ON CRIME LITERATURE

I find great satisfaction in reading detective novels because it is gratifying that in contrast to

real life, the bad guy is caught and brought to justice and law and order is restored as it should be. Last week I was reading Simon Brett: ‘The Liar in the Library’, and there was a question asked: ‘are detective novels inferior literature and should it be defined not as literature, but as popular trash’. The book gave examples that some serious, or should we say real literary writers, write detective novels under a pseudonym like: John Banville, whose novel ‘The Sea’ was awarded the Booker Prize in 2005 as well as a long list of other awards, but he writes detective novels as Benjamin Black, which I have not read; or Julius Barnes, who was awarded the Man Booker Prize 2011 for this book ‘The Sense of an Ending’, he writes crime mysteries under his wife’s last name, Dan Kavanagh. It is not often that a man takes his wife’s last name; it is always the other way round. Another example is Carolyn Heilbrun she was an academic and professor of literature at Columbia University in New York, she was the first woman to get tenure there in 1982 (how late)! She wrote detective novels under the name Amanda Cross; she concealed her identity because it would have prevented her academic advancement in the narrow-minded university environment dominated by men. It is said her pseudonym was a rewriting of ‘To cross a man’.

Well, according to Peter Wimsey in Sayers: ‘Strong Poison’ (1930): ‘in detective stories virtue is always triumphant. They are the purest literature we have.’

In ‘Gaudy Night’ (1935) by Dorothy L Sayers, herself a graduate of Oxford at a time when women were not allowed to graduate,  she writes about a women’s College in Oxford, they are bothered by a Poison-Pen and one of their graduates the detective novelist  Harriet Vane, has been asked to investigate, even though there some members of faculty defined her novels as trashy without having read them. Is Harriet Vane the author’s alter ego, I wonder. Peter Wimsey’s mother in ‘Strong Poison” ‘finds Harriet’s books well-written and very clever and only on page 200 I guessed who the murderer was and not on page 15 as in other books’.  

Harriet Vane in ‘Gaudy Night’ as a cover gives a talk to the students on “Detection in Fact and Fiction’. Harriet Vane realizes that students are well-read in detective fiction, but she felt rather sorry for them for the lack of depth and insight into literature as such. ‘Gaudy Night’ was published in 1935 and interestingly that same year Dorothy L Sayers gave a talk at Oxford: Aristotle on Detective Fiction, it was printed as part of the book ‘Unpopular Opinions’ (1946). In the foreword of the book, she writes how she much she enjoyed writing the lecture claiming that it is ‘quite serious, scholarly and sound’. I have not read Aristotle’s ‘The Poetics’ (335 BC) but having now read her essay I will try to find it; it is of course unavailable in the local book shop! She writes about how Aristotle born 2500 years too early, actually anticipated the development of the detective novel with his accepted structure of: a beginning – a middle and an end; characters and events should be realistic as impossible-probable rather than improbable- possible, these concepts occur repeatedly in several of her books in discussions  Peter Wimsey has both with his friend chief inspector Charles Parker and as well as with Harriet Vane. Sayers raises the question on how to ‘frame lies in the right way’ that the readers will have ‘fair-play’ in trying to guess who the murderer is, while the author will lead us down blind alleys. Reading ‘Aristotle on Detective Fiction’ I feel how Sayers must have really enjoyed and laughing while sitting and out-lining, choosing what to incorporate in her lecture at Oxford to make it pompous enough for the bastion of humanity’s keepers of classical teaching at Oxford. It is funny and highly enjoyable, I absolutely loved it!

Reading crime novels sometimes one comes across a modernization of old stories that would appeal to the classically minded scholar; for example: Martin Edwards: ‘The Cipher Garden’ ( 2005), is actually a very plausible and consistent re-writing of Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus Rex’ play (about  430 BC), the son killed the father and married the mother. This was of course taken up by Sigmund Freud as the Oedipus Complex, but if you want to read about the anti-woman complex of Freud’s teachings, read ‘In the Last Analysis’ (1962) by Amanda Cross.

The idea that authors must play fair with the readers, is well established in the Knox’s Ten Commandments and the establishment of The Detective Club (1932) by British authors of detective literature among which Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie were prominent members, and as you may read about in ‘Dorothy and Agatha” (1990) by Gaylord Larsen. I believe that playing fair with readers must be the idea of the women authors, men are much too competitive for any fair-play. I also believe that we women read these stories because of a sense of justice and truth in detective fiction; I know, I do.

I find detective stories that explore other things more relevant to me than just kill- detect; in ‘Gaudy Night’ the place and situation of women in society is thoroughly evaluated against the NAZI way of Kinder- Kuche- Kirche or a professional academic life; today, of course, most women have both: professional lives and a family life. That is more than relevant today when you hear the American cry, that without children women are valueless and  a bunch of childless cat ladies.

In ‘Gaudy Night’ the role of a university education is defined as the how students can ‘discuss their common problems, agreeing pleasantly or pleasantly agreeing to differ’. That is not happening in today’s toxic environment of a very loud majority tyranny, so loud that it is impossible to hear your own thinking and thus obstructing the way to develop your own independent thinking based on facts and not out of uncontrolled emotions.

Other detective novels that have taken up issues that are troublesome and relevant to anyone who wants to be a well- informed member of society:  In Louise Penny’s ‘How The Light gets in”(2013) addiction to alcohol and drugs are reviewed from the side of the abuser; in her ‘A Great Reckoning” (2016) it is about how to fight organized crime behind the illegal drugs in particular fentanyl that has hit the American society like an epidemic with more than 100,000 dead annually in the last few years in particularly among younger people. In ‘Devices and Desires’ by PD James (1989) issues around nuclear energy was examined, which is still a burning question after the earthquake and following tsunami that devasted the Japanese Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (2011). Should we accept the occasional grave danger of nuclear energy but cleaner, against fossil energy, that worsen the global warming daily; not easy decisions. Perhaps the problem is that non-academics do not want to trust and rely on academics? So perhaps we academics need to find a way to communicate better, to be understood and explain ourselves? Throughout most of Louise Penny’s work there is a continued discussion of Art, both in paintings and poetry, that I find stimulating and of course has no bearing on the detecting, maybe one of the reasons I enjoy them so much.

As a physician I have enjoyed very much Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ series with quite insightful descriptions of the physician’s life and as well as the frustrations when alternative treatments without proven effectiveness are preferred by lack of knowledge. Perhaps also an area where better communications skills may pave a way for a more honest and truthful way to help patients? I have observed that  people who don’t want the state- of- the- art medical management of various diseases often are smokers of tobacco, a habit I  find unacceptable for the person himself but also to his family and to society as such.

Earlier detective novels have had  cruel and very unflattering descriptions of  my profession: Sayers: ‘Whose Body’ (1923); Ngaio Marsh: ‘Death in a White Tie’ (1938); PD James: ‘Cover Her Face’ (1962); PD James: ‘A Shroud for a Nightingale’ (1971), just to name a few.

I do like female authors of crime stories, they are much more realistic and down to Earth; so, as a physician I wonder at the evilness in some of favorite authors’ books towards my fellow physicians.

That brings me to another thing Sayers wrote in her Foreword to ‘Unpopular Opinions’, she writes about ‘the disintegration of modern classics as done in UK and in America by unscrupulous pseudo-scholarship’; that is just how I felt when I read about the American professor Vanessa Perks in Simon Brett: The Liar in the Library (2019), she is an obnoxious idiot who believes in abbreviations only she can understand and uses them  in order to belittle her surroundings; she does not remember  that fiction is a made- up thing, but it should be anchored in real life and be connected to a better insight to a more honest and true society, where justice can be expected and seen; academic scholarship should connect to society and the lifes of ordinary people, even if it is only for a detective novel. The absurd thing is that when you become an expert, you know a lot or everything of a smaller issue; but in the end can you know everything about nothing and that is not right; knowledge should be based on facts and context to make informed opinions even if based on considerable uncertainty.

To end my ramblings or babblings (like Peter Wimsey says in ‘Having his Carcase’ 1932) in  Guillermo Martinez: ‘The Oxford Murders’ (2005), is a detective story but not in the real sense, first of all the victims were nice people that did not deserve to be murdered; in ‘The Liar in the Library’ by Brett I absolutely rejoiced in the murder of that awful author, he deserved it big time. In ‘The Oxford Murders’ every thing was manipulated by a genius mathematician (I still do not understand the message: M-heart- 8) he was not the murderer, but he managed to throw a fog of clues over completely unrelated things and against all the rule's of fair-play in crime novels, the real murderer was not caught or tried, but allowed to continue life and enjoy the fruits of the killing. I my opinion a detective novel only a male writer could construct. It left me angry.

On the other hand, I do like an ending that completely took me by surprise, like in Martin Edwards: ‘The Coffin Trail’ (2004); also a man, but I really enjoy his Lake District series, Hannah is great!

Today, there are university courses in how to write crime fiction; they even have an academic scholarly journal from The Edinburgh University Press: Crime Fiction Studies, two issues every year since 2020 with four to ten articles, editorials and book reviews. According to their website the purpose is:

Crime Fiction Studies is an innovative journal that provides a much-needed, academically strong publication within the area of Crime Fiction that is both focused, interdisciplinary and international. It draws scholars together through a series of themed and general issues which explore the status of the genre today, its history, social and cultural influences and current popularity.

I wonder what Dorothy L. Sayers would have said about that!

I will continue to read a variety of detective novels and return to those I like the most, like most of what I wrote about here.