Patrick A. Velardi
In two essays, George Grella (Winks, ed.: 1988) provides the students of mystery fiction with a marvelous historical perspective of detective and mystery writing. In the first essay, “The Formal Detective Novel”, Grella lays out the elements of a very British form of writing. Typically a group of people gathered in an isolated location discover that one among them has been murdered. The police are helpless, and it takes an outsider to look again at all the facts and deduce the solution, putting the guilty person safely away. The formula is scrupulously duplicated from one novel to another and continues to amuse and amaze. According to Grella, the central puzzle may make this form of mystery writing so appealing. Matching wits against the detective provides the pleasure. Of course, two sides to the puzzle theory arise, those who maintain that the reader, “inferior” in intellect to the detective, enjoys observing the detective at work. The other side of the argument states that readers love mysteries, not because of the puzzle, but because the story provides a scapegoat for the reader to feel superior to. Finally, Grella concludes that the true appeal of mystery fiction is literally because the intricacies of a mystery plot parallel the twists and complications of a comedy plot, and so the mystery novel is seen by Grella as a comedy of manners.
The most common detective, a gentlemen amateur, is the central character in mystery fiction. Grella spends several paragraphs describing the amateur sleuth as the counterpart of the hero in comedies. The gentleman amateur of mystery fiction is usually intelligent, distinctive physically in one way or another, eccentric, overindulging, and keenly observant. A second type of detective, according to Grella, is the elf, as is Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s novels. Poirot employs his magic for the ultimate good of all, and restores the fabric of society after it has been disrupted. The third type of detective in mystery fiction is called the Wizard by Grella. An example in American mystery fiction is Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout’s obese misanthrope who solves the crime from afar while tending to his orchids.
The settings of the formal detective novel also follow patterns that limit the suspects to a number that can be dealt with efficiently. Usually the settings are isolated and luxurious depicting an elite segment of society that is disrupted by the crime, and that has behaviors predictable by the detective so that he can solve the mystery. English society is tailor made for the formal mystery and in contrast American society is not. The transition of the formal novel into the United States does necessitate some changes, and the formal novel is not so popular because of the societal differences. Detectives such as Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe seem silly at times because American convention does not allow them to fit in as well as they would in a society more in tune with formal rules of behavior.
The characters in a formal detective novel follow patterns as well. Grella’s list includes doctors, lawyers, professors, sporting types, military men, and vicars. A beautiful girl and a handsome man are often needed to provide romance, and who provide the detective an opportunity to clean up the mess, and allow the young couple to marry and live happily. Another stock character, the obsessed philosopher, uses his hobby-like knowledge to create a bizarre method of murder. Two characters, the victim and the murderer are socially undesirables who need to be eliminated from proper society. In some way the murderer and the victim have performed in a manner that seriously disrupts things as they are or should be. There are many fatal flaws that are employed by mystery writers that necessitate the elimination of both murderer and victim, and in the end those that impede the natural flow of things have to go. Grella states that the murderer is more appealing than the victim because the murderer has removed a societal problem. However, he has also committed the most serious of crimes against society, and in so doing he has placed other members of society under suspicion. Once the murderer is removed by the detective, things can return to normal.
Grella concludes his essay with his thoughts about why formal detective fiction was flourishing when he wrote the essay in 1976, and indeed is still flourishing today. The detective novel, Grella says, grows in popularity because it provides the reader with a means of escape from harsh realities of everyday life, and offers an opulent and luxurious life to dream about. Mystery fiction is a literary release valve for millions of people who are perfectly willing to suspend their disbelief and become a part of an intricate tale of murder, mayhem and a return to a posh, appealing order.
George Grella’s second essay, “The Hard-Boiled Detective Novel”, examines the American version of detective fiction. The differences between English and American society make the formal detective novel less understood and appreciated in the United States. The heterogeneous nature of American society makes it difficult to pigeon-hole as an author can with the more formalized British society. Beginning to appear after World War I, the hard-boiled stories were seen as an accurate portrayal of American society, a society populated by real criminals and real policemen. Grella points out that Dashiell Hammett is the most successful example of the first generation of hard-boiled detective fiction, and Raymond Chandler represents the best example of a second generation of the genre. The hard-boiled writers created the private eye and the American detective hero, dealing out and absorbing a great amount of punishment, isolating himself from normal human relationships and forming his own moral code which is usually stricter and more unbending than the rest of the population. Hammett’s Sam Spade, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Ross Macdonlad’s Lew Archer, and Robert Parker’s Spenser each have their own inner voice that each listens to, even when it goes against traditional laws of society. An unswerving quest for truth, and expulsion of the undesirable is the guiding principle of the detective hero. Grella points out that the moral code often means physical harm, hardship and sacrifice for the detective. The code ultimately insures the detective’s loneliness, but nonetheless is strictly adhered to. He is too good for society, not perfect, but the best possible.
The hard-boiled detective invariably works in the city, the center of wickedness where every perversion seems to thrive. Grella names the setting as the urban jungle which has replaced the wilderness. The detective hero is a man of the wilderness but the wilderness has disappeared, replaced by the seaminess of the city. This is where the detective hero fights against the evils of society, and he is left cynical and disillusioned in the end, his strength remaining because of his own moral code, his own sense of truth and right and wrong. In this world of the hardboiled novel, the formal detective could never survive. The hard-boiled detective can never hope for full resolution of the crime, and restoration of society as it was before the crime because evil is too pervasive in his environment. The has only attacked a minute portion of the evil, while all around him the rest of the evil continues.
What a bleak prospect for reading with young people! Yet through all the bleakness there is that sense of morality that the hero never loses sight of. The students of today watch television. They know the vastness of evil quite well, even if they cannot easily express it. Surely one cannot argue with an attempt to provide another route out from the abyss that seemingly engulfs modern city life. After all, the detective/hero does succeed in his single minded quest to right one wrong, and this heroic deed does teach us all that rather than give up, it is better to deal with one problem at a time. As Grella points out, the private detective starts out as a sleuth, and then becomes a true hero in a more romantic than realistic sense, but Grella stops short of calling detective fiction escapist. I find myself in disagreement because I think that hardboiled detective fiction can be escapist, but more importantly today’s young people can enjoy the heroic aspects of detective fiction. When Robert Parker’s Spenser defies conventions and does what needs to be done, who does not let out a cheer, when all around us in real life we feel hopelessly constricted by society? While not proposing lawlessness in any way, in our literature it does us well to be able to escape convention once in a while.
Mystery Fiction: Plots
Throughtout several years I have successfully used an outline explaining plots in short stories. In
How to
Read a Short Story
by Marjorie L. Burns plot is discussed as having four elements. First the author reveals the situation that the characters find themselves in. The problem or conflict is exposed either by narrative or immediate action. Second, events and actions grow out of the conflict if it was fully revealed at the outset of the story. If the conflict is not immediately revealed because the author starts with action rather than narrative, then the students must discover the conflict by carefully reading and observing what the characters do and say. This part of the plot is called rising action. Students identify opposing forces in the story, perhaps two characters, a character and a force of nature (a storm), or a character and the problem he faces. Third is the turning point or climax in which the action reaches its acme and one opposing force wins and the other loses. In mystery or detective fiction the crime is solved. Fourth, the author shows the results of whatever was decided or revealed at the climax. The resolution in mysteries can be the explanation of the crime as only the detective or private eye could have determined it. This formula has worked well in helping students understand short stories, and though novels are more complex, generally it has worked in helping students get a good understanding of the plot.
For this unit I plan to use two short stories that will help me teach the students several things. Both stories can be classified as an American version of the formal detective novel as described in an earlier section of this paper. Both stories are heavily reliant on plot, and they should be quite useful in teaching students the four elements of plot outlined above. Finally, both stories are about baseball (albeit baseball some 30 to 50 years ago), always a motivating factor for me and my students.
The first story, “Man Bites Dog” by Ellery Queen is a good example of plot for analysis by students. The setting is the seventh game of the world series between the New York Yankees and the New York Giants. The characters include Ellery Queen, his date, gossip columnist Paula Paris, Inspector Queen and Sargeant Velie in one box behind the Yankee dugout. Below them are two boxes occupied by one couple each Big Bill Tree, ex-pitcher and Lotus Verne, shapely movie star, in one. In the other box were Big Bill’s estranged wife Judy Starr, Broadway celebrity and her escort Jimmy Connor, song-and-dance man.
The exposition is in the introduction of the characters and the tension between the two couples, who are being closely scrutinized by Ellery Queen.
To define “rising action”, one would examine all of the characters’ by-play. Big Bill and Judy each put the unfinished portion of their hot dog on the unoccupied Seat between them while signing autographs on scorecards for their fans. Judy was willing to sign an unlimited number, while Big Bill told the usher to allow only six cards and pencils to be brought to him. Judy licked her pencil tip nervously before each autograph; Big Bill licked his pencil tips with great deliberation before each one. As the game started and the autograph hounds left, Judy reached for the wrong hot dog and Big Bill ate the rest of hers. He collapsed in a dead faint and shortly died.
At first the hot dog was suspected, with Judy as the murderess, but Ellery felt that it was impossible for her to have tampered with it, as so many eyes were on her. Ellery stood and loudly offered $5.00 for each scorecard autographed by Big Bill. The climax is the buying back of five of the six cards. It is then obvious that Ellery was on the right track in pursuing his pencil-lead-as-poison theory.
The story is resolved when a young boy comes forward with the sixth autograph and tells his story of a man, obviously in disguise, asking him to get Judy’s autograph on the scorecard with the pencil he provided. Seeing his chance at an autograph of his hero, Big Bill, he grasped it and succeeded. The denouement, generally not very long in detective fiction, ties up the loose ends. In “Man Bite Dog” the loose ends include finding the disguise Big Bill used when offering the boy money to get Judy’s autograph, the opportunity to steal the poison from Bill and Judy’s doctor (both had access), and the fact that Big Bill had hay fever, and so could not smell the almond odor himself when using the pencil he had prepared for the murder of his wife.
In the second short story, “This Won’t Kill You” by Rex Stout, the obese Nero Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin are at the deciding game of a world series. There are early signs of a problem arising, a rookie player, Nick Ferrone, is out of the lineup much to everyone’s amazement in light of the fact Ferrone has been having a spectacular season. To make matters worse the Giants are not only being soundly beaten by the Red Sox, but several Giant players are playing like bush leaguers. With the evident bad play, Archie’s attention wanders to an extremely attractive young lady seated several rows away, a fact that is meaningful later. Suddenly Nero and Archie are summoned to the office of their host, Emil Chisolm, part owner of the Giants. Then what appears to be the problem is revealed, several players have been drugged and Chisolm suspects the missing player, Ferrone. At this point the action centers on locating the missing rookie and on Wolfe’s advice the police are called. In the meantime, Goodwin conducts his own search of the clubhouse, and discovers Ferrone’s body with his skull crushed, and thus the true problem of the story is revealed.
Once the true problem is exposed the primary action is to solve the murder, but Nero soon suspects that the drugging of the players is connected to the killing. Here we have a semblance of the formal detective novel with definite American overtones. All the suspects are contained in the clubhouse of a baseball team rather than in a country manor house, but the essential ingredient of confinement is present. We also see the plot unfold, step by step, as all action leads up to the point where the mystery is solved, which students will recognize as the climax of the story. Various clues that were dropped almost coincidentally along the way, such as Archie’s “glomming” the pretty girl in the stands become important to solving both the secondary and primary problems in the story. While Nero Wolfe is supposedly solving the drugging mystery, he is indeed solving the murder mystery. The climax occurs when Wolfe discloses that one person who should have been somewhere was not, and thereby falls under suspicion and subsequently the accusation of both the drugging and the murder to cover up the drugging. In the resolution of the story the reader gets the motive explained and Nero Wolfe, with Archie’s able assistance wraps up yet another case.
In both stories cited several purposes are served. The formal detective novel is ably demonstrated as it exists in its American form. This is a good lesson in itself for the young reader of mystery fiction since both stories are linked to British mysteries by their formats. Such a connection is necessary if the young reader is to have an understanding of the historical perspective of mystery fiction. Plot as an effective means of both clear writing and reading with understanding is also clearly shown in both stories. Each tale has just enough complicating factors to keep the reader on his toes, but not so many as to confuse the neophyte. Both stories are examples of good clear writing that is not watered down for children as so many mysteries for the young are, and yet neither contains objectionable language or situations. Finally, the door may be opened for those young readers newly introduced to mystery fiction by good examples rather than by a book expressly written for children.
Setting
In his book,
The Puritan Pleasures of the Detective
Story
, Erik Routley has a special section titled “The Americans.” He spends some time talking about Ellery Queen (two cousins, actually, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee). Routley credits Queen with primary importance in getting American detective fiction started, and marvels at the remarkable sales Ellery Queen had as a writer. Routley writes about a Queen novel titled
The Glass Village
in which the character Ellery Queen does not appear. Routley’s mention of the book induced me to read it and I was pleasantly surprised by what a wonderfully tight story it is. As I read the book I was also impressed by how important the setting was to understanding the plot. Shinn Corners is a tiny farming community of about three dozen inhabitants, almost all of whom are strongly imbedded in the Puritan religion. Here we see the links to British mystery in that the story takes place in an isolated community away from other people. One individual, Judge Shinn, represents the only clear thinking around, except for that of an outsider, Johnny Shinn. These two have gone beyond the strict Puritanical philosophy and recognize other forces at work in the world. Johnny Shinn in particular has been in two wars, World War II and Korea, and brings to the New England setting the thinking of a man who has seen the horrors of the world and is left cynical by them. What occurs in the community after one of its number is murdered could not have happened easily if the setting were different. The mood of the story is molded by the buildings, the weather and by what people observe around them. Even the people themselves sometimes appear to be props in the setting rather than characters in the plot. In this sense the novel again demonstrates the formal detective novel’s use of stock characters who add to the mood of the surroundings.
Fanny Adams, famous artist and popular matriarch of the community, is murdered and soon afterwards a tramp is captured carrying a sum of money exactly the same as that missing from Fanny’s spice jar. The People of Shinn Corners immediately descend upon the hapless stranger ready to exact just retribution in the tradition of quick Puritan justice. The Puritan nature that cherishes privacy demands that the stranger be punished by the people of Shinn Corners alone, and when representatives of the county seat come to investigate and take over, the Puritan code fights them off. The people of Shinn Corners have a confrontation with the county representatives and win the right to prosecute the tramp mostly due to the clear thinking of Judge Shinn. The Judge stands apart and serves as the clear-thinking link between the Puritan ethic and pure justice. Worldly-wise Johnny Shinn becomes the cool-headed cynical assessor of facts and finally discovers the clue that solves the mystery and seals the fate of the murderer.
When reading
The Glass Village
with young people, discussion of the setting will enable them to both comprehend the story and recognize the importance of setting to mystery and detective fiction. Although it is certainly an adult book and as such can be read on many different levels, the novel contains no overtly objectionable language or situations. It is written in a marvelously clear fashion with several build-ups in the plot as it reaches the climax. The only characters generously described are Johnny and Judge Shinn, so that students can understand that the rest of the cast serves to emphasize the setting and its impact on the outcome. Much of the feel for the setting comes from the dialogue which is always helpful when reading a longer work with young people. The Puritan philosophy necessary to understand its impact on the setting is adequately explained early in the book, so that research into Puritanism, while naturally beneficial, is not necessary. Most importantly I anticipate animated discussion about the moral questions raised by the clash between the Puritans of Shinn Corners, and Johnny Shinn. The closed society, slowly dying, ensures that only a place like Shinn Corners could be the setting for the events of the novel.
Character
Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels have long been among my favorite reading. Parker has created a character in Spenser so rich in detail that he lives above the plot and setting of the books. Throughout each book Parker gives us long looks into the soul of his detective hero both directly through forceful narrative, and indirectly through fast-paced witty, urbane and down-right smartaleck dialogue. The Spenser series is among the best examples of the hard-boiled detective novels. There are, however, some problems connected with using Parker’s books in a classroom. Primarily, the language is often peppered with four-letter words that might be offensive to some young readers. I believe that my purpose, reading an example of hard-boiled detective fiction that demonstrates careful crafting of a character, can be achieved by carefully choosing sections of a Parker novel to read to students in a classroom. Since Parker does not use profanity gratuitously, rather it is a part of the dialogue that flows naturally, it will not be difficult to do very minor editing and substituting for a younger audience. As the age of the student increases, the need for caution decreases. (My own son began reading Spenser in the seventh grade with no great shock to his morality.) Nevertheless, one needs to be aware of the possibility of offending someone. However, the vitality of Parker’s characters is worth the risk.
The novel chosen for this section of the unit is
Mortal Stakes
, a story about baseball and blackmail. In this novel Spenser is hired by the management of the Boston Red Sox to investigate suspicions that a star pitcher, Marty Rabb, is being influenced to alter outcomes of games by purposely pitching ineffectually. As a cover for the investigation Spenser poses as a writer, allowing him free access to the ballplayers. In his initial interview with Marty Rabb and his wife, Linda, Spenser finds a happy young family, who appear to have everything going well, but as he digs deeper, he discovers an incident in Linda Rabb’s past that is a source for blackmail. Spenser then proceeds to make things right. In typical hard-boiled detective fiction fashion, this does not necessarily mean that Spenser turns Rabb over to the authorities. The code of the detective will not allow him to do that because it will not serve the ultimate good, but merely satisfy society’s laws. To make things right, Spenser must eliminate the evil doer and rescue the Rabbs from the clutches of evil.
Spenser is indeed the classic detective hero, with his own moral code, and a healthy disregard for society’s laws. He is not quite a loner; he has Susan Silverman to share his inner feelings, and Hawk to discuss his ideas, philosophies and plans to rescue the innocents. Throughout a Spenser novel we have Robert Parker exposing Spenser’s character through narrative and dialogue. In the first several chapters we hear the classic Spenser repartee as he discusses issues with Erskine, and we have Parker telling us about Spenser as we learn about Spenser’s habits, activities, and the observations he makes. I believe that students can respond to the straightforward writing as the plot unfolds, and that they can also respond to the heroic aspects of Spenser. In one class we now read
Shane
, and parallels between Shane and Spenser would make for a very lively discussion.
