Conventions of the Genre
The next step, and next objective, of this unit will be to introduce a discourse on the standard conventions/commandments of detective fiction as laid out by the Roman Catholic priest Ronald Knox in the preface to Best Detective Stories of 1928-29. They are often referred to as Father Knox's Decalogue, The Ten Rules of (Golden Age ) Detective Fiction. He regarded the detective novel as an intellectual puzzle that had to obey the rules of logic - a view which was shared by many of his colleagues, but not all. In 1912, Knox became one of the first practitioners of the mock-serious pastime called Sherlockian scholarship with his article 'Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes', which first appeared in Blue Book 1912(Ronald Arbuthnott Knox 1). There were others who laid out conventions but often these were characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details. Understanding that this genre is not a philosophical treatise or a stringent social commentary is paramount; rather it is a story where the reader enjoys the opportunity to solve a crime following an investigation of several suspects in an atmosphere of suspense, intrigue, and seduction to the "checkmate" solution using the same inductive/ deductive reasoning powers as the story's investigator. The following list of The Ten Rules of Detective Fiction is from the website www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv186.html The original commandment is written in italics. The rest adds clarification and further explanation.
The Ten Commandments for Detective Novelists
1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow. The writer must be cautious because an outright authorial deception, one, for example, placing the narrator as the perpetrator, must not be exercised. (Christie, of course, breaks this rule in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.)
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course and must play no part in the actual solution of the mystery.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable and every effort should be made to avoid it as an explanation of the murder method.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end, unless you as an author are qualified to justify it.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story. No "foreigner" or other aliens unless as an author you have an understanding of their culture and their mindset and can show the relevance to the plot beyond exotic mystification. It shouldn't be just be an insignificant character such as a tramp in the park or gypsy in a field.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right. These are hardly fair in a story of deduction. He or she should not be shown the truth by accident, having been baffled before, but an accident can easily provide a missing piece of the puzzle. This intuition, a baseless feeling in your bones, is quite different from a plausible hunch based on partial evidence.
7. The detective, himself must not commit the crime, as most often we see the detective as trustworthy and someone we believe in.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader. All clues must be revealed, although it is perfectly acceptable to disguise them. Writers in the Christie vein fall suspect here. A question to be asked is whether the clues in the Holmes stories are, in fact, decodable or whether they are the proof of Holmes' omniscience. It is important to note that this rule applies to clues prior to the last few chapters in detective novels but that most writers fall away in the end when it comes to the corroboratory or clinching evidence they need down the stretch. It's in those last chapters that the detective is most maddeningly mystifying. You know that at the last minute he's made a confirmatory phone call or asked Scotland Yard for some facts about someone (often to clear them), and you know that those results will clear the case, but these narrative moments never allow you to move forward. What you need to do is identify the right clues earlier in the novel. In Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for example, the possibility of a breakthrough comes when Poirot deliberately ascertains that Ackroyd is mechanically gifted. The last minute clues are either withheld from you or you can't know what to do with them unless you're already on the right track. Knox needs to distinguish between these two kinds of clues.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below the average reader. He sometimes misinterprets the events under investigation.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them. Do not try to fool the reader with impersonations, wigs, or false whiskers. It is here that Knox directly attacks Conan Doyle. Doyle was biased by his taste much like anyone else (Father Knox's Decalogue 1).
As we begin reading the stories, part of our discussion will center around these conventions. "Are any of these conventions violated in the story?" "How would the story change if one was added or subtracted?" and, of course, the Darwinian question, "Why do the Holmes's story endure?"
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