Middle Golden Age (1926-1939)

To most people, the period I am now about to discuss is the one and only Golden Age. A time of eccentric detectives and baffling mysteries when the genre reached unparallelled heights of virtuosity and ingeniosity. A time when locked-room murders and dying messages were business as usual and the police would routinely turn to gifted and wealthy amateurs to solve the most complicated cases. A time when the game element of the genre was emphasized with many books including challenges to the reader and rules being set out to prohibit cheap tricks. And yet a closer look at the period paints a more complex picture, one that is rife with contradiction and dissension; it also helps to correct some enduring misconceptions.

 

Middle Golden Age for the most part continued, amplified and institutionalized the changes initiated in the previous period; it also added a major one of its own. Early proponents of fair-play valued it on both aesthetical and ethical grounds; to hide major clues from the reader ruined the story's overall effect and was an appalling thing to do. Their successors, on the other hand, objected to not playing fair because it was cheating. The detective story, in short, had become a game, a "recreation of noble minds" and games need rules. Mgr. Knox in Britain and S.S. Van Dine in America were happy to oblige. While the former was chiefly concerned with purging the genre of antediluvian clichés that still showed up now and then, the latter's commandments amounted to a bill of divorce from standard fiction.

 

Practice differed sensibly from theory, however. Middle Age detective fiction for all its challenges to the reader and assertions of fair-play was actually more akin to prestidigitation than cluedo. The author presented the reader with a baffling problem and - ideally - gave him all of the clues, yet at the same time used his best smoke and mirrors to make sure he couldn't make sense of the evidence, revealing in the end the unsuspected truth to general bafflement then thunderous applause including from the defeated reader. Pace Van Dine, the closer equivalent to a detective story was not a ball game or a cross-word puzzle but a magician pulling a rabbit off his hat.

 

One might think - and it has often been told - that this conception of the detective story as well as the existence of a firm corpus of "laws" resulted into standardization - authors writing much like the other, books so alike that reading one spared one reading the rest. Another frequent criticism is that by focusing on the plot and viewing their books as mere games, authors ignored or at least neglected characterization, "realism" and social comment. Both criticisms are correct to an extent, and wrong on the whole. The period admittedly had its share of formulaic writing of no more literary merit than a sudoku problem but it was not the end of the story. Contrary to popular wisdom, playing "the grandest game in the world" was not contradictory with literary ambition (Sayers, Wade) genre-bending (Carr) parody (Innes) or wild imagination (Mitchell) Also contrary to accepted wisdom, whodunit is not the only genre thriving in the period. Middle Golden Age also sees the dawn of hardboiled (Hammett) and noir (Cain) fiction as well as of the crime novel (Francis Iles, Richard Hull, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes) whereas the transmutation of HIBK into suspense is underway with Ethel Lina White in Britain and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding in the US.

At the core of Middle Golden Age writing was the triumphalist notion that crime was only a temporary disruption in the immutable order of things and that reason would always prevail. This notion suffered repeated blows in the Thirties as totalitarian regimes took hold of Europe and war became increasingly probable. Detective fiction by the end of the period is more prosperous and fertile than ever, but the seeds of doubt have been sown with Berkeley and Sayers defecting and newcomers displaying a more skeptical attitude to the rules of the genre as well as its ethos.

As with the former period, Middle Golden Age closes with a Christie book, this time And Then They Were None which fittingly appeared in 1939. This book, one of its author's masterpieces, combines the extreme cleverness in plotting which is typical of the genre and the era with a gloomy worldview that is much less so: No one on Indian Island is innocent and there is no Poirot, Holmes or Wimsey in sight to rescue the inhabitants from their fate and restore order in the end. The jolly days of Mayhem Parva were gone; now detective fiction must deal with the sound and fury of a definetely disordered world. How it would an whether it could is what we'll see in the next and final instalment in this series.

Only Ten?

Rob Kitchin has a challenge for classic mystery aficionados:

Imagine a reader new to crime fiction and wanting an education in the classics. Or consider a seasoned crime fiction reader who’s barely read a crime novel published prior to 1970. Well I’m that latter reader. I’ve read several hundred crime novels but nearly all of them are from the contemporary period. This is the year I intend to right that by reading some of the crime fiction canon. What I need though is a curriculum - a list of ten must-read crime fiction classics.And this is where I need some help. So to that end I’m setting up a relatively straightforward challenge, one that doesn't even require any reading. The challenge is to set a ten book, pre-1970, crime fiction curriculum and to either post the list on your own blog and send me the link or post the list in a comment to this post by January 31st. I’ll then compile a curriculum based on the most popular choices (and provide link-backs to posts). Ideally, the selection of books needs to try and capture different crime fiction sub-genres and styles.

Needless to say, I have a plenty of suggestions, but Rob wants only ten books. All of those I have in mind have an equal claim to greatness and importance and choosing one rather than another is a pretty painful experience, but that's what challenges are about. So here is my not-so-final round-up of the ten mysteries you should read before I change my mind again; it is as varied as could be given my admittedly biased tastes, but no one I think will waste his/her time checking these out.

John Dickson Carr, The Emperor's Snuff-Box - His most atypical work in many respects - no impossible crime, no hint of the supernatural and no Fell/Merrivale - but a towering achievement all the same for its deceptively simple plot and excellent characterization (go read it and tell me Carr had no sense of character...)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown - Absolute perfection. Period.

Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs - Not her most-often cited book, but the one where she's really at the height of her powers as both a plotting genius and a writer.

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone - If you are to read only one detective novel in your life, be it this one (or The Hound of the Baskervilles)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles - If you are to read only one detective novel in your life, be it this one (or The Moonstone)

Stanley Ellin, The Eighth Circle - A private eye novel with a difference by one of the greatest short-story writers ever.

Cyril Hare, An English Murder - A dirge for a society, a class-system and a whole genre; the mystery equivalent of Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game.

Charlotte Jay, Beat Not the Bones - A thriller like no other: Joseph Conrad meets Cornell Woolrich.

Margaret Millar, A Stranger In My Grave - Her whole output would deserve inclusion here; I'm picking this one in particular because of its superb title and the character of Steve Pinata which sadly never reappeared again.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? - One of the most brilliant debuts in the history of the genre, and the best was yet to come.

Readers of this blog are strongly encouraged to submit their own "classics" in the comment section.

(via Petrona)

Romancing the (Moon)Stone

The Moonstone is one of my personal candidates for the title of best mystery novel ever written (other nominees include The Hound of the Baskervilles, Gaboriau's Le Crime d'Orcival or J.D. Carr's The Three Coffins among many, many others) and this review sums up what makes this book so great very well.

Believe it or not, it remained on my shelves for ten years before I actually got around to read it - I was negatively impressed by the length of the book as well as by his age; surely its only interest was of a historical kind. And then one day I finally opened it, read the first three pages and I was hooked. I couldn't put it down and the only disappointment I felt when finally closing the book was that it was already over.

Pace Barzun, T.S. Eliot had every right to label this book "the [...] greatest of English detective novels" (he also thought it was the first, but was wrong on this count as primogeniture belongs to Charles Felix's obscure The Notting Hill Mystery) as everything about this book is perfect or near-perfect from the masterful construction to the equally wonderful characterization. It is also strikingly modern, absolutely not the period piece you might expect. One century and a half ago, the detective novel had already taken on most of its definitive shape and to see it emerge before one's eyes is but one of the book's many pleasures.

Now talking about it makes me feel like reading it again. A good way to start a new decade, isn't it?

2010

I wish all readers of this blog a happy new year. May it bring you all of the good and none of the bad.

 

 

Golden Age, Delayed

Recurring computer problems and even more recurring bouts of writer's block mean, I guess to no one's surprise, that I won't meet the announced deadline of December, 31 for the publication of the articles on Middle and Late Golden Age. I'm currently in the middle of Middle, which should hopefully appear somewhere in January.

 

I sincerely apologize to my readers for this delay.

High Golden Age (1920-1926)

There are at least two reasons to choose 1920 as the beginning of Golden Age. The first and more obvious is that it saw the first published efforts of two of the giants of the period, namely Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles) and F.W. Crofts (The Cask) The second is that it follows one of the dreariest periods in the history of the genre. The Detective Story had been one of the unsung casualties of the Great War, all but disappearing from the literary landscape during the conflict. Not only does 1920 herald a new era but it also marks the rebirth of the genre, a new start - but not a start from scratch. Authors from the previous era were still there and picked up where they had left before the war while newcomers progressively rejuvenated a formula that had been mostly left unquestioned for the last forty years; the ancient merged into the modern. The first six years of the new era is a period of transition, which we'll call "High Golden Age" from now on, and it's revealing of the stature of the First Lady of Crime that it opens and closes with a Christie book.

To a 2009 reader Styles looks astonishingly modern whereas The Cask is a thing of the past  if an extremely enjoyable one, and he may find hard to believe they were published the same year. Styles's elaborate architecture and misdirection are striking announcements of things to come; The Cask on the other hand harks back to pre-WW1, even pre-holmesian (Gaboriau's influence is sensible throughout) detective fiction with its emphasis on detection rather than deception. Still, they are both transition works, at the crossroads of two eras. The Hercule Poirot of Styles, for instance, is not quite the one most readers are familiar with. He has the same appearance, most of the same personality traits, but he is a comparatively more "physical" sleuth and pays a greater attention to material clues, in line with detective mores of the time when the book was written (1916). Conversely, the complex criminal scheme and alibi-breaking of The Cask set it apart from its models' simpler, more straightforward narratives. So none of these books is entirely modern, but none is entirely "primitive" either. It is a fair summary and assessment of the whole period.

 

Early detective fiction but for a few exceptions was short, relatively linear (expose of the problem - investigation - solution) and cared little for whodunit, placing the emphasis instead on the "how" and "why" of the case. Astonishing as it may seem to a modern reader, murder was not the capital offence it would later become; sleuths might just as well deal with thefts, disappearances, blackmail or any insolit chain of events. But the most striking difference from later mystery fiction was with regard to the place and role of the reader. Since detective stories were thought of as exercises in logic, the thrill of the game was to be found in the puzzle and the detective's mental prowess; the reader was to be a spectator, not a player, let alone a partner. Fair-play was thus scant, and misdirection almost non-existent.

 

High Golden Age writing shares some of the previous era's characteristics: whodunit was still regarded by most as a secondary issue and detectives were still expected to make spectacular deductions based on physical evidence or arcane knowledge. What changed is that authors set to write detective novels rather than stories, and longer works require meatier content: problems became more "spectacular" while plots got more complex and twistier. Detectives too "evolved", getting increasingly "ideosyncrastic" personalities. The genre as a whole shifted slowly away from the previous era's nominal realism to a more avowedly "stylized" approach.

 

The relationship between the author and the reader underwent some changes as well. No longer was the latter expected to just sit and marvel, starry-eyed, at the master sleuth's exploits. R. Austin Freeman insists in his Art of the Detective Story that he must be given the same chances as the detective to solve the cas, and no clues must be hidden from him:

 

This failure of the reader to perceive the evidential value of facts is the foundation on which detective fiction is built. It may generally be taken that the author may exhibit his facts fearlessly provided only that he exhibits them separately and unconnected. And the more boldly he displays the data, the greater will be the intellectual interest of the story. For the tacit understanding of the author with the reader is that the problem is susceptible of solution by the latter by reasoning from the facts given; and such solution should be actually possible. Then the data should be produced as early in the story as is practicable. The reader should have a body of evidence to consider while the tale is telling. The production of a leading fact near the end of the book is unfair to the reader, while the introduction of capital evidence — such as that of an eye-witness — at the extreme end is radically bad technique, amounting to a breach of the implied covenant with the reader.

 

This is the stone on which the concept of "fair play", a cornerstone of Golden Age and later detective/mystery fiction, would be built. Freeman unlike Van Dine didn''t regard the genre as a simple mind-game and neither did he belittle "literary" endornments such as character or atmosphere. He believed, on the other hand, that detective stories must be somewhat "interactive". Chesterton in the past had already expressed similar views, but they had remained a dead letter. Now those ideas were finally catching on, but old habits die hard. Most "Ancestors" as well as some newcomers kept using the good old tricks and would still do for a long time.

This formative period, as I've written earlier, ends in 1926 with another Christie novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This book, possibly the most famous detective story of all time and also one of the most controversial at the time of its publication because of the trick it played on readers, put its author definetely on the map. Perfecting the approach initiated in Styles six years earlier, Christie makes her novel a trap - her aim is not to demonstrate, to solve, but to deceive. Critics and colleagues alike faulted her for not playing fair - and this, too, was something new. Neither Van Dine (whose Benson Murder Case was published the same year) or Knox had yet written their "commandments" but the existence and necessity of rules was being increasingly accepted. Another period, the one most of us associate with "Golden Age", was about to begin.

The Age Before Golden Age

Henrique Valle, commenting on my initial post, asked an important question:

 

"Are Trent´s Last Case and the earlier Chesterton, Mason (of At The Villa Rose fame!), Freeman and Philpotts works, among others, outside the Golden Age?"

 

This raises once again the definition problems I highlighted in my article. Is Golden Age a period, a style, or both?

 

If we choose the first option and stick to the commonly accepted chronology (Golden Age beginning somewhere in the early Twenties and ending either before or shortly after WW2) then the issue looks settled once and for all: Trent's Last Case, being published in 1913 and probably written sooner, is not part of the Golden Age and neither are works by Chesterton, Mason, Freeman and others that were published prior to the Great War.

 

Things are less clear by the second option, as many of these works exhibit features associated with GA-style detective fiction and, indeed, exerted a decisive influence on it. As to the third option - regarding Golden Age as a certain period dominated by a certain model of detective stories - it leaves our candidates out of the picture once again since neither Trent's Last Case or The Eye of Osiris for instance are typical products of their era; one of the reasons of their enduring appeal is how ahead they were of their time.

 

Now even these apparently firm answers generate further interrogations: If it's not yet Golden Age, what is it then? How do we call the period that preceded, and led to, proper Golden Age?

 

Some scholars including Julian Symons have called it "the first Golden Age" and there is justification for this. The thirty or so years between the first publication of A Study in Scarlet and the outset of the World War I saw the genre coming to maturity - as I've written elsewhere, all of mystery fiction as we know it was either in germ or full-blown by the early 1910s - as well as conquering a vast audience. Most of all, it was marked by some of the earliest and most lasting triumphs of the genre - its relative novelty as well as the absence of firm rules (soon to be remedied to, alas) boosted authors' creativity. That it most often manifested in the guise of short stories rather than novels, something we've lost the habit of, makes it all the more impressive.

 

To call such a period a Golden Age would certainly not be an exaggeration, but it is somewhat confusing in my view, especially if you think like I do that GA in its traditional acception is already a plural entity. If we start numbering Golden Ages like we do with World Wars and French Republics we end up emptying the whole notion. Why not a third or a fourth Golden Age? Is not each period a Golden Age of sorts? Also, I like the that when I'm talking about GA in the broadest sense, I don't need to specify which one I'm referring to. It makes discussion and debate much easier. Silver Age then? This might do, but the appellation might apply just well to the period immediately following the standard GA and preceding the thriller boom of the early Sixties...

 

I welcome any suggestion.