new
works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories
relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled
narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers
actually inhabit or that provide a form of affordable tourism. These stories can be set in the past, the here and now, or the future. Characters can
range from Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple to Kerry Greenwood’s
Honourable Phryne Fisher. Similarly, language can come in numerous styles from the direct (even rough) words of Carter Brown to the literary
prose of Peter Temple. Anything is possible, meaning everything is available to readers.

For Auden—although he required a crime to be committed and expected that crime to be resolved—these doorways were only slightly ajar. For him,
the story had to be a Whodunit; the setting had to be rural England, though a college setting was also considered suitable; the characters had to be
“eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) and good (instinctively ethical)” and there needed to be a “completely satisfactory detective”
(Sherlock Holmes, Inspector French, and Father Brown were identified as “satisfactory”); and the language descriptive and detailed (406, 409, 408).
To illustrate this point, Auden’s concept of crime fiction has been plotted on a taxonomy, below, that traces the genre’s main developments over a
period of three centuries. As can be seen, much of what is, today, taken for granted as being classified as crime fiction is completely excluded from
Auden’s ideal.

Figure 1: Taxonomy of Crime Fiction (Adapted from Franks, Murder 136)

Crime Fiction: A Personal Journey

I discovered crime fiction the summer before I started high school when I saw the film version of  The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and
Lauren Bacall. A few days after I had seen the film I started reading the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, featuring his famous detective
Philip Marlowe, and was transfixed by the second paragraph:

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there
was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some
very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes
that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb
up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying (9).

John Scaggs has written that this passage indicates Marlowe is an idealised figure, a knight of romance rewritten onto the mean streets of mid-20th
century Los Angeles (62); a relocation Susan Roland calls a “secular form of the divinely sanctioned knight errant on a quest for metaphysical
justice” (139): my kind of guy. Like many young people I looked for adventure and escape in books, a search that was realised with Raymond
Chandler and his contemporaries. On the escapism scale, these men with their stories of tough-talking detectives taking on murderers and other
criminals, law enforcement officers, and the occasional femme fatale, were certainly a sharp upgrade from C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia.

After reading the works written by the pioneers of the hardboiled and roman noir traditions, I looked to other American authors such as Edgar Allan
Poe who, in the mid-1800s, became the father of the modern detective story, and Thorne Smith who, in the 1920s and 1930s, produced magical
realist tales with characters who often chose to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This led me to the works of British crime writers including
Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. My personal library then became dominated by Australian writers of crime fiction, from
the stories of bushrangers and convicts of the Colonial era to contemporary tales of police and private investigators.

There have been various attempts to “improve” or “refine” my tastes: to convince me that serious literature is  real reading and frivolous fiction is
merely a distraction. Certainly, the reading of those novels, often described as classics, provide perfect combinations of beauty and brilliance. Their
narratives, however, do not often result in satisfactory endings. This routinely frustrates me because, while I understand the philosophical
frameworks that many writers operate within, I believe the characters of such works are too often treated unfairly in the final pages. For example,
at the end of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry “left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” after his son is
stillborn and “Mrs Henry” becomes “very ill” and dies (292–93). Another example can be found on the last page of George Orwell’s  Nineteen Eighty-
Four when Winston Smith “gazed up at the enormous face” and he realised that he “loved Big Brother” (311).  Endings such as these provide a
space for reflection about the world around us but rarely spark an immediate response of how great that world is to live in (Franks  Motive). The
subject matter of crime fiction does not easily facilitate fairy-tale finishes, yet, people continue to read the genre because, generally, the concluding
chapter will show that justice, of some form, will be done. Punishment will be meted out to the ‘bad characters’ that have broken society’s moral or
legal laws; the ‘good characters’ may experience hardships and may suffer but they will, generally, prevail.

Crime Fiction: A Taste For Justice

Superimposed upon Auden’s parameters around crime fiction, are his ideas of the law in the real world and how such laws are interwoven with the
Christian-based system of ethics. This can be seen in Auden’s listing of three classes of crime: “(a) offenses against God and one’s neighbor or
neighbors; (b) offenses against God and society; (c) offenses against God” (407). Murder, in Auden’s opinion, is a class (b) offense: for the crime
fiction novel, the society reflected within the story should be one in “a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no
contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal, and where murder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a
crisis” (408). Additionally, in the crime novel “as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of
time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the
contradiction of murder” (408). Thus, as Charles J. Rzepka notes, “according to W.H. Auden, the ‘classical’ English detective story typically re-enacts
rites of scapegoating and expulsion that affirm the innocence of a community of good people supposedly ignorant of evil” (12).

This premise—of good versus evil—supports Auden’s claim that the punishment of wrongdoers, particularly those who claim the “right to be
omnipotent” and commit murder (409), should be swift and final:

As to the murderer’s end, of the three alternatives—execution, suicide, and madness—the first is preferable; for if he commits suicide he refuses to
repent, and if he goes mad he cannot repent, but if he does not repent society cannot forgive. Execution, on the other hand, is the act of atonement
by which the murderer is forgiven by society (409).

The unilateral endorsement of state-sanctioned murder is problematic, however, because—of the main justifications for punishment: retribution;
deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation (Carter Snead 1245)—punishment, in this context, focuses exclusively upon retribution and
deterrence, incapacitation is achieved by default, but the idea of rehabilitation is completely ignored. This, in turn, ignores how the reading of crime
fiction can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment and how a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably
intertwined. One of the ways to explore the connection between crime fiction and justice is through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the
conscience collective which proposes punishment is a process allowing for the demonstration of group norms and the strengthening of moral
boundaries. David Garland, in summarising this thesis, states:

So although the modern state has a near monopoly of penal violence and controls the administration of penalties, a much wider population feels
itself to be involved in the process of punishment, and supplies the context of social support and valorization within which state punishment takes
place (32).

It is claimed here that this “much wider population” connecting with the task of punishment can be taken further. Crime fiction, above all other
forms of literary production, which, for those who do not directly contribute to the maintenance of their respective legal systems, facilitates a feeling
of active participation in the penalising of a variety of perpetrators: from the issuing of fines to incarceration (Franks Punishment). Crime fiction
readers are therefore, temporarily at least, direct contributors to a more stable society: one that is clearly based upon right and wrong and reliant
upon the conscience collective to maintain and reaffirm order. In this context, the reader is no longer alone, with only their crime fiction novel for
company, but has become an active member of “a moral framework which binds individuals to each other and to its conventions and institutions”
(Garland 51). This allows crime fiction, once viewed as a “vice” (Wilson 395) or an “addiction” (Auden 406), to be seen as playing a crucial role in
the preservation of social mores.

It has been argued “only the most literal of literary minds would dispute the claim that fictional characters help shape the way we think of
ourselves, and hence help us articulate more clearly what it means to be human” (Galgut 190). Crime fiction focuses on what it means to be human,
and how complex humans are, because stories of murders, and the men and women who perpetrate and solve them, comment on what drives some
people to take a life and others to avenge that life which is lost and, by extension, engages with a broad community of readers around ideas of
justice and punishment.

It is, furthermore, argued here that the idea of the story is one of the more important doorways for crime fiction and, more specifically, the
conclusions that these stories, traditionally, offer. For Auden, the ending should be one of restoration of the spirit, as he suspected that “the typical
reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin” (411). In this way, the “phantasy, then, which the detective
story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as
the law” (412), indicating that it was not necessarily an accident that “the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant
countries” (408). Today, modern crime fiction is a “broad church, where talented authors raise questions and cast light on a variety of societal and
other issues through the prism of an exciting, page-turning story” (Sisterson). Moreover, our tastes in crime fiction have been tempered by a
growing fear of real crime, particularly murder, “a crime of unique horror” (Hitchens 200). This has seen some readers develop a taste for crime
fiction that is not produced within a framework of ecclesiastical faith but is rather grounded in reliance upon those who enact punishment in both the
fictional and real worlds. As P.D. James has written:
[N]ot by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some
evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order
restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos (174).

Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her work to legitimise crime fiction, wrote that there: “certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some
time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks” (108). Of course, many readers have “learnt all the tricks”, or most of
them. This does not, however, detract from the genre’s overall appeal. We have not grown bored with, or become tired of, the formula that revolves
around good and evil, and justice and punishment. Quite the opposite. Our knowledge of, as well as our faith in, the genre’s “tricks” gives a level of
confidence to readers who are looking for endings that punish murderers and other wrongdoers, allowing for more satisfactory conclusions than the,
rather depressing, ends given to Mr. Henry and Mr. Smith by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell noted above.

Conclusion

For some, the popularity of crime fiction is a curious case indeed. When Penguin and Collins published the Marsh Million—100,000 copies each of 10
Ngaio Marsh titles in 1949—the author’s relief at the success of the project was palpable when she commented that “it was pleasant to find
detective fiction being discussed as a tolerable form of reading by people whose opinion one valued” (172). More recently, upon the announcement
that a Miles Franklin Award would be given to Peter Temple for his crime novel Truth, John Sutherland, a former chairman of the judges for one of
the world’s most famous literary awards, suggested that submitting a crime novel for the Booker Prize would be: “like putting a donkey into the
Grand National”. Much like art, fashion, food, and home furnishings or any one of the innumerable fields of activity and endeavour that are subject
to opinion, there will always be those within the world of fiction who claim positions as arbiters of taste. Yet reading is intensely personal. I like a
strong, well-plotted story, appreciate a carefully researched setting, and can admire elegant language, but if a character is too difficult to embrace—
if I find I cannot make an emotional connection, if I find myself ambivalent about their fate—then a book is discarded as not being to my taste.  

It is also important to recognise that some tastes are transient. Crime fiction stories that are popular today could be forgotten tomorrow. Some
stories appeal to such a broad range of tastes they are immediately included in the crime fiction canon. Yet others evolve over time to accommodate
widespread changes in taste (an excellent example of this can be seen in the continual re-imagining of the stories of Sherlock Holmes). Personal
tastes also adapt to our experiences and our surroundings. A book that someone adores in their 20s might be dismissed in their 40s. A storyline
that was meaningful when read abroad may lose some of its magic when read at home. Personal events, from a change in employment to the loss
of a loved one, can also impact upon what we want to read. Similarly, world events, such as economic crises and military conflicts, can also
influence our reading preferences.

Auden professed an almost insatiable appetite for crime fiction, describing the reading of detective stories as an addiction, and listed a very specific
set of criteria to define the Whodunit. Today, such self-imposed restrictions are rare as, while there are many rules for writing crime fiction, there
are no rules for reading this (or any other) genre. People are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction,
and to follow the deliberate or whimsical paths that their tastes may lay down for them. Crime fiction writers, past and present, offer: an incredible
array of detective stories from the locked room to the clue puzzle; settings that range from the English country estate to city skyscrapers in
glamorous locations around the world; numerous characters from cerebral sleuths who can solve a crime in their living room over a nice, hot cup of
tea to weapon wielding heroes who track down villains on foot in darkened alleyways; and, language that ranges from the cultured conversations
from the novels of the genre’s Golden Age to the hard-hitting terminology of forensic and legal procedurals. Overlaid on these appeal factors is the
capacity of crime fiction to feed a taste for justice: to engage, vicariously at least, in the establishment of a more stable society. Of course, there
are those who turn to the genre for a temporary distraction, an occasional guilty pleasure. There are those who stumble across the genre by
accident or deliberately seek it out. There are also those, like Auden, who are addicted to crime fiction. So there are corpses for the conservative
and dead bodies for the bloodthirsty. There is, indeed, a murder victim, and a murder story, to suit every reader’s taste.

References

Auden, W.H. “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on The Detective Story, By an Addict.” Harper’s Magazine May (1948): 406–12. 1 Dec. 2013
‹http://www.harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206›.

Carter Snead, O. “Memory and Punishment.” Vanderbilt Law Review 64.4 (2011): 1195–264.

Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976/1977.

Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. London: Penguin, 1939/1970.

––. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988.

Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: HarperCollins, 1920/2007.

Cole, Cathy. Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction. Fremantle: Curtin UP, 2004.

Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Glyph 7 (1980): 202–32.

Franks, Rachel. “May I Suggest Murder?: An Overview of Crime Fiction for Readers’ Advisory Services Staff.”  Australian Library Journal 60.2 (2011):
133–43.

––. “Motive for Murder: Reading Crime Fiction.” The Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference. Sydney: Jul. 2012.

––. “Punishment by the Book: Delivering and Evading Punishment in Crime Fiction.” Inter-Disciplinary.Net 3 rd Global Conference on Punishment.
Oxford: Sep. 2013.

Freeman, R.A. “The Art of the Detective Story.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1924/1947. 7–17.

Galgut, E. “Poetic Faith and Prosaic Concerns: A Defense of Suspension of Disbelief.” South African Journal of Philosophy 21.3 (2002): 190–99.

Garland, David. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Random House, 1929/2004.

––. in R. Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988.
Hitchens, P. A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England. London: Atlantic Books, 2003.

James, P.D. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction since 1800: Death, Detection, Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010.

Knox, Ronald A. “Club Rules: The 10 Commandments for Detective Novelists, 1928.”  Ronald Knox Society of North America. 1 Dec. 2013
‹http://www.ronaldknoxsociety.com/detective.html›.

Malmgren, C.D. “Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective and Crime Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture Spring (1997): 115–21.

Maloney, Shane. The Murray Whelan Trilogy: Stiff, The Brush-Off and Nice Try. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1994/2008.

Marsh, Ngaio in J. Drayton. Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2008.

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1949/1989.

Roland, Susan. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave, 2001.

Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.

Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1928/1947. 71–109.

Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2005.

Sisterson, C. “Battle for the Marsh: Awards 2013.” Black Mask: Pulps, Noir and News of Same. 1 Jan. 2014
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Van Dine, S.S. “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 189-93.

Wilson, Edmund. “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New
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Keywords

Auden; crime fiction; justice; punishment; reading; t

Why Is Crime Fiction So Popular?

Detectives and other investigators abound on our TV and cinema
screens.

In the western world, crime fiction – mystery, thrillers, suspense, etc. – makes up
somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of all fiction book sales. Why is the crime genre so
popular?

Crime is fascinating, to be sure, because most of us don’t commit it. But the popularity of
the genre has little to do with crime per se. It has far more to do with the very essence of
how storytelling works.
In this article we will be looking at:

 Cause and Effect

 Agency
 The Narrative Principle
 Why Some People Don’t Like Crime Stories
 The Search For Truth
 How Crime Is Like Comedy

Crime fiction exhibits most clearly one of the fundamental rules of storytelling: cause and
effect. In crime fiction, you notice more than in other genres that every scene must be
justified – each plot event must have a raison d’être within the story, because the reader
or audience perceives every scene as the potential cause of an effect that comes later.

Even if a plot event turns out to be a red herring, then that herring is placed there for a
purpose – i.e. of misleading the reader/viewer. And that is the point. Every scene has a
recognizable purpose. In all fiction, scenes with no purpose might best be expunged. In
crime fiction scenes with no purpose are least forgivable.

Picture an arched bridge. You know, the type that the Romans built. Every stone is held in
place by the other stones. Take away only one stone, and the whole structure falls to
pieces.

Source: http://jaysromanhistory.com/romeweb/engineer/keyarch.
gif

Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/bridge.png

Fiction is a bit like that. Each scene supports the others, and an extra scene, a superfluous
one, doesn’t have a place – or involves subtly changing all the others, just as you would
have to adjust the shape of the other stones in the arch bridge if you were to add one
more. Nowhere do you see this effect more clearly than in crime fiction. Crime fiction is
cause and effect storytelling at its purest.

The universe has this law of cause and effect. But we as humans cannot really see it in
action, because the universe is far too vast and complicated. We try to attribute causes to
everything we experience, but mostly that is speculation. In other words, we
seek agency – we look for the agent (the active or efficient cause, the person or thing
responsible) of any actions we perceive. In real life, our judgments are often fallacious: we
suspect far more specific agency than there actually is. The reason is a simple safety
mechanism. It is safer to assume there is a specific threat (a sabre-tooth tiger behind the
bush) than accept that the agent of a phenomenon might be so general as to be
meaningless (the wind caused the rustle in the bush). Stories teach us to look for agency.
In stories we are used to finding out who the agent of a phenomenon was – and nowhere
more so than in a crime story. The whole story is built around discovering who committed
the crime. So if stories exist in order to teach us something that will help us to survive –
the evolutionary theory of why we humans love stories so much –, then crime stories do
that with particular efficiency.

Structurally, crime fiction is the purest genre. In classic crime fiction the narrative
principle is particularly clear. The external problem as inciting incident is most obvious:
the crime. The crime is external to the investigator’s life – until the investigator receives
the call to investigate it. So the investigator is set a task, given a mission. The story sets
up directly what the investigator wants: to resolve the crime. The investigator perceives it
as a need to solve the crime, because that is the job, it’s what investigators do. The quest
is to find, the goal is to apprehend the criminal. An external problem, a call, a task, a
want, an external need, a goal. All the elements of storytelling, all that the surface
structure of any story exhibits – in crime fiction none of this is buried, it is not indirect, it’s
not possible to overlook these elements, either as a reader or indeed as an author.

Indeed, the main reason some people don’t appreciate the crime genre is because it
concentrates so expressly on the surface structure. What crime stories often don’t exhibit
so meaningfully is the deep structure – not the internal problem and the real or emotional
need of the main character, nor the change, the emotional development or growth of that
character. In crime fiction, the resolution of the quest for the truth behind the mystery set
up at the beginning of the story – the answer to the story question “who committed the
crime?” – often takes the place of character development. For some people, that is not
enough. That’s why crime fiction is often considered “lightweight” by comparison to more
“literary” stories.

However, consider this: All art, like all science and all religion, is in its very essence the
search for truth. Truth about the human condition, what it is like to be living as a person in
this world. In no genre is a search for truth more explicitly the subject matter. Who
committed the crime? The whole story revolves explicitly about solving this problem,
finding the truth of behind the mystery.

Because the whole point of any story – as with any art – is truth-seeking, when it is so
direct as in crime fiction, the story is easier to consume, less demanding than stories that
are not so obviously and directly about truth-seeking. That explains the apparent paradox
of why reading about gruesome murders is somehow relaxing.

The interesting twist in crime fiction compared to other genres is that the protagonist of a
crime story often does not exhibit change. In most stories, the main character learns
something and grows emotionally – is a changed person at the end of the narrative. That
cannot be said for most detectives in crime stories. This is due to a large extent to the
necessity of keeping the investigator as a consistent character for the next books in the
series, the next episodes. But it is also because the discovery of what was hidden, of the
revelation of truth, takes place in the audience. The effect necessary for the reader or
viewer to feel a story is satisfying, the effect of perceiving a change from the situation set
up at the beginning to the situation at the end, happens with the “aha”-effect of finding out
who the murderer is, rather than with seeing, aha, the character has grown.

There is another genre where the situation at the end of the story is pretty much the same
as at the beginning: comedy. Though here usually someone gets married rather than put
behind bars.

Comedy is an expression of the cyclical nature of life. Spring comes every year after
winter. The sun rises after every night. This is one of the very deepest and most basic
realities we are aware of as part of the human condition. This reality is structurally
expressed in comedies – and in crime stories.

The other great fact of the human condition is death. Mortality is one of the deepest topoi
of stories. Tragedy is the classical genre that deals with it most explicitly.

And of course crime fiction deals at its core with death too. So crime fiction expresses the
same as two of the oldest and most classical styles of storytelling, comedy and tragedy.
And therefore expresses almost everything there is to express through storytelling.

No wonder crime fiction is so popular.

Why we love crime fiction

APR 29, 2016
BY MO HARBER-LAMOND
IN:BLOG , CRIME FICTION , UNCATEGORIZED , WRITING COURSES

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Crime fiction is one of the biggest selling literary genres, but what makes it so popular? Mo Harber-Lamond explores the

development of the genre, and why we get so much enjoyment from reading about criminals, murders and the solving of

mysteries.
-> Read more

In the UK, one in every three books sold is a crime novel. While the genre can be traced back to the early- to mid-19th century,

and proved popular to a degree, the real kick-start of the genre’s popularity was undoubtedly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s series of

Sherlock Holmes stories. The influence of Holmes can be seen in the characterisation of detectives up to the present day:

eccentricity abounds, and whether they’re troubled by drugs, alcohol, instability or love, they are never perfect, yet always

brilliant.

The genre itself follows a number of conventions. There will be a crime or event that, somewhere along way, almost invariably

precipitates someone’s death. We follow a ‘detective’ character as they attempt to solve the crime, although they may be a

civilian, rather than a trained member of the police or private investigator. The story will usually conclude with the perpetrators

of the crime being discovered and brought to justice, or at the very least, end with an alternative, yet equally satisfying

resolution. There is also commonly a much grander scheme afoot, often behind the scenes, which tends to be foiled just in the

nick of time.

These basic elements are wide enough to give writers the scope to do almost anything they want with the story. Due to this,

the genre is often used as a vehicle to explore wider themes such as race, gender equality, the corruption of authority, or just

about any other issue important to the writer. The versatility of the genre is attractive to both writer and reader, as real-world

problems can be delved into within an entertaining, accessible framework.

So why do we enjoy reading about terrible crimes and injustices?

Well, firstly, these stories are relatable. The imperfect detective protagonist might be jaded, silly, witty or even a genius, but

they’re not superhuman. They’re a real person, and we enjoy that. Also, we’re exposed to these sorts of events every day

through the media, but we very rarely get an inside look at how the crimes are handled and solved. Crime fiction gives

us an insight to this, and as a form of escapism it’s far less fantastical, and often much more gritty, than other types of genre

fiction, such as sci-fi or fantasy.

Secondly, the story could be about a high-tech spy agency, the seedy New York criminal underbelly, or troubles in a Swindon

hospital, but the danger and thrill of the chase is undeniably ‘cool’. This ‘coolness’ is something unquantifiable, but while guns,

drug cartels and taking the law into one’s own hands might not be things we want to get involved in ourselves, it’s always

entertaining to see someone else do it – for better or for worse. We all like to live vicariously from time to time.

Thirdly, and most importantly, we enjoy the mystery. As humans, we long for the satisfaction of a good resolution in all aspects

of our lives: that final chord at the end of a song; being able to go home after work knowing you’ve finished the stock take; the

feeling you get after completing your first novel. It’s no different with crime fiction. We enjoy piecing together the disparate

clues, building them up ourselves into a coherent picture, and finally reaching that final chapter to find out it wasn’t who we

thought it was all along, but that now it all makes sense.

To write a truly good crime novel, though, it’s not enough to have an intricate plot and a charismatic detective. These are books

that rely on tight, focused writing, and while they can be as explicit and action packed as the writer likes, they need to show

restraint. This skill comes from studying the form, and rigorous writing practice. A good example is crime writer and guest

author on our Introduction to Writing Crime Fiction online course, Sarah Hilary, who won the 2015 Theakstons Old Peculier

Crime Novel of the Year with Someone Else’s Skin. While her novels are startlingly violent, she’s not all about blood and gore.

Hilary has a knack of depicting terrible acts without being gratuitous, and this is what sets her apart from the pack. A crisp

razor slicing the jugular is far more effective than a frenzied machete onslaught.

The majority of the crime fiction readership now is female, and female characters are dominating the genre. While this might

seem like a new development, strong female protagonists have featured in many popular novels in the past. For example, in

Graham Greene’s thriller (a genre closely tied to the crime story), Brighton Rock, Ida is as much a protagonist as Pinkie. In

classic crime fiction, however, women are almost invariably cast as victims, but now we see them taking up roles across the

board, from detective to villain. With the rise of the ‘domestic-noir’ – a sub-genre thrust into the limelight by Julia Crouch’s

work, and the success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl – we see the exploration of femininity and the agency of women, as well as a

twisting plot and all the conventions we expect from a crime novel. This subversion shows the adaptability of the form, and how

powerful crime writing can be for addressing issues that might at first seem out of the scope of ‘genre writing’.

So, it’s not hard to see why we enjoy a good crime novel. We want protagonists we can relate to, the guarantee of a satisfying

resolution, and perhaps more than just a tale of a trigger-happy lunatic. Sometimes, though – and you know that it’s true –

that is all we really want.

Why Is Crime Fiction the Most Popular Genre?
Posted March 20, 2014 by Joel Goldman & filed under Crime Fiction.
 
Do you have a dark habit? A private passion for bloodshed, violence, suspense, and mystery? If you’re nodding your head,
then you’re not alone. So why do we love to read about the murderers and serial killers, gangs and mafia bosses? It seems
that murder and the sometimes-convoluted motives behind it fascinate us whether we’re reading about it in the latest crime
thriller or hearing an actual news report. Crime fiction resonates with a broad population base and reigns as the most popular
of fiction genres.

WHY WE LOVE THE KILL

Why do we find stories about a seedy underworld and a brutal killer more appealing than reading War and Peace, The Great
Gatsby, or other classics? Does it mean fans of crime fiction are too shallow to enjoy the more cerebral stories in classic
literature? Absolutely not. I think there are a number of reasons people gravitate toward stories about crime. Here’s my short
list – people love crime novels because they:
Stimulate tired brains. People live busy, hurried lives today and I think many don’t get to their pleasure reading until
they’re already quite tired. The fast-paced danger and suspense in crime novels draws them in; whereas, if they picked up a
work of literary fiction to read at bedtime, they’d nod off after a few pages.
Provide a catharsis. Even though thriller books can be scary and suspenseful, they can help us get past our real-life fears.
Former crime reporter turned thriller author, Michael Duffy says, “Whether it’s the Bible, which is full of violence, or crime
novels, both help us deal with our fears. You get the same story over and over again of murder and revenge; it must have a
cleansing effect.” When we hear about some of the heinous true crime stories on the news, it can leave us feeling vulnerable
and afraid. Reading a good crime novel where the bad guy gets it in the end, can relieve some of that anxiety.
Fulfill secret desires. People often have serious feelings of resentment against a coworker or ex-lover. They may read crime
novels and imagine that it’s the person that wronged them getting knifed by a deranged killer in the story. Before I wrote my
first crime novel, one of the partners at my law firm complained bitterly to me about one of the other attorneys. So I said,
“Let’s write a book about him, kill the son-of-a-bitch off in the first chapter and spend the rest of the book figuring out
whodunit.” That’s how my first legal thriller, Motion to Kill, came about.
Give an adrenaline rush. Perhaps people love to read crime thrillers for the same reasons they go on high-speed roller
coasters and watch horror flicks. They want to experience the adrenaline rush, the fear, without exposing themselves to any
real danger. Give it a try…grab a copy of Stone Cold or Shakedown.
Relieve boredom. Bored with the same old, same old? Crime certainly isn’t boring. Pick up a crime novel with lots of
surprise plot twists and clever bad guys and be bored no more. Even when you’ve put the book down to take the dog for a
walk, or start dinner, your mind will be busy sorting through the clues. You’ll mentally ruminate over why one character said
this and another did that.
I think it all boils down to this quote by psychologist Robert I. Simon, “…bad men do what good men dream.” Crime novels
allow good people to peek into and vicariously experience the world of bad people. What do you think? Do you have
anything to add about why crime fiction has become so popular? Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

The Strange Appeal of Crime Fiction -

ANDREW TAYLOR
Written by Andrew Taylor

"Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund
of innocent enjoyment than any other single subject." 

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that sentence in 1934. Things

haven't changed. Among all the forms of death murder is the one with the
widest appeal. Murder is usually the defining event in crime fiction the motor
that drives the story. It fascinates in fiction as well as in fact and on television
and at the cinema as well as in books. TV audience figures and public lending
rights data tell the same tale. That crime fiction is one of the best-established
forms of entertainment. And that its appeal is unusually broad-based and long-
lived. 
At first sight it seems not merely strange but almost shameful that the human
race has such a taste for sudden death. Isn't there enough of it in real life? Is
our penchant for it a symptom that we are hungry for sensation, that we have
an unlovely appetite for vicarious violence? Is crime fiction bad for the moral
health of its readers or viewers? Why on earth do so many of us like it? 

To answer that question we first of all have to find a working definition of what
crime fiction is: and this in itself is a mystery which would have baffled Holmes
or Poirot. These days the classic whodunnit is only one variant among many.
The pure detective story was in many respects an aberration: the modern crime
novel. like its nineteenth century predecessor is much closer to mainstream
fiction in its concerns and techniques than is often realised. 

Most of crime fiction whether on the page or on the screen centres on murder
and has a strong narrative. This is nothing new. Crime in one shape or another
is one of the basic plot devices of Western literature. Julian Svmons called the
Little Red Riding Hood story an interesting case of disguise and attempted
murder. Murder, suspense and sudden reversals can be found in the works of
The Odyssey and Hamlet as well as in The Big Sleep and Cracker. 

H.R.F. Keating has produced a catch-all definition of the genre. "… fiction
written primarily for its entertainment value which has as its subject some form

 of crime." He goes on to say that "'crime writing is fiction

that puts the reader first,riot its writer." Useful though this definition is. It
shouldn't be taken too seriously. Dickens and Trollope, for example, often used
crimes to underpin their plots: and both of them were commercial authors who
understood the paramount importance of entertaining their readers. All one can
with any certainty is that the label "crime fiction" is an elastic convenience for
those who use it, not an exact term.

The genre's elasticity is perhaps one reason for its wide and enduring appeal.
Like the Church of England. Crime fiction means different things to different
people at different times. We have the howdunnit and the whydunnit as well as
the whodunnit. We can snuggle up with a cosy or exercise our mental digestive
system with something hard-boiled. There are novels where the hero is the
criminal not the detective. There are crime novels set in Roman times and crime
novels set in the future. Some are designed to shock and others designed to
make us laugh. Some investigate the psychopathology or sociology of crime
while others act as dramatisations of the ethical or political views of their
creators. 
Not only is crime fiction a portmanteau genre, it is also attracting more and
more serious writers - people who fifty years ago might well have written
mainstream fiction. It is possible that many readers have become disillusioned
with the intellectual excesses of the modern literary novel and have turned with
a sigh of relief to crime. P.D.James suggests that a good crime novel combines
"the old traditions of an exciting story and the satisfying exercise of rational
deduction with the psychological subtleties and moral ambiguities of a good
novel." It's worth adding that in crime fiction the main characters are usually
under great stress. They are placed in situations where they are forced to shed
their protective layers of habit and conformity and reveal their naked natures -
to other characters. to us, and perhaps to themselves. They are in conflict, often
violent with other characters. They suck the reader and the viewer into their
fictional lives and force us to care what happens to them. The very best writers
of crime fiction make us wonder about ourselves as well as about their
characters. Is it any wonder that crime fiction sells? 

This goes some way towards explaining part of the genre's appeal. But only
part. H.R.F. Keating's remark, that crime fiction "puts its reader first", suggests
another piece of the jigsaw. Crime novels are designed to entertain. They are
the products of popular culture. As such, they must make a profit, for no one
will subsidise them. Crime fiction may have literary aspirations, but its emphasis
on entertainment ensures that these do not intimidate potential readers. Crime
fiction is literature in its shirtsleeves, stripped of pretensions: and none the
worse for that. 

Crime fiction, then, is accessible. It has also been suggested that its appeal has
a psychological dimension. C.Day Lewis thought the detective story was a
twentieth-century folk tale. Nick Elliot, once the head of drama series at the
BBC, believes "Crime fiction satisfies in us a secret yearning for justice, the
unappeasable appetite for a fair world, which begins in childhood and never
leaves us. It satisfies our need for conclusions, both moral and narrative." 
Before the war, both the detective story and the thriller reassured the middle
classes that all would be well: that in nothing to fear from criminals and lower
orders. To some extent, even now much crime fiction functions as a literary
comfort blanket. It helps us to come to terms with the increasing violence of the
modern world. 

The best crime novels do both more and less than this: they do not suggest a
remedy for crime or reassure us that all in the end will be well; but they can
help us to understand our violent society, and they also allow us to hope that
evil will not go unpunished. 

Most - though not all - crime novels crime novels share a common structure.
First there is the crime, usually a murder; then there is the investigation; and
finally the resolution or judgement, often in the shape of the criminal's arrest or
death. This tight structure is another reason for the genre's appeal. To object
that the structure is artificial is to miss the point: Racine's tragedies observe the
Aristotelian unities of time, place and action; Shakespeare voluntarily confined
himself to the fourteen lines of the sonnet form: Jane Austen wrote what are, in
formal terms, romantic novels of courtship, where marriage offers the ultimate
resolution. Most art plays tribute to the fact that the human race hungers for
form, if only as a method of providing a temporary container for fiction
providesnot only the dangerous chaos but something to put it in. 
It is commonly said - by the late Julian Symons and H.R.F. Keating among
others - that crime fiction can never be great literature because it is so
sensational. It is a view worth taking seriously partly because Symons and
Keating are first-rate crime novelists and partly because it is admirably
unpretentious. But does this mean that those of us who like crime are
condemned irrevocably to be purveyors and consumers of second-rate pulp? Are
we the sort of people who prefer Sparkling Pomagne to Veuve Clicquot? 

Of course not. Much "great literature" is outrageously sensational. There is no

intrinsic reason why crime fiction should not aspire to be great (whatever it is
still a crime novel if it succeeds is another question). What counts, as ever is not
your effects but how you achieve them. We can safely reassure ourselves that
the strange appeal of crime fiction is not limited to those of second-class cultural
intelligence. 

It seems likely that the crime novel is merely the latest vehicle for themes that
have been fascinating people for thousands of years. It fascinates so many
people partly because it entertains partly because it offers the rewards of any
good quality fiction, and partly because it deals with some of the uglier aspects
of human nature. 

Murder is the ultimate crime and we're naturally fascinated by the strong human
emotions that bring it about. It's also worth remembering that the twentieth
century has been the most violent on record: does this have something to do
with the current popularity of the crime novel? 
Finally perhaps the human race is obsessed with death. Remember the
enormous crowds that used to gather at public executions. Death is something
that will happen to us all. The murder mystery gives us a way of exploring a few
of the implications - and of enjoying ourselves while we do it.