How to rite Killer Fiction Read Online Free Page B
Author: Carolyn Wheat
a gimmick. If talking cats (Carole Nelson Douglas, Rita Mae Brown) aren't solving crimes, then cooks who provide the reader with recipes do the job (Diane Mott Davidson, Jerri-lyn Farmer). Herbalist-detectives (Susan Wittig Albert) give advice on how to dry and use oregano, while crossword puzzle mysteries (Parnell Hall) provide double the pleasure for the word addict. Some of the strictest rules of the old school are broken by authors using ghosts (Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity's Death) and psychics (Martha Lawrence's Elizabeth Chase series) as detectives.
The trick is not to allow the gimmick to replace a solid mystery core. The culinary detective must not only cook, she must detect. The psychic detective must do more than just wait for inspiration from the beyond.
The "Dark Cozy"
The classic whodunit has been called a comedy of manners, but in
America, broader social commentary has been part of the genre ever since Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, the first book ever to use fingerprints as a mode of detection (well before their use crept into real-life police work). Today's traditional mysteries go deeper than the Golden Age writers ever thought about going and today's writers use the form to explore social and personal problems.
Nancy Pickard deals with mental illness in I.0.U. Margaret Maron examines the bitter heritage of Southern racism in Home Fires. Minette Walters ( The Ice House) delves deeply into the psychological torment beneath placid middle-class facades.
It may even seem that the traditional lines have blurred. There are cozies that bite and private eyes who cry.
The American Hard-Boiled Detective Story
If Agatha Christie's St. Mary Mead is "the great good place," as Auden insists, then the American urban landscape constitutes "the great wrong place." This is the San Francisco of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, the Florida of Elmore Leonard, the New York of Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder.
In this world, murder is not an aberration. Order didn't exist before this particular victim was killed, and it's not going to exist after the killer is caught. Justice isn't really possible; the most you can get is "some justice."
"It's Chinatown, Jake," Gittes's cop pal reminds him at the end of Chinatown, when it's clear that the villain will get away with his crimes, and the point is that it's all Chinatown. In this world, the cops aren't amiable bunglers; they're corrupt and actively hostile to any truth that could upset the rotten apple cart. Even if the killer is hauled away in handcuffs or blown away by a well-aimed .44, the idyllic, peaceful, orderly world represented by the English village is very, very far away.
This world demands a different detective from the cerebral, scientific Great Detective. An investigator going head-to-head with a villain this violent had better be able to use violence himself if necessary. The scientific method isn't much use if the evidence will never see the inside of a courtroom because the cops are corrupt and won't arrest anyone with too much power. Other qualities are called for in this type of mystery, and the hard-boiled detective embodies those traits.
Yes, I'm going to quote Chandler. Here it comes: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." That phrase lies at the heart of the American hard-boiled tradition, and it's as alive in Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins as it ever was in the old Black Mask days.
Tough private eyes started out as white American males. Women were faithful, warmhearted secretaries, long-suffering girlfriends, and red-lipsticked femmes fatales. Nonwhite males and females appeared as walk-on characters at best. Today's shamuses come in both genders and all races. The great wrong place is no longer just the American city; a sense that officialdom can be bought pervades the world. Justice is hard to come by,
The trick is not to allow the gimmick to replace a solid mystery core. The culinary detective must not only cook, she must detect. The psychic detective must do more than just wait for inspiration from the beyond.
The "Dark Cozy"
The classic whodunit has been called a comedy of manners, but in
America, broader social commentary has been part of the genre ever since Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, the first book ever to use fingerprints as a mode of detection (well before their use crept into real-life police work). Today's traditional mysteries go deeper than the Golden Age writers ever thought about going and today's writers use the form to explore social and personal problems.
Nancy Pickard deals with mental illness in I.0.U. Margaret Maron examines the bitter heritage of Southern racism in Home Fires. Minette Walters ( The Ice House) delves deeply into the psychological torment beneath placid middle-class facades.
It may even seem that the traditional lines have blurred. There are cozies that bite and private eyes who cry.
The American Hard-Boiled Detective Story
If Agatha Christie's St. Mary Mead is "the great good place," as Auden insists, then the American urban landscape constitutes "the great wrong place." This is the San Francisco of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, the Florida of Elmore Leonard, the New York of Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder.
In this world, murder is not an aberration. Order didn't exist before this particular victim was killed, and it's not going to exist after the killer is caught. Justice isn't really possible; the most you can get is "some justice."
"It's Chinatown, Jake," Gittes's cop pal reminds him at the end of Chinatown, when it's clear that the villain will get away with his crimes, and the point is that it's all Chinatown. In this world, the cops aren't amiable bunglers; they're corrupt and actively hostile to any truth that could upset the rotten apple cart. Even if the killer is hauled away in handcuffs or blown away by a well-aimed .44, the idyllic, peaceful, orderly world represented by the English village is very, very far away.
This world demands a different detective from the cerebral, scientific Great Detective. An investigator going head-to-head with a villain this violent had better be able to use violence himself if necessary. The scientific method isn't much use if the evidence will never see the inside of a courtroom because the cops are corrupt and won't arrest anyone with too much power. Other qualities are called for in this type of mystery, and the hard-boiled detective embodies those traits.
Yes, I'm going to quote Chandler. Here it comes: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." That phrase lies at the heart of the American hard-boiled tradition, and it's as alive in Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins as it ever was in the old Black Mask days.
Tough private eyes started out as white American males. Women were faithful, warmhearted secretaries, long-suffering girlfriends, and red-lipsticked femmes fatales. Nonwhite males and females appeared as walk-on characters at best. Today's shamuses come in both genders and all races. The great wrong place is no longer just the American city; a sense that officialdom can be bought pervades the world. Justice is hard to come by,
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