[HN Gopher] The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction (2017)
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The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction (2017)
Author : Tomte
Score : 83 points
Date : 2022-07-06 11:47 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (elizabethspanncraig.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (elizabethspanncraig.com)
| watwut wrote:
| > Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his
| mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below
| that of the average reader
|
| At some point, I realized that Watson is much less dumb, then
| submissive and constantly verbally bullied. Or rather, that we
| perceive him through the way Sherlock (or his equivalent)
| constantly puts him down, even when his reactions are not dumb at
| all. And since Watson equivalent never stand up for himself, he
| is dumb for reader who don't think about him.
|
| And once you notice it, it is quite frequent in literature. When
| character gets insulted by other characters without standing up
| for himself, people will take from it that character is stupid -
| even in cases where that character was completely normal or even
| for right all along.
|
| It actually works the same way in real life too.
|
| > science
|
| Interestingly, when you look at detective stories with scientific
| accuracy, the evidence detectives use is super shoddy. Most of it
| is at bike-marks accuracy at best - guaranteed to imprison
| innocents often.
|
| All this is because I read too many of detective stories.
| _def wrote:
| Everytime I read articles like this I feel the urge to make
| writing a hobby, but I just can't get to it. Feels like I'm
| missing out but I'm not sure.
| ksdale wrote:
| I'm always complaining to my wife about movies with a
| detective/mystery component where the key to the whole thing is
| revealed _after_ the mystery is solved and is is something that
| we, as viewers, could not possibly have known. It feels the same
| as using magic. It 's always seemed to me that it should be
| _possible_ for the viewer to solve the mystery at the same time
| as the protagonist, given only what the viewer knows so far. It
| 's validating to see that this is considered a vital component of
| a detective story, at least by some.
| tpoacher wrote:
| > The detective must not himself commit the crime
|
| Violation of this rule ruined an otherwise amazing PC game for
| me, which shall remain nameless to avoid spoilers.
|
| It was borderline silly to have the detective you played for 90%
| of the game narrating his thoughts on what clues meant, and on
| who the culprit might be, only to then turn out to be the
| murderer ...
| ThePadawan wrote:
| (Trying to stay spoiler-free)
|
| I'm trying to discover which one you mean - I remember one
| which matches somewhat, but in which you control so many
| characters that you definitely don't spend 90% of the time
| controlling the one that ends up being the culprit.
|
| (But that game also just threw a handful of red herrings at the
| wall that ended up being completely meaningless, so it was a
| bit of a lame duck, rushed into release like all the releases
| by this "auteur" have been before and since)
|
| Apart from that, on the not strictly speaking detective side of
| things, there is also Planescape: Torment which pulled this
| whole idea off spectacularly (to the point that it has become
| tropey in the other direction again).
| ModernMech wrote:
| An additional commandment I can think of is that the crime has to
| be something significant, like a murder. I wouldn't want to read
| a story about a detective solving a petty crime or finding a lost
| dog.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But if that lost dog was the only one that could tell you which
| well Timmy fell down, then it might be more significant
| nobody9999 wrote:
| > An additional commandment I can think of is that the crime
| has to be something significant, like a murder. I wouldn't want
| to read a story about a detective solving a petty crime or
| finding a lost dog.
|
| Dirk Gently[0] would like a word...
|
| [0]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently_(pilot_episode)
| ModernMech wrote:
| I think you've kind of proven my point, as Dirk Gently is
| more of a comedy than a mystery. The absurdity of a detective
| finding a lost cat is what makes it funny. And then all the
| rest about time travel... I mean, if you want to make a
| comedy mystery you would want to violate as many of these
| "commandments" as you could.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I think you've kind of proven my point, as Dirk Gently is
| more of a comedy than a mystery. The absurdity of a
| detective finding a lost cat is what makes it funny. And
| then all the rest about time travel... I mean, if you want
| to make a comedy mystery you would want to violate as many
| of these "commandments" as you could.
|
| A reasonable point. Although I'd say that humor (if done
| well) is a boon, rather than a detriment to mysteries (most
| fiction, actually).
|
| And cats _always_ make things better[2]!
|
| As someone who enjoys mystery novels, I've noted that minor
| mysteries are often used as a device to bring the detective
| into situations where larger issues may be afoot[0][1].
|
| It seems to me that if a mystery is engaging, the
| underlying "crime" isn't as relevant as the storytelling,
| clue planting and the thought process of the detective.
|
| At the same time, mysteries generally deal with serious
| crimes (especially murder), as it amps up the (fictional)
| stakes and provides a reason for the interest and
| participation of the detective.
|
| But that needn't be the case -- as long as the mystery is
| interesting, the prose is of good quality and the
| characters engaging. At least that's my take.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Clap
| ham_C...
|
| [2] cf. Lillian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who..."
| mysteries[3].
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Who_series
|
| Edit: Fixed reference indices.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > ... a plot involving time travel
|
| A violation of Knox Rule number II.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, it's not a problem. It's clear from the beginning that
| it involves time travel, and the story unrolls perfectly
| linearly.
| kej wrote:
| The Encyclopedia Brown series rode the lost dog/petty crime
| train to 20+ volumes.
| ModernMech wrote:
| That's why I had changed my original comment from "no one
| would want to read" to "I wouldn't want to read" :P
| [deleted]
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| From the way she was carrying on I was expecting this to be
| about her son. Her husband seemed oddly unaffected though. As
| she continued discussing his habits, I slowly pieced it
| together. Morning walk, careful hair brushing, just the right
| food, not too wet, not too dry... I had to interrupt her.
|
| "You're talking about your dog? I don't do dogs." I said.
|
| At this point, the husband slid an envelope across the desk
| filled with cash. It was at least twice my daily rate.
|
| "Look," he said, "I need this done, and I need it done
| discreetly. Find the dog, or bring me its collar." The woman
| began to object, but a glare from her husband stopped her.
|
| This was more than a missing dog case. It had to be, no one put
| up that much, in cash, up front just for a dog. You put up
| posters in the neighborhood, you don't hire a PI. Alarm bells
| were ringing in my head, but the rent was due, and Aberlour
| isn't cheap.
|
| I opened my desk drawer and casually slid the envelope into it.
| "Do you have a picture of..."
|
| "Beaumont. His name is Beaumont," the woman supplied.
|
| ...
| mypastself wrote:
| Love all of these (including the seemingly offensive "Chinaman"
| one), but I disagree with most of the updated list.
|
| Contemporary mystery authors too often feel the need to create
| the illusion of depth by having alcoholic protagonists with messy
| personal lives. It's cliche, and it put me off the genre for good
| about a decade ago.
| nineplay wrote:
| There was a fair amount of complaint about the tacked-on Poriot
| backstory in the recent Death on the Nile movie. IMO, filling
| in every blank makes characters less interesting, not more.
|
| https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/i-cant-stop-thinking-abo...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That's been going on for a very long time. "The Big Sleep" has
| a protagonist with a messy personal life; "The Thin Man" has a
| protagonist who drinks throughout the book, and complains at
| the end that he didn't get to drink nearly as much as he
| intended.
| tgv wrote:
| After reading some Nordic detective, I reached the conclusion
| that a severe dependency must be a requirement for admission to
| police academy. Divorce, accidental kills, being the only
| survivor of a crash that killed your family, etc., are extra
| points which set your career on a quick path to D.I. One cannot
| imagine the horrors that constitute the life of a police
| commissioner.
| logifail wrote:
| > I reached the conclusion that a severe dependency must be a
| requirement for admission to police academy
|
| I'm thinking it goes back at least as far as Inspector Morse,
| although I'm not sure whether we'd say he had a dependency on
| real ale or Mozart....?
|
| Perhaps a certain lack of joy?
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Obligatory: https://youtu.be/I-OOpZitfd0 (all of 36 seconds
| long and every one of them worth it)
| labrador wrote:
| Swedish crime show, standing in a forest, snow on the
| ground, dark but not night, possibly in the afternoon:
|
| "He committed Finnish suicide"
|
| "What's that?"
|
| "He drank himself to death"
|
| Later on...
|
| Detective to the pathologist as they stand over the body of
| completely naked woman in the morgue:
|
| "What can you tell me about this woman?"
|
| "Judging by her perfect white teeth I'd say she's American"
| watwut wrote:
| I think that rough alcoholic detectives are more from 1990ties.
| then contemporary. But I may be reading different books then
| you.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > alcoholic protagonists
|
| It's been a while since I last read 'Red Harvest' but I
| remember an awful lot of laudanum.
| cafard wrote:
| I thought it was just the guy who had been gassed in the war,
| and then the narrator. But I remember Paul Theroux, in one of
| the railroad books, finding all the drinking in _The Thin
| Man_ distracting.
| xhevahir wrote:
| The problem is that if you're going to have the reader follow a
| particular detective around for several books, the reader will
| eventually want to see more sides to the character than just
| the professional one; treating the detective as merely a
| detective, solving cases that otherwise don't engage his or her
| wider life. begins to feel very mechanical and shallow, even--
| if it's not too strong a word--exploitative. Hence the "messy
| personal lives," stories where the criminal kidnaps the
| detective's spouse, etc. Nothing says the detective has to be
| an embittered alcoholic or some other cliche, but I think
| there's good reasons behind the trend.
| karencarits wrote:
| > Contemporary mystery authors too often feel the need to
| create the illusion of depth by having alcoholic protagonists
| with messy personal lives
|
| I agree with you. Messy personal lives and often sex scenes or
| gore that add nothing to the story. I find it off-putting and
| disturbing (not necessarily morally disturbing, more as noise
| or feeling disconnected from the author: I don't get why are
| you telling me this, am I missing the point, should I be
| enjoying this?) and find myself retreating to old classics like
| Poirot, Father Brown, Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes again and
| again
| autoexec wrote:
| > Contemporary mystery authors too often feel the need to
| create the illusion of depth by having alcoholic protagonists
| with messy personal lives.
|
| It's a trope that makes some sense though. People who are doing
| work that requires them to travel for long periods of time,
| spend lots of time alone, or where they obsess over every
| detail of something for days on end could easily strain
| relationships and cause issues in their personal lives, while
| constantly dealing with cases involving horrible things can
| easily lead to drugs/alcohol use. It's still a cliche and it's
| sure to get old, but I almost feel like you'd need a good
| explanation for avoiding it. How does a character who has spent
| years seeing the worst things have zero issue dealing with it?
| How does a person whose income in inconsistent, whose lifestyle
| has them disappearing for days at a time, and whose work
| consumes them not have issues with their personal life?
|
| Not that you can't have a detective who is independently
| wealthy or works as part of a team, or who never travels, or
| never deals with the kinds of cases that would cause them to
| have trouble sleeping at night, but if you do have that kind of
| character the rest of it just sort of follows.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| > the Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and
| under-equipped in the matter of morals.
|
| Indeed, what a line!
| john-radio wrote:
| Full context matters here:
|
| > Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a
| reason for it in our western habit of assuming that the
| Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and
| under-equipped in the matter of morals.
|
| Knox is criticizing this assumption, not endorsing it.
|
| > I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are
| turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention
| of 'the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo', you had best put it down
| at once; it is bad.
|
| I definitely agree with Knox's harsh judgment of the books
| that used to include such lines! I am reminded of the many
| ridiculous and racist caricatures of Chinese, African, Native
| American, and many other cultures in the (otherwise fairly
| wonderful) Tintin comics by Herge.
|
| Of course, writing a rule against including any Chinese
| people in detective fiction is going much too far, and is
| also racist; but no doubt Knox's writing here is a product of
| his time.
|
| In fact, the first detective novel I ever read was "Walking
| Shadow" by Robert B. Parker, where his tough PI Spenser and
| his comrades Hawk and Susan Silverman go up against some
| Boston area tongs, and the Chinese people in that book are
| interesting, "round" characters; so I'm glad Parker had
| either never heard of this particular rule and chose to
| ignore it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| How about "Don't make the murderer a stereotype". (I
| suspect the Chinaman rule is in there because at the time,
| a bunch of less-well-done detective stories used it as an
| easy way to make a villainous villain. Well, until
| recently, you could do the same with the stereotyped-
| villain-du-jour. Depending on your audience, you still
| could today.)
| baud147258 wrote:
| > the many ridiculous and racist caricatures of Chinese
| [...] in the (otherwise fairly wonderful) Tintin comics by
| Herge.
|
| From what I remember of the Blue Lotus, it was the Japanese
| antagonists who got the short end of the stick in that
| regard, so at least the book in China avoided that issue
| (unlike the books set in the US and Africa)
| ilamont wrote:
| Is there a similar formula for science fiction or fantasy? It
| seems that the rules are looser, particularly for scifi, but
| maybe multiple formulas exist within the genre.
| purist33 wrote:
| Thou shalt not cite Quantum theory for everything.
| baud147258 wrote:
| Nor nanomachines
|
| (looking at you, Metal Gear Solid 4)
| becquerel wrote:
| Paul Auster's City of Glass is a good postmodernist read which
| violates a lot of these rules and other conventions of the genre.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The other two books in his New York Trilogy ( _Ghosts_ and _The
| Locked Room_ ) do a similar job of deconstructing the genre in
| different, similarly mindbending ways.
|
| As an aside, I've never seen anyone do a better job of
| describing the very specific feeling of long walks in
| Manhattan. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't understand the
| joy I find there.
| Balarny wrote:
| Umineko fans represent
| teddyfrozevelt wrote:
| Where are my Virtue's Last Reward fans at?
| keiferski wrote:
| Also worth reading in this genre is Raymond Chandler's _The
| Simple Art of Murder_ :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simple_Art_of_Murder
|
| https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20140930/html.php#Page_1
| mysterydip wrote:
| Just finished season 1 of "Only Murders in the Building", and it
| has some great examples of these principles IMHO.
| cafard wrote:
| Did the original essay specifically mention _Who Killed Roger
| Ackroyd_? I read it a long time ago.
|
| Also, there is, for those not big on detective fiction, Edmund
| Wilson's essay "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"
| karaterobot wrote:
| It doesn't mention that one, but it alludes to it.
|
| See also _Who Killed Roger Ackroyd_ by Pierre Bayard, in which
| the author argues for a different outcome to the case.
| greggeter wrote:
| jawns wrote:
| One reason why I prefer the classics (Agatha Christie, G.K.
| Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.) is that a lot of modern
| mystery authors think they need to be both mystery writers and
| comedians. The voice of the narrator, if not the characters
| themselves, is often snarky and sarcastic, and I find it
| incredibly off-putting. So if I could offer an additional
| commandment, it would be to acknowledge that you might be as
| clever as you think you are, but you're probably not as funny as
| you think you are.
| JackFr wrote:
| But to a large extent the appeal of Poirot and Miss Marple is
| the levity they add.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I found that Father Brown from G.K. Chesterton also added a
| lot of levity
|
| > the reader deserves a fighting chance to solve the mystery
| without the author's use of cheap tricks.
|
| though I found he frequently didn't leave much (any?) chance
| for the reader to solve the mystery, though for me the
| mystery and its solution was never really the focus of the
| stories anyway.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Not the GP, but I think there's a difference between a
| leading character who is inherently humorous or says humorous
| things vs the narrator doing it. And in cases where the
| narrative is first person from the perspective of someone in
| the story (mostly famously _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ ),
| it should remain relatively flat and observational rather
| than being puffed up with a lot of that character's thoughts,
| opinions, or personality.
| fenomas wrote:
| I've noticed this - but for me it's not the comedy per se, it's
| that modern authors (particularly in the noir style) want their
| detective to be a constant source of witty comebacks. You feel
| like the other characters are just there to deliver setup
| lines, so the detective can amaze us with his devastating
| zingers.
|
| Ironically, Raymond Chandler - whom I imagine many such modern
| authors are trying to imitate - commented somewhere in his
| letters that the detective should almost never get the
| punchline. He pointed out that it was more effective to have
| the bad guy deliver the zinger, and the detective just take it
| on the chin and shrug it off, leaving the heel unsure whether
| to try to top his own line or just awkwardly make his exit.
| nineplay wrote:
| > The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson,
|
| Watson was not stupid and I wouldn't trust an author who read him
| that way. Matched with
|
| > Thou shalt strive to create a detective who has flaws.
|
| it suggests audiences who must be spoon-fed or they will be lost
| and confused. "The Detective Solves Crimes To Ease The Guilt Over
| His Tragic Loss And The Side Character Has No Backstory So Don't
| Waste Any Mental Space On Him!!"
| lqet wrote:
| This seems like a perfect set of rules to write _dull_ detective
| fiction. Some of the best works I have read (or seen) from this
| genre violate a lot of these rules.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| You have to know the rules to break them effectively. Like, if
| your story is about a new kind of poison, which your reader
| cannot know anything about, awesome. But understand that your
| story is now _about that new poison_ , not about solving the
| murder, because solving the murder is impossible without
| special, in-universe knowledge.
| watwut wrote:
| Good authors did not started by writing hundred formulaic
| stories first. Instead, they tended to seek own way even as
| they learned from predecessors.
|
| I don't like this saying, because in literature and art
| generally it leads to formulaic repetitive stories. If you
| dont break rules before learning them, you will never learn
| to break them. And when it is most common advice there is, we
| get the situation in which you can predict the rest of
| average book or movie after first 10 minutes.
|
| It is much better when authors treat rules as optional
| formulas - follow or not and be aware there is a lot more to
| choose from.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > Good authors did not started by writing hundred formulaic
| stories first.
|
| Maybe not hundreds, but I bet many good authors started by
| writing a few dozen formulaic stories first. Humans learn
| through mimicry, and I don't think storytelling is any
| different.
|
| > If you dont break rules before learning them, you will
| never learn to break them.
|
| If you're good at your craft, you end up learning the rules
| regardless; the only question is how efficient are you at
| doing do? The best way to learn is through mistakes, but
| you can choose to learn from others' mistakes, so you don't
| need to make them yourself.
|
| That's what the "rules" are: things other people have done,
| that didn't work. They aren't absolutes, but they're good
| starting points, and until you have some sort of intuition
| about things, breaking the rules should at least make you
| stop and consider why you're doing so, and if you're doing
| so in a way that will work.
| watwut wrote:
| > I bet many good authors started by writing a few dozen
| formulaic stories first
|
| I don't think this is true based on authors I know. The
| ones I know that started with dozen formulaic stories
| wrote formulaic stories whole their lives. They might
| have been good formulaic stories, but still.
|
| The ones who did not wrote formulaic, were going outside
| formulaic from the beginning.
|
| > Humans learn through mimicry, and I don't think
| storytelling is any different.
|
| Mimicry of formulaic story is exactly same formulaic
| story. Yes, you will learn how to wrote that one formula
| if you go this way.
|
| > The best way to learn is through mistakes, but you can
| choose to learn from others' mistakes, so you don't need
| to make them yourself.
|
| That does not imply you should write few dozen formulaic
| stories before attempting to create something else. You
| can study other writers without writing formulaic
| stories.
| havblue wrote:
| >I. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of
| the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has
| been allowed to follow.
|
| I've often been annoyed at modern police shows like law and order
| that I think fail to introduce the suspects sufficiently. The
| modern formula seems more like one suspect leads to another then
| another then another then the confession. There's seldom any way
| for the viewer to suspect who's actually guilty early on, unlike
| murder she wrote or columbo, so there's no payoff when you find
| out who it was.
| a1o wrote:
| Doesn't Law and Order oftenly introduce the criminal early on?
| It's not about the investigative part, but being able to go
| through the full law enforcement process including the judgment
| part. Law and Order isn't a detective show in my opinion.
| ldjb wrote:
| See also: S.S. Van Dine's Twenty Rules for Writing Detective
| Stories
|
| https://www.openculture.com/2016/02/20-rules-for-writing-det...
| harpersealtako wrote:
| I know this one from the Umineko visual novel series.
| Detectives in the Umineko universe are dimension-hopping
| reality auditors who wield the "rules of detective fiction" as
| rhetorical weapons (and sometimes literal weapons) when jumping
| into stories to fight against witches who are trying to create
| unsolvable mysteries to increase peoples' belief in magic.
| There's one detective who uses Knox's 10 rules, and another who
| uses Van Dine's 20 rules. It's a really fun, really meta story,
| one where the main characters are both participants in the
| story and genre-savvy readers debating who the murderer is
| using trope knowledge.
| hirundo wrote:
| Dective fiction is usually about the process of justice when
| someone breaks a commandment, frequently the sixth, often
| involving seven, eight and nine. I'm looking forward to the meta-
| detective novel in which a critic investigates violations of the
| Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction.
|
| The appropriate punishment might be more suitable to a fantasy
| novel: To sentence the writer live for a time as a character in a
| world built by an even more arbitrary, capricious and inscrutable
| author than Jehovah.
|
| I'd read that.
| dekhn wrote:
| It's interesting to think of Big Lebowski as a detective movie
| and compare it to the rules that are in this including the
| Chinaman.
|
| "Walter Sobchak: What the f** are you talking about? The chinaman
| is not the issue here, dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in
| the sand, dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, dude,
| chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American,
| please."
| inasio wrote:
| One of my favorite detective stories is Dead yellow women, by
| Dashiell Hammett. Includes a crazy chase through hidden tunnels
| in San Francisco's (early 1900s, opium dens, etc) Chinatown.
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