Preliminary Survey

Your interest (or lack of it!) in mysteries or detective fiction?

Detection you enjoyed or despised in various media: 

In the movies:

On television:

In books/magazines:

Favorite mystery authors:

Favorite sleuths:

History of Detective Fiction

Das Fräulein von Scuderi", an 1819 short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which Mlle de Scudery establishes the innocence of the police's favorite suspect in the murder of a jeweller, is sometimes cited as the first detective story and a direct influence on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".[10] Also suggested as a possible influence on Poe is ‘The Secret Cell’, a short story published in September 1837 by William Evans Burton, describing how a London policeman solves the mystery of a kidnapped girl. Burton’s fictional detective relies on practical methods - dogged legwork, knowledge of the underworld and undercover surveillance - rather than brilliance of imagination or intellect, but it has been suggested this story may have been known to Poe, who in 1839 worked for Burton.[11] However, true detective fiction is more often considered in the English-speaking world to have begun in 1841 with the publication of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" itself,[8] featuring "the first fictional detective, the eccentric and brilliant C. Auguste Dupin". Poe devised a "plot formula that's been successful ever since, give or take a few shifting variables."[12] Poe followed with further Auguste Dupin tales: "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" in 1843 and "The Purloined Letter" in 1845.

Poe referred to his stories as "tales of ratiocination".[8] In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. "Early detective stories tended to follow an investigating protagonist from the first scene to the last, making the unraveling a practical rather than emotional matter."[12] "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" is particularly interesting because it is a barely fictionalized account based on Poe's theory of what happened to the real-life Mary Cecilia Rogers.

Émile Gaboriau was a pioneer of the detective fiction genre in France. In Monsieur Lecoq (1868), the title character is adept at disguise, a key characteristic of detectives.[13] Gaboriau's writing is also considered to contain the first example of a detective minutely examining a crime scene for clues.[14]

Another early example of a whodunit is a subplot in the novel Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens. The conniving lawyer Tulkinghorn is killed in his office late one night, and the crime is investigated by Inspector Bucket of the Metropolitan police force. Numerous characters appeared on the staircase leading to Tulkinghorn's office that night, some of them in disguise, and Inspector Bucket must penetrate these mysteries to identify the murderer.

Dickens's protégé, Wilkie Collins (1824–1889)—sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of English detective fiction"—is credited with the first great mystery novel, The Woman in White. T. S. Eliot called Collins's novel The Moonstone (1868) "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels... in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe",[15] and Dorothy L. Sayers called it "probably the very finest detective story ever written".[16] The Moonstone contains a number of ideas that have established in the genre several classic features of the 20th century detective story:

• English country house robbery

• An "inside job"

• red herrings
• A celebrated, skilled, professional investigator
• Bungling local constabulary
• Detective inquiries
• Large number of false suspects
• The "least likely suspect"
• A rudimentary "locked room" murder
• A reconstruction of the crime
• A final twist in the plot

Although The Moonstone is usually seen as the first detective novel, a number of critics suggest that the lesser known Notting Hill Mystery (1862–63), written by the pseudonymous "Charles Felix", preceded it by a number of years and first used techniques that would come to define the genre.[17][18] In 1952, William Buckler identified the author of the novel as Charles Warren Adams and in 2011 American investigator Paul Collins found a number of lines of evidence that confirmed Buckler's initial claim.[17][19]

In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, the most famous of all fictional detectives. Although Sherlock Holmes is not the original fiction detective (he was influenced by Poe's Dupin and Gaboriau's Lecoq), his name has become a byword for the part. Conan Doyle stated that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.[20] A brilliant London-based "consulting detective" residing at 221B Baker Street, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and is renowned for his skillful use of astuteobservation, deductive reasoning, and forensic skills to solve difficult cases. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, and all but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend, assistant, and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson

Detective fiction

Main article: Detective fiction

• The whodunit The most common form of detective fiction. It features a complex, plot-driven story in which the reader is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed at the end of the book.

• Locked room mystery: A specialized kind of a whodunit in which the crime is committed under apparently impossible circumstances, such as a locked room in which no intruder could have entered or left.
• Cozy: A subgenre of detective fiction in which sex, profanity or violence are downplayed or treated humorously.

Later and contemporary contributions to the whodunit

• The historical whodunit is also a sub-genre of historical fiction. The setting of the story and the crime has some historical significance.
• The inverted detective story, also known as the "howcatchem." The commission of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator is revealed to the reader first, then the rest of the story describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery.
• The American hard-boiled school. Distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex, the sleuth usually also confronts danger and engages in violence.
• The police procedural: The detective is a member of the police, and thus the activities of a police force are usually convincingly depicted.
• The  legal thriller: The major characters are instead lawyers and their employees, and they become involved in proving their cases.
• The spy novel: The major characters are instead  spies, usually working for an  intelligence agency.

• Caper stories and the criminal novel: Stories told from the point of view of the criminals.

• The psychological suspense novel: This specific sub-genre of the  thriller genre also incorporates elements from detective fiction, as the protagonist must solve the mystery of the psychological conflict presented in these types of stories.