Why not read a classic mystery?
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You’e probably heard me talking about the “golden age of mystery fiction.” But what exactly am I talking about?
The golden age of detective fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s. The Golden Age proper is in practice usually taken to refer to a type of fiction which was predominant in the 1920s and 1930s but had been written since at least 1911 and is still being written.
Certain conventions and clichés were established that limited any surprises on the part of the reader to the details of the plot and, primarily, to the identity of the murderer. The majority of novels of that era were "whodunits,” and several authors excelled, after misleading their readers successfully, in revealing the least likely suspect convincingly as the villain. There was also a predilection for certain casts of characters and certain settings in a secluded English country house and its upper-class inhabitants (although they were generally landed gentry; not aristocracy with their country house as a second house).
The rules of the game—and Golden Age mysteries were considered games—were codified in 1929 by Ronald Knox.
According to Knox, a detective story "must have as its main interest the unravelling of a mystery; a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end." Knox's "Ten Commandments,” also known as "Knox Decalogue,” are as follows:
The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
No Chinaman must figure in the story.
No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
The detective himself must not commit the crime.
The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
image: Sammy Sander for Pixabay
Bookbub has put together suggestions for a starter library of mystery classics. Have you read any of these? What do you think of them? What titles would you add to this list?
And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie
The Decagon House Murders
Yukito Ayatsuji
The Crime at Black Dudley
Margery Allingham
Bluebird, Bluebird
Attica Locke
Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Soji Shimada
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
The Widows of Malabar Hill
Sujata Massey
Fer-de-Lance
Rex Stout
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
Devil in a Blue Dress
Walter Mosley
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
The Daughter of Time (one of my all-time favorite novels!)
Josephine Tey
Whose Body?
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Honjin Murders
Seishi Yokomizo
The Conjure-Man Dies
Rudolph Fisher
A Man Lay Dead
Ngaio Marsh
image: Nick Panic for Pixabay