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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

#41

Post by the_af »

open-source-ux wrote: post #25

The 'police procedural' crime drama has become very popular on British TV in recent years. There's probably too of much it to be honest. The most popular is a BBC series called Line of Duty about corruption in the police force ("bent coppers"). There are seven series (seasons) so far and the plots are far-fetched but entertaining. Every episode features police interviews or interrogations which make up much of the dr…

I absolutely adore Line of Duty. I like how everyone in the team of protagonists is not entirely clean, though not estirely bad either.

Of course the prime example and my favorite cop TV show ever is The Shield. You are rooting for the bad guys, though you gradually realize just how bad they are as the series progresses, and eventually you become horrified and want their punishment to finally arrive... but still, every time they evade it you (I) find myself cheering. Horrifying.

Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction

#42

Post by the_af »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
open-source-ux wrote: post #25

The 'police procedural' crime drama has become very popular on British TV in recent years. There's probably too of much it to be honest. The most popular is a BBC series called Line of Duty about corruption in the police force ("bent coppers"). There are seven series (seasons) so far and the plots are far-fetched but entertaining. Every episode features police interviews or interrogations which make up much of the dr…

Line Of Duty is absolutely excellent and a cut above regular police procedura, but it bends the rules slightly: there are times when the first the audience is made aware of a piece of evidence is when it appears in the interview scenes. Magnifies the impact of the drama but at the expense of it not being even theoretically possible for the viewer to be ahead of the detectives.

One thing I find refreshing of British cop shows is how things that are trivial in US shows just aren't possible.

Neither cops nor criminals go guns blazing everywhere, simply because having access to a gun is a big deal. An entire season of Line of Duty is about this.

Cops in threatening situations cannot simply pull a gun out of the blue. This forces scriptwriters to become a bit more creative about problem resolution.

Whenever you're tired of US cop shows, try a British show!

Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction

#43

Post by kgwgk »

noahbrier wrote: post #39
kgwgk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that’s a reference to a movie called Inspector Dupin How so? The link goes to https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/edgar-allan-poe-in... > which is based on the book What book? It's based on the work of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jörg_Bong By the way, he didn't even get Edgar Allan Poe's name right.

You're right, those are both on me. I put the link in and will fix that and spelling. (I run Why is this interesting? and edited the piece.)

Apart from the misspelling correction, I don't see how the change is an improvement.

    Edgar Allan Poe invented the murder mystery genre we know today 
    with Inspector Dupin, a purveyor of “ratiocination,” or intensive reasoning
    — who was introduced to the world in The Murders on the Rue Morgue.
Previously the link [Inspector Dupin] was about Edgar Allan Poe's character "Not-An-Inspector Dupin" who was introduced to the world in The Murders on the Rue Morgue.

Now the link is about the TV movie "Inspector Dupin" which is based on German novels published in the last decade and unrelated to The Murders on the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe or the invention of the murder mystery genre we know today.

Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction

#44

Post by noahbrier »

kgwgk wrote: post #43
noahbrier wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, those are both on me. I put the link in and will fix that and spelling. (I run Why is this interesting? and edited the piece.)

Apart from the misspelling correction, I don't see how the change is an improvement. Edgar Allan Poe invented the murder mystery genre we know today with Inspector Dupin, a purveyor of “ratiocination,” or intensive reasoning — who was introduced to the world in The Murders on the Rue Morgue. Previously the link [Inspector Dupin] was about Edgar Allan Poe's character "Not-An-Inspector Dupin" who was introduced to the…

Ok, actually fixed now. Just got rid of inspector and changed to the proper name. Thanks.

Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction

#45

Post by saghm »

IgorPartola wrote: post #19
saghm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Okay, but it doesn't seem obvious to me why "detective story" necessarily implies "story about competition within a social class". If I read a blog post titled "20 rules for making pasta-based dishes", and one…

It seems like there was a decent amount of context missing here which leads to this ambiguity. Reading the original I can see it a couple of different ways but it seems to me that what is implied is that there was a genre of story in which the villain was always Chinese and that genre was full of shitty books that relied on racist cliches rather than clever plots or good writing. The advice then is to not follow down…

I was responding to the comment about the rules that the person who did the crime couldn't be a butlet/maid/etc., not the rule you mention, which is an entirely different can of worms

Re: Father Knox’s decalogue: the ten rules of Golden Age detective fiction

#46

Post by GuB-42 »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #22

To me, one reason that Knox's Decalogue is interesting is that it's venerable enough for there to be stories that deliberately play with it. I'm particularly aware of the visual novels Virtue's Last Reward (which arguably makes a point of violating the letter of each of the rules while preserving their underlying intent) and Umineko When They Cry (which is hard to explain without blatant spoilers except to say that t…

I was about to mention Umineko, I mean, there is even a character named Knox, and it is not a coincidence. As for what it is, it is strongly inspired by Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" but it ends up questioning the nature of reality.

There is an anime but it doesn't do the visual novel justice. I don't consider the adaptation that bad, it is just that the story is so twisted and complex that it is simply impossible to fit into 26 episodes.

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