Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
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Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
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Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#2If you're an Agatha Christie fan, I highly recommend the 2019 "Knives Out" movie. Writer/Director Rian Johnson is a fan, and the movie does it justice.
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#3Surprised there is no mention of Dashiell Hammett, a contemporary of Christie's. He wrote The Maltese Falcon in 1930, introducing the world to Sam Spade, an interesting contrast to Hercule Poirot. The interwar period certainly was the golden age of detective and mystery novels, whether they were more in line with the Christie formula or followed a more hard-boiled, American style.
I wonder to what degree the novels of that period informed the more paranoid, Cold War-era novels and films after WWII. John le Carré and Ian Fleming obviously come to mind, but Orson Welles's The Third Man and Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity are also great explorations of the postwar noir genre.
I'm sure there are essays about how it's all connected, and how it can probably be traced back to early mysteries like Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, but I haven't found anything yet that charts the history of the genre and explains the relative stability of its tropes and motifs over time.
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#4Surprised there is no mention of Dashiell Hammett, a contemporary of Christie's. He wrote The Maltese Falcon in 1930, introducing the world to Sam Spade, an interesting contrast to Hercule Poirot. The interwar period certainly was the golden age of detective and mystery novels, whether they were more in line with the Christie formula or followed a more hard-boiled, American style. I wonder to what degree the novels o…
Why would it mention Dashiell Hammett? It is an article about Golden Age detective fiction rules, not some overview of all the good detective fiction authors.
Anyway, Hammett wasn't even a Golden Age author, as Chandler's famous essay makes abundantly clear.
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#5Surprised there is no mention of Dashiell Hammett, a contemporary of Christie's. He wrote The Maltese Falcon in 1930, introducing the world to Sam Spade, an interesting contrast to Hercule Poirot. The interwar period certainly was the golden age of detective and mystery novels, whether they were more in line with the Christie formula or followed a more hard-boiled, American style. I wonder to what degree the novels o…
> Surprised there is no mention of Dashiell Hammett, a contemporary of Christie's. He wrote The Maltese Falcon in 1930, introducing the world to Sam Spade
I think it's because Dashiell Hammett wrote in a different genre. Rather than detective fiction, he wrote in the hardboiled or noir style, totally unlike Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle or other authors of what we associate with "detective/whodunnit fiction". His stories are not that much about the mystery (contrast them with Christie's, which are all about the mystery, and without which they would not be interesting to read), but about the rough and cynical detective making a living in an uncaring world, where corruption rules and the law is similarly dirty and suspect. Also they smoke a lot and wear hats!
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#6Just a note about rule #5… in an effort to not use an offensive term for asian immigrants the author has possibly inverted the meaning of the rule:
5. No racial stereotypes. – to a 21st century reader implies that an author will not use racial stereotypes, that the characters can be their own individuals regardless of their race. In the original it means that there will be no asian immigrants in the story, and Knox further clarified that he thought their presence spoils a good story.
You can read more at: https://agathachristie.fandom.com/wiki/The_“Rules”_of_Detect...
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⟦addendum⟧
The page I link above also contains a similar list of "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" by S. S. Van Dine. He avoids any racists rules, but has a "classist" rule that speaks to America in the 1920s as seen by avant-garde art critic…
Servants – such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like – must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. It is unsatisfactory, and makes the reader feel that his time has been wasted. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person – one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion; for if the crime was the sordid work of a menial, the author would have had no business to embalm it in book-form.
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#7If you're an Agatha Christie fan, I highly recommend the 2019 "Knives Out" movie. Writer/Director Rian Johnson is a fan, and the movie does it justice.
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Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#8Have recently discovered the Honkaku novels from Japan, which were part of a revival of golden age, "fair play" detective fiction. I recommend starting with The Honjin Murders. Have really enjoyed them as it's the first time after Christie that I've discovered something close to it.
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#9Just a note about rule #5… in an effort to not use an offensive term for asian immigrants the author has possibly inverted the meaning of the rule: 5. No racial stereotypes. – to a 21st century reader implies that an author will not use racial stereotypes, that the characters can be their own individuals regardless of their race. In the original it means that there will be no asian immigrants in the story, and Knox f…
I also clicked through to read the original, had a different interpretation of the use of that rule. It seems to me directed at focusing attention on competition within a social class rather than outside it.
These stories are about members of the same group competing, not about in vs out-group competition.
i.e. imagine a school mystery: "the case of the stolen grade book" with culprit "random stranger who walked onto school grounds". The forbiddenness of such a solution is not racism/classism/ageism, but just that they're not part of the same social milieu of students, teachers, and parents. Them showing up makes all the fraught studentstudent, studentteacher interactions meaningless. Such a culprit's has different freedoms, social restrictions, and resources are different than the characters. If the culprit were another teacher with freedom to move, you get interesting contrast to students lack of mobility (needing hall passes to do their investigations). The mechanics of the story with an in-group culprit force readers to think about the social relations gaps they personally see in their own lives.
The political implications of this are inconclusive to me - it avoids "othering" traditionally outside groups (to the authors of these books) and portraying them as criminals - but it does this by ignoring their participation in society and making them vanish.
Culprit selection is difficult; compare Colombo, who has similar rules: "the culprit is nearly always from the upper class" - is this a racist/classist policy or not?
Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction
#10The rule "no racial stereotypes" was, in the original
> No Chinaman must figure in the story. (The "No Chinaman rule" was a reaction to, and criticism of, racial cliches prevalent in 1920s English writing. Knox explained, "I see no reason in the nature of things why a Chinaman should spoil a detective story. But as a matter of fact, if you are turning over the pages of an unknown romance in a bookstore, and come across some mention of the narrow, slit-like eyes of Chin Loo, avoid that story; it is bad.")
I quote it not to endorse it, but for a better feel for how they thought