There's a neat little blog post looking at the reasons why murder mysteries got super popular about a quarter of the way into the twentieth century. The blogger, Brad, points out that literature that sort of reduces murder and guilt to the level of puzzle has a certain appeal to people insecure about survival. And yes, there are parallels.
As to the books he recommends, a huge portion of them I haven't read as of yet. Some of them I can vouch for. Others I'm curious about.
As to the books he recommends, a huge portion of them I haven't read as of yet. Some of them I can vouch for. Others I'm curious about.
2 comments:
While I see some relevance in his point about murder mysteries having appeal for people concerned about their survival I don't think that's the essential reality behind their gain in popularity in those years. The genre began in the 1900s with Doyle, Poe and Collins in the era that police forces were being instituted in major cities. People enjoy puzzles. As many more of them became literate and, other than radio, there wasn't much home entertainment in the early part of the 20th century pulp magazines and books became increasingly popular allowing a good living for the writers - some of whom were very good as we well know. Pulp eventually lost its appeal when tv took over as major entertainment, but the mystery story hasn't ever lost its appeal.
I've read a a fair few of the novelists he mentioned. Some of the others, like the shin honkaku, may well be worth checking out.
Nice little blog post you discovered.
It's hard to tell. The world not going through the Great War - and the Spanish flu epidemic that resulted from it - is about as big a counterfactual as you can get. Of course Doyle did have a few predecessors like Poe and Collins. There are also a few contemporaries who aren't nearly as well remembered, like Arthur Morrison and Ernest Bramah. Chesterton started writing the Father Brown stories before the war. So the mystery genre wouldn't have been entirely forgotten. But it's quite possible that the kind of overwhelming carnage that especially the British underwent in the war made a more orderly and accountable kind of violence seem more appealing by comparison. I also think there's a natural curiosity about puzzles, and I certainly have it. So how each factors in is a matter for debate.
He's a good blogger, one of a few I've found associated with the topic of crime fiction. A number of them are confirmed bachelors, which is curious to me. I never made the association when I started reading mysteries, but it sort of makes sense.
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