The history of the creation and development of the detective genre. Detective genre and its types

21.04.2019

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Detective it a work of fiction with a special type of plot construction, which is based on the conflict of good and evil realized in solving the crime, which is resolved by the victory of good. The detective story arises on the basis of the plot model of the adventurous, but uses traditional techniques to formulate and resolve a fundamentally different conflict. One of the first detective stories- "Murder on Morgue Street" (1841) by E.A. Po - the conflict between good and evil develops within the framework of religious consciousness (created in the image and likeness of God's man and an evil beast - a gigantic orangutan), but the detective story gets widespread precisely with the weakening of religious principles in society, when ethical conflicts come to the fore and there is a need to assert the power of good and its obligatory victory in the fight against evil. In this sense, the detective performs a certain "protective" function and therefore becomes one of the most popular types mass literature... Three heroes are key in the detective's character system - the victim, the criminal and the detective, and in the confrontation of the latter two, a conflict of evil and good is realized, and the victim in most cases does not directly participate in the conflict and therefore should not cause either antipathy or compassion among the readers. The expansion of the system of characters is either due to the appearance of "witnesses" who contribute to the solution of the crime, or due to the introduction of a number of "imaginary" criminals - those who are suspected of being atrocious. The task of the detective is not only to expose the criminal, but also to justify the innocent. As an additional conflict in a detective story, the clash of stupidity and intelligence is often used: the opposition of a stupid detective and a smart detective, or an intelligent detective and his narrow-minded assistant. Depending on what, in the opinion of the author and the society to which the work is addressed, is intended to defend the good - reason, press, faith or power - changes social status Detective: It could be a police officer, journalist, pastor, private detective.

Detective plot composition

The composition of the plot of the detective is based on the centripetal principle: all plot lines that are outwardly little connected at the beginning of the work must converge in the finale within the framework of a single denouement. Two lines of development of the plot become key and obligatory, one of which is based on the conflict between the criminal and the victim (the commission of a crime), and at the heart of the other is the conflict between the criminal and the detective (solving the crime), and most often they develop in the work not sequentially, but in parallel , as if "towards" each other: the first is found within the second, although the denouement of the first is only an exposure for the second. The plot of the second line is the detection of a crime, and then, in the course of the investigation, a picture of the crime gradually emerges, which is fully restored only in the denouement at the moment the criminal is exposed. The principle of "coincidence" of two plot lines will predetermine strict selection criteria for the depicted phenomena of reality: everything that does not correspond to two lines at the same time is discarded, with the exception of special "inhibiting" or "distracting" elements. The seeming underdevelopment of characters in a detective story is a consequence of the same type of collisions in which it is revealed; in fact, the schematism encountered is explained not by the principles of the detective story, but by the artistic level of the work. In the best detective stories, writers have created a number of striking types of detectives: S. Auguste Dupin (E.A. Po), papa Tabare and Lecoq (E. Gaborio), Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan-Doyle), Rouletabille (G. Leroux), Pastor Brown (G.C. Chesterton), Heruolle Poirot and Miss Marple (A. Christie), Nero Wolfe (R. Stout), Perry Mason and Donald Lam (E.S. Gardner), Commissioner Maigret (J. Simenon). The types of villains, their victims, and other participants in the events are no less significant in the detective story; A. Christie's novels (18910-1976) are based on the same degree of development of the characters of the real criminal and the imaginary criminals.

Required traits

For a detective, the motive of a mystery, a riddle is obligatory; At the same time, unlike mysticism, in a detective story it is assumed in advance that the secret is not absolute, but relative in nature, being the result of a combination of objective circumstances and some kind of malicious intent, and its resolution is possible and feasible for a person who is able to gather together the information scattered in parts and correctly comprehend her. In a detective story, they often see a hymn to the human mind, which solves any riddle and stands on the defense of good in the fight against evil, especially since the attitude of many authors, starting with E. Po, who praised the "analytical abilities of our mind", corresponds to this. Analytical detectives usually have an element of play with the reader., who is told all the information that the detective possesses, and is offered to solve the riddle before the main character. A sharp mind, however, is not a necessary quality for an investigator; heroes can solve riddles thanks to their activity, strength, dexterity, sneakiness, persistence (J.H. Chase, M. Spillane. G. McDonald), thanks to luck or coincidence of circumstances (I. Khmelevskaya). The genre forms of detective fiction are diverse: there is detective drama, detective stories, novels, novels, psychological, adventure, social, satirical, ironic detective stories are created; in the second half of the 20th century, the so-called "action" was developing rapidly. The principle of cyclization is often used, when a whole series of works is written, united by a common image of a detective. It is necessary to distinguish police and criminal novels from detectives, depicting the world of policemen or the world of criminals as one of the social spheres, as well as social and psychological novels using criminal plots (Crime and Punishment, 1866, F.M. Dostoevsky), and adventurous prose, which is characterized by a fundamentally different type of conflict, including works about the adventures of successful criminals (The Adventures of Rocambol, 1859, PA Ponson du Terrail, a cycle about Arsene Lupin by M. Leblanc). At the same time, in a number of cases, detective stories use “cheating the reader” - a deliberate violation of the canonical scheme (the investigation is conducted by the criminal himself, the crime is imaginary, all suspects are criminals); in this case, the violation is revealed only at the moment of the denouement, and until then the narrative is correlated by the author and the readers with the canon.

Detective in Russia and the USSR

In Russia and in the USSR, the detective story was initially established mainly as pseudo-translated literature: the anonymous "Nat Pinkerton"; "Mess Mend" (1924-25) by Jim Dollar (M. Shaginyan), and then a special type of Soviet detective was formed, which became widespread in other socialist countries, in which the conflict of good and evil is considered within the framework of the contradictions of antagonistic classes, and then transformed into a conflict between the social and the antisocial, interpreted in accordance with the dominant ideological setting; antagonistic contradictions persist at the level of confrontation between the two systems and are reflected in the literature in a spy detective story. V Soviet literature in the post-war years, the books by A.G. Adamov, Yu.S. Semyonov, brothers A. and G. Vainer gained fame; v post-soviet time the cycle of A. Marinina stands out, where the traditions of the Soviet "police" detective story are combined with elements of the French police novel.

The word detective comes from English detective - a detective and from Latin detectio, which means - disclosure.

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Definition

An essential feature of a detective story is that the actual circumstances of the incident are not communicated to the reader, at least in their entirety, until the investigation is completed. Instead, the reader is guided by the author through the investigation process, gaining the opportunity at each stage to build their own versions and evaluate known facts. If the work initially describes all the details of the incident, or the incident does not contain anything unusual, mysterious, then it should already be attributed not to a pure detective story, but to related genres (action movie, police novel, etc.).

According to the famous author of detective stories Val McDermid, detective as a genre became possible only with the advent of evidence-based litigation.

Features of the genre

Important property classic detective story - the fullness of the facts. The solution to the mystery cannot be based on information that was not provided to the reader during the description of the investigation. By the time the investigation is over, the reader should have enough information to help him find a solution on his own. Only a few insignificant details can be hidden, which do not affect the possibility of disclosing the secret. Upon completion of the investigation, all riddles must be solved, all questions must be answered.

A few more signs of a classic detective in the aggregate were named by N.N.Volsky the hyperdeterminism of the detective's world("The world of the detective is much more orderly than the life around us"):

The ordinariness of the situation. The conditions in which the events of the detective take place are, on the whole, common and well known to the reader (in any case, the reader himself believes that he is confidently oriented in them). Thanks to this, it is initially obvious to the reader what of what is being described is ordinary, and what is strange, beyond the scope.
Stereotyped behavior of characters. Characters are largely devoid of originality, their psychology and behavioral models are quite transparent, predictable, and if they have any sharply distinguished features, then those become known to the reader. The motives of actions (including the motives of the crime) of the characters are also stereotyped.
The existence of a priori rules for plotting that do not always correspond real life... So, for example, in a classic detective story, the narrator and the detective, in principle, cannot turn out to be criminals.

This set of features narrows the field of possible logical constructions based on known facts, making it easier for the reader to analyze them. However, not all detective subgenres follow these rules exactly.

Another limitation is noted, which is almost always followed by a classic detective story - the inadmissibility of random errors and undetectable coincidences. For example, in real life, a witness may speak the truth, may lie, be mistaken or misled, but may simply make an unmotivated mistake (accidentally confuse dates, amounts, surnames). In a detective story, the last possibility is excluded - the witness is either accurate or lies, or his mistake has a logical justification.

Eremey Parnov points to following features classic detective genre:

The first works of the detective genre are usually considered to be the stories of Edgar Poe, written in the 1840s, but elements of the detective story have been used by many authors before. For example, in the novel by William Godwin (-) "The Adventures of Caleb Williams" () one of central characters- amateur detective. A great influence on the development of detective literature was also exerted by E. Vidok's "Notes", published in. However, it was Edgar Poe who created, according to Eremey Parnov, the first Great Detective - amateur detective Dupin from the story "Murder on the Rue Morgue". Dupin subsequently fathered Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown (Chesterton), Lecoq (Gaborio) and Mr. Cuff (Wilkie Collins). It was Edgar Poe who introduced into the plot of the detective the idea of a rivalry in solving a crime between a private investigator and the official police, in which a private investigator, as a rule, prevails.

The detective genre became popular in England after the release of the novels by W. Collins "The Woman in White" () and "Moonstone" (). In the novels "The Hand of Wilder" () and "Checkmate" () by the Irish writer C. Le Fanu, the detective story is combined with the Gothic novel. The 30s - 70s are considered the golden age of detectives in England. 20th century. It was at this time that the classic detective novels of Agatha Christie, F. Biding and other authors were published, which influenced the development of the genre as a whole.

The founder of the French detective story is E. Gaboriau, the author of a series of novels about the detective Lecoque. Stevenson imitated Gaboriau in his detective stories (especially in The Rajah's Diamond).

Twenty Rules for Writing Detectives by Stephen Van Dyne

In 1928 english writer Willard Hattington, better known by his pseudonym Stephen Van Dyne, published his literary rules, calling it "20 Rules for Writing Detectives":

1. It is necessary to provide the reader with opportunities for unraveling secrets, equal to those of the detective, for which purpose it is clear and accurate to report all incriminating traces.

2. With regard to the reader, only such tricks and deception are permissible as can be used by the criminal in relation to the detective.

3. Love is forbidden. The story should not be a game of tags between lovers, but between a detective and a criminal.

4. Neither a detective nor any other professional investigator can be a criminal.

5. Logical conclusions must lead to exposure. Accidental or unfounded confessions are impermissible.

6. A detective cannot be absent from a detective who methodically searches for incriminating evidence, as a result of which he comes to a solution to the riddle.

7. Mandatory crime in a detective story is murder.

8. In solving a given mystery, all supernatural powers and circumstances.

9. Only one detective can act in a story - the reader cannot compete with three or four members of the relay team at once.

10. The perpetrator must be one of the more or less significant actors well known to the reader.

11. An unacceptably cheap solution in which one of the servants is the criminal.

12. While the perpetrator may have an accomplice, the main story is about the capture of one person.

13. Secret or criminal communities have no place in a detective story.

14. The method of committing the murder and the method of investigation must be reasonable and reasonable with scientific point vision.

15. For the quick-witted reader, the clue should be obvious.

16. In a detective story, there is no place for literature, descriptions of painstakingly developed characters, coloring the situation with the means of fiction.

17. A criminal can never be a professional villain.

19. The motive of the crime is always of a private nature; it cannot be an espionage act, seasoned with any international intrigues, motives of secret services.

The decade that followed the promulgation of the terms of the Van Dyne Convention finally discredited the detective as a genre of literature. It is no coincidence that we know well the detectives of previous eras and each time we turn to their experience. But we will hardly be able to name the names of figures from the Twenty Rules clan without going into the reference books. Modern Western detective has developed in spite of Van Dine, refuting point by point, overcoming limitations sucked from the finger. One paragraph (the detective should not be a criminal!), However, survived, although it was violated several times by the cinema. This is a reasonable prohibition, because it protects the very specifics of the detective, its core line ... modern novel we will not see a trace of the "Rules" ...

The Ten Commandments of Ronald Knox's detective novel

Also, Ronald Knox, one of the founders of the Detective Club, proposed his own rules for writing detective stories:

I. The perpetrator must be someone mentioned at the beginning of the novel, but it must not be someone whose train of thought the reader was allowed to follow.

II. As a matter of course, the action of supernatural or otherworldly forces is excluded.

III. The use of more than one secret room or secret passage is not allowed.

IV. It is unacceptable to use hitherto unknown poisons, as well as devices that require a long scientific explanation at the end of the book.

V. The work should not feature a Chinese person.

Vi. A detective should never be helped by a lucky break; he should also not be guided by an unaccountable but correct intuition.

Vii. The detective doesn't have to be a criminal himself.

VIII. Having come across this or that clue, the detective is obliged to immediately present it to the reader for study.

IX. The detective's stupid friend, Watson in one guise or another, should not hide any of the considerations that come to his mind; by their mental capacity it should be slightly inferior - but only quite a bit - to the average reader.

X. Indistinguishable twin brothers and doubles in general cannot appear in a novel if the reader is not properly prepared for it.

Some types of detectives

Closed-type detective

A subgenre that usually most closely matches the canons of a classic detective story. The plot is based on the investigation of a crime committed in a secluded place, where there is a strictly limited set of characters. There can be no outsider in this place, so the crime could only be committed by someone present. The investigation is carried out by someone from the crime scene with the help of the rest of the heroes.

This type of detective is different in that the plot, in principle, eliminates the need to search for an unknown criminal. The suspects are there, and the detective's job is to get as much information as possible about the participants in the events, on the basis of which it will be possible to identify the culprit. Additional psychological stress is created by the fact that the criminal must be one of the well-known, nearby people, none of whom usually looks like a criminal. Sometimes in a closed type detective, a whole series of crimes (usually murders) occurs, as a result of which the number of suspects is constantly decreasing.

Examples of closed detectives:

Edgar Poe, Murder on the Rue Morgue.
Cyril Hare, A Purely English Murder.
Agatha Christie, "Ten Little Indians", "Murder on the Orient Express" (and almost all of the works).
Boris Akunin, "Leviathan" (signed by the author as "a hermetic detective").
Leonid Slovin, "Additional Arrives on the Second Path".
Gaston Leroux, The Secret of the Yellow Room.

Psychological detective

This type of detective story may deviate somewhat from the classical canons in terms of the requirements for stereotypical behavior and typical psychology of heroes and is the intersection of the genre with the psychological novel. Usually a crime committed for personal reasons (envy, revenge) is investigated, and the main element of the investigation becomes the study personality traits suspects, their attachments, pain points, beliefs, prejudices, clarification of the past. There is a French psychological detective school.

Dickens, Charles, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Boileau - Narsezhak, "She-Wolf", "The One Who Has Done", "Sea Gate", "Outline the Heart".
Japrizo, Sebastien, "Lady with glasses and with a gun in the car."
Calef, Noel, Lift to the Scaffold.
Ball, John, "A Stuffy Night in the Carolina."

Historical detective

A historical work with detective intrigue. The action takes place in the past, or an old crime is being investigated in the present.

Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose"
Robert van Gulick, Judge Dee series
Agatha Christie "Death Comes at the End", "Five Little Pigs"
John Dixon Carr The Newgate Bride, The Devil in Velvet, Captain Slit
Ellis Peters, Cadfael Series
Ann Perry, Thomas Pitt Series, Monk
Boileau-Narsejak "In the enchanted forest"
Quinn, Ellery "The Unknown Manuscript of Dr. Watson"
Boris Akunin, Literary project"The Adventures of Erast Fandorin"
Leonid Yuzefovich, Literary project about the detective Putilin
Alexander Bushkov, The Adventures of Alexey Bestuzhev
Igor Moskvin, cycle Petersburg investigation 1870-1883

Ironic detective

The detective investigation is described from a humorous point of view. Often, works written in this vein parody and ridicule the cliches of a detective novel.

Agatha Christie, Partners in Crime
Varshavsky, Ilya, "The robbery will take place at midnight"
Kaganov, Leonid, "Major Bogdamir saves money"
Kozachinsky, Alexander, "Green Van"
Westlake, Donald, "The Cursed Emerald" ( Hot pebble), "The bank that gurgled"
Joanna Khmelevskaya (most of the works)
Daria Dontsova (all works)
Yene Reite (all works)

Fantastic detective

Works at the junction of science fiction and detective story. The action can take place in the future, an alternative present or past, or in a completely fictional world.

Lem, Stanislav, "Investigation", "Inquiry"
Russell, Eric Frank, "Everyday Work", "The Wasp"
Holm van Zaichik, cycle Bad people No"
Kir Bulychev, "Intergalactic Police" cycle ("Intergpol")
Isaac Asimov, Lucky Starr Cycles - Space Ranger, Detective Elijah Bailey and Robot Daniel Olivo
Sergey Lukyanenko, Genome
John Brunner, The Squares of the city,; Russian translation - )
Strugatsky brothers, Hotel "At the Dead Mountaineer"
Cook, Glenn, a series of fantasy detective stories about Detective Garrett
Randall Garrett, a series of fantasy detective stories about the detective Lord Darcy
Boris Akunin "Children's Book"
Kluger, Daniel, cycle of fantasy detectives "Magical Matters"
Edgar Alan Poe - Murder on the Rue Morgue
Harry Turtledove - Toxic Spell Dump Case

Political detective

One of the genres quite far from the classic detective story. The main intrigue is built around political events and rivalry between various political or business leaders and forces. It also often happens that main character in itself is far from politics, however, while investigating the case, it stumbles upon an obstacle to the investigation by the "powers that be" or reveals some kind of conspiracy. Distinctive feature political detective is (although not necessarily) the possible absence of completely goodies, except for the main thing. This genre is rarely found in pure form, however, may be a constituent part of a work.

Agatha Christie, The Big Four
Boris Akunin, "State Councilor"
Levashov, Victor, "The Conspiracy of Patriots"
Adam Hall, Berlin Memorandum (Qwilleran Memorandum)
Nikolay Svechin, "The Hunt for the Tsar", "Demon of the Underworld"

Spy detective

It is based on the narrative about the activities of intelligence officers, spies and saboteurs both in war and in peacetime on the "invisible front". On stylistic boundaries it is very close to political and conspiracy detectives, often combined in the same work. The main difference between a spy detective and a political one is that in a political detective the most important position is occupied by the political basis of the case under investigation and antagonistic conflicts, while in espionage, attention is focused on intelligence work (surveillance, sabotage, etc.). A conspiracy detective can be considered a variety of both espionage and political detectives.

Agatha Christie, Cat Among Doves, Man in Brown Suit, Hours, Meetings of Baghdad (and most of the works).
John Le Carré, "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"
John Boynton Priestley, Haze Over Gretley (1942)
James Grady, Six Days of the Condor
Boris Akunin, "Turkish Gambit"
Dmitry Medvedev, "It was near Rivne"
Nikolay Dalekiy, "The Practice of Sergei Rubtsov"

The main feature of the detective story as a genre is the presence in the work of some mysterious incident, the circumstances of which are unknown and must be clarified. The most frequently described incident is a crime, although there are detectives in which events that are not criminal are investigated (for example, in the "Notes on Sherlock Holmes", of course, related to the detective genre, there are no crimes in five out of eighteen stories).
An essential feature of a detective story is that the actual circumstances of the incident are not communicated to the reader, at least in their entirety, until the investigation is completed. Instead, the reader is guided by the author through the investigation process, gaining the opportunity at each stage to build their own versions and evaluate known facts. If the work initially describes all the details of the incident, or the incident does not contain anything unusual, mysterious, then it should already be attributed not to a pure detective story, but to related genres (action movie, police novel, etc.).

Typical characters

Detective - directly involved in the investigation. The most different people: law enforcement officials, private detectives, relatives, friends, acquaintances of the victims, sometimes completely random people. An investigator cannot be a criminal. The figure of the detective is the central one in the detective story.
A professional detective is a law enforcement officer. Can be a very expert high level, and maybe - and an ordinary, of which there are many, a police officer. In the second case, in difficult situations sometimes seeks advice from a consultant (see below).
A private detective - for him investigating crimes is his main job, but he does not serve in the police, although he may be a retired police officer. As a rule, he is extremely highly qualified, active and energetic. Most often, a private detective becomes a central figure, and to emphasize his qualities, professional detectives can be brought into action, who constantly make mistakes, succumb to the provocations of a criminal, get on the wrong track and suspect innocent people. The opposition "a lone hero against a bureaucratic organization and its officials" is used, in which the sympathies of the author and the reader are on the side of the hero.
An amateur detective is the same as a private detective, with the only difference that investigating crimes is not a profession for him, but a hobby that he turns to only from time to time. A separate subspecies of amateur detective - random person who has never engaged in such activities, but is forced to conduct an investigation due to an urgent need, for example, to save an unjustly accused loved one or to divert suspicion from yourself. The amateur detective brings the investigation closer to the reader, giving him the impression that "I could figure it out too." One of the conventions of a series of detectives with amateur detectives (like Miss Marple) is that in real life a person, if he does not investigate crimes professionally, is unlikely to encounter so many crimes and mysterious incidents.
A criminal commits a crime, covers his tracks, tries to resist the investigation. In a classic detective story, the figure of the criminal is clearly indicated only at the end of the investigation; up to this point, the criminal can be a witness, a suspect or a victim. Sometimes the actions of the criminal are described in the course of the main action, but in such a way as not to reveal his identity and not to inform the reader of information that could not have been obtained during the investigation from other sources.
Victim - the one against whom the crime is directed or the one who suffered as a result of a mysterious incident. One of the standard options for a detective's denouement is that the victim turns out to be a criminal himself.
Witness - a person who has any information about the subject of the investigation. The perpetrator is often first shown in the description of the investigation as one of the witnesses.
An investigator's companion is a person who is constantly in contact with an investigator, participating in an investigation, but does not have the abilities and knowledge of an investigator. He can provide technical assistance in the investigation, but his main task is to show more prominently the outstanding abilities of the detective against the background of the average level. an ordinary person... In addition, a companion is needed to ask the detective questions and listen to his explanations, giving the reader the opportunity to follow the detective's train of thought and paying attention to certain points that the reader himself might have missed. Classic examples such companions are Dr. Watson with Conan Doyle and Arthur Hastings with Agatha Christie.
A consultant is a person who has a pronounced ability to conduct an investigation, but does not directly participate in it himself. In detective stories, where a separate figure of the consultant stands out, she may be the main one (for example, the journalist Ksenofontov in the detective stories of Viktor Pronin), or it may turn out to be just an episodic advisor (for example, the detective's teacher, whom he turns to for help).
Assistant - does not conduct investigations himself, but provides the detective and / or consultant with information that he obtains himself. For example, a forensic expert.
Suspect - in the course of the investigation, it is assumed that it was he who committed the crime. The authors treat suspects in different ways, one of the often practiced principles is “none of those immediately suspected is a real criminal,” that is, everyone who falls under suspicion turns out to be innocent, and the real criminal turns out to be someone who was not suspected of anything. However, not all authors follow this principle. In Agatha Christie's detectives, for example, Miss Marple repeatedly says that "in life it is usually the one who is suspected first that is the culprit."

Twenty rules for writing a detective story

In 1928, the English writer Willard Hattington, better known by his pseudonym Stephen Van Dyne, published his rulebook, calling it "20 Rules for Writing Detectives":

1. It is necessary to provide the reader with opportunities for unraveling secrets, equal to those of the detective, for which purpose it is clear and accurate to report all incriminating traces.
2. With regard to the reader, only such tricks and deception are permissible as can be used by the criminal in relation to the detective.
3. Love is forbidden. The story should not be a game of tags between lovers, but between a detective and a criminal.
4. Neither a detective nor any other professional investigator can be a criminal.
5. Logical conclusions must lead to exposure. Accidental or unfounded confessions are impermissible.
6. A detective cannot be absent from a detective who methodically searches for incriminating evidence, as a result of which he comes to a solution to the riddle.
7. Mandatory crime in a detective story is murder.
8. In solving a given mystery, all supernatural forces and circumstances must be excluded.
9. Only one detective can act in a story - the reader cannot compete with three or four members of the relay team at once.
10. The perpetrator must be one of the most or less significant characters well known to the reader.
11. An unacceptably cheap solution in which one of the servants is the criminal.
12. While the perpetrator may have an accomplice, the main story is about the capture of one person.
13. Secret or criminal communities have no place in a detective story.
14. The method of committing the murder and the method of investigation must be reasonable and scientifically sound.
15. For the quick-witted reader, the clue should be obvious.
16. In a detective story, there is no place for literature, descriptions of painstakingly developed characters, coloring the situation with the means of fiction.
17. A criminal can never be a professional villain.
18. It is forbidden to explain the secret by accident or suicide.
19. The motive of the crime is always of a private nature; it cannot be an espionage act, seasoned with any international intrigues, motives of secret services.
20. The author of detective stories should avoid all sorts of stereotyped solutions and ideas.

Types of detectives

Closed-type detective
A subgenre that usually most closely matches the canons of a classic detective story. The plot is based on the investigation of a crime committed in a secluded place, where there is a strictly limited set of characters. There can be no outsider in this place, so the crime could only be committed by someone present. The investigation is being conducted by someone at the scene of the crime, with the help of the rest of the heroes.
This type of detective is different in that the plot, in principle, eliminates the need to search for an unknown criminal. The suspects are there, and the detective's job is to get as much information as possible about the participants in the events, on the basis of which it will be possible to identify the culprit. Additional psychological stress is created by the fact that the criminal must be one of the well-known, nearby people, none of whom usually looks like a criminal. Sometimes in a closed type detective, a whole series of crimes (usually murders) occurs, as a result of which the number of suspects is constantly decreasing.
Psychological detective
This type of detective story may deviate somewhat from the classical canons in terms of the requirements for stereotypical behavior and typical psychology of heroes. Usually, a crime committed for personal reasons (envy, revenge) is investigated, and the main element of the investigation is the study of the personality traits of the suspects, their attachments, pain points, beliefs, prejudices, clarification of the past. There is a French psychological detective school.
Historical detective
A historical work with detective intrigue. The action takes place in the past, or an old crime is being investigated in the present.
Ironic detective
The detective investigation is described from a humorous point of view. Often, works written in this vein parody the cliches of a detective novel.
Fantastic detective
Works at the junction of science fiction and detective story. The action can take place in the future, alternative present or past, in a completely fictional world.
Political detective
One of the genres quite far from the classic detective story. The main intrigue is built around political events and rivalry between various political or business leaders and forces. It often happens that the protagonist himself is far from politics, however, while investigating the case, he stumbles upon an obstacle to the investigation by the "powers that be" or uncovers some kind of conspiracy. A distinctive feature of a political detective is (although not necessarily) the possible absence of completely positive characters, except for the main one. This genre is rarely found in its pure form, but it can be a constituent part of the work.
Spy detective
It is based on the narrative about the activities of intelligence officers, spies and saboteurs both in war and in peacetime on the "invisible front". On stylistic boundaries it is very close to political and conspiracy detectives, often combined in the same work. The main difference between a spy detective and a political one is that in a political detective the most important position is occupied by the political basis of the case under investigation and antagonistic conflicts, while in espionage, attention is focused on intelligence work (surveillance, sabotage, etc.). A conspiracy detective can be considered a variety of both espionage and political detectives.

Aphorisms about the detective

Thanks to the criminals World culture enriched with a detective genre.

If you don't know what to write, write: "A man came in with a revolver in his hand" (Raymond Chandler).

The less discerning the investigator, the longer the detective story (Victor Romanov).

There are so many motives for crimes that a detective (Georgy Alexandrov) is scratching his turnip.

In detective stories like this: some are hoarding goods, others are just waiting for this.

From committing a crime to solving it - everything is just one detective novel (Boris Shapiro).

detective fiction translation

Before proceeding with a direct examination of the features of the detective genre, it is necessary to clearly define the subject of analysis - a detective story.

Detective (eng.<#"justify">a) Immersion in the usual way of life

It is difficult to build a detective story on material that is exotic for the reader. The reader should have a good understanding of the "norm" (the situation, the motives of the characters' behavior, the set of those habits and conventions that are associated with the social roles of the heroes of the detective, the rules of decency, etc.), and, consequently, the evasion from it - strangeness, incongruity.

b) Stereotyped behavior of characters

The psychology, emotions of the characters are standard, their individuality is not emphasized, it is erased. Characters are largely devoid of originality - they are not so much personality as social roles... The same applies to the motives of the characters' actions (in particular, the motives of the crime), the more impersonal the motive, the more suitable it is for a detective. Therefore, the predominant motive for the crime is money, since any individuality in this motive is erased: everyone needs money, it is the equivalent of any human need.

c) The presence of special rules for plotting - unwritten "laws of the detective genre"

Although in the works they are not declared, but after reading a few "good" ones, i.e. well-formed detectives, the reader knows them intuitively and considers any violation of them a fraud on the part of the author, a violation of the rules of the game. An example of such a law is the prohibition of some characters from being a criminal. The killer cannot be the narrator, investigator, close relatives of the victim, priests, high-ranking statesmen. For the narrator and detective, this prohibition is unconditional, for other characters the author can remove it, but then he must openly declare this during the narrative, directing the reader's suspicions to this character.

These three characteristics characteristic of the detective genre can be combined into one, they all serve as a manifestation of the hyperdeterminism of the world described in the detective story, in comparison with the world in which we live. In the real world, we may encounter exotic personalities and situations whose meaning we do not understand, the motives of real crimes are often irrational, a priest may turn out to be the leader of a gang, but in a detective story, such plot decisions would be perceived as a violation of the laws of the genre. The detective's world is much more orderly than the life around us. To build a detective riddle requires a rigid network of undoubted, unshakable patterns, on which the reader can rely with full confidence in their truth. Since in the real world there are fewer solid patterns than is usually required to build a detective plot, they are introduced from the outside by mutual agreement of the authors with the readers, as well-known rules of the game.

Another feature of the detective genre is that the true circumstances of the incident are not communicated to the reader, at least not in full, until the investigation is completed. The reader is guided by the author through the process of solving, having the opportunity at each stage to build his own versions, based on known facts.

Typical elements genre structure, most fully expressing the features of the detective:

Three questions

In the detective genre, a certain standard for plotting has developed. At the very beginning, a crime is committed. The first victim appears. (In a few deviations from this version, the compositional functions of the victim are performed by the loss of something important and valuable, sabotage, forgery, the disappearance of someone, etc.) Then three questions arise: who? as? why? These questions form the composition. In a standard detective scheme, the question is "who?" - the main and most dynamic, because the search for an answer to it occupies the greatest space and time of action, determines the action itself with its deceitful moves, the process of detecting, the system of suspicion-evidence, the play of hints, details, the logical construction of the course of thinking of the Great Detective (VD).

Thus, "who killed?" - the main spring of the detective. The other two questions - "how did the murder happen?" last pages, in the film - in the final monologues of the Great detective or in dialogues with the assistant, friend or enemy of the protagonist, personifying the slow-witted reader. As a rule, in the process of VD guessing, which is hidden from the reader, the questions of "how" and "why" have an instrumental meaning, since with their help, he identifies the culprit. It is curious that the predominance of "how" over "why" (and vice versa) determines, to some extent, the nature of the story. For the famous Englishwoman, "detective queen" Agatha Christie, the most interesting is the mechanics of crime and investigation ("how?"), And her beloved hero Hercule Poirot is tirelessly working on studying the circumstances of the murder, collecting evidence that recreates the picture of the crime, etc. The hero of Georges Simenon, Commissioner Maigret, getting used to the psychology of his characters, “entering the image” of each of them, tries first of all to understand “why” the murder took place, what motives led to it. The search for a motive is the most important thing for him.

In one of the first detectives of world literature - the novel "Murder on the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe, amateur detective Auguste Dupin, faced with a mysterious crime, the victim of which was the mother and daughter of L "Espana, begins by examining the circumstances. locked from the inside room? How to explain the unmotivatedness of the monstrous murder? How did the criminal disappear? Having found the answer to the last question (a mechanically slamming window), Dupin also finds the answer to all the others.

Compositional structures

The famous English author of detective stories Richard Austin Freeman, who tried not only to formulate the laws of the genre, but also to give it some literary weight, in his work "Mastery of a detective story" names four main compositional stages: 1) problem statement (crime); 2) investigation (solo part of the detective); 3) decision (answer to the question "who?"; 4) proof, analysis of facts (answers to "how?" And "why?").

The main theme of detective stories is formulated as "S - D situation", (from English words Security - security and Danger - danger), in which the home comfort of a civilized life is opposed scary world beyond this security. "Situation S - D" appeals to the psychology of the average reader, as it makes him feel a kind of pleasant nostalgia for his home and responds to his aspirations to get away from the dangers, to observe them from hiding, as if through a window, to entrust the care of his fate strong personality... The development of the plot leads to an increase in danger, the effect of which is intensified by the whipping up of fear, the emphasis on the strength and composure of the offender and the helpless loneliness of the client. However, Yu. Shcheglov in his work "To the description of the structure of a detective story" asserts that such a situation is a description of only one semantic plan.

The detective almost always has a happy ending... In a detective story, this is a complete return to safety, through victory over danger. The detective administers justice, evil is punished, everything has returned to its usual course.

Intrigue, plot, plot

The detective intrigue comes down to the simplest scheme: crime, investigation, mystery solution. This circuit constructs a chain of events that form dramatic action... The variability is minimal here. The plot looks different. The choice of life material, the specific character of the detective, the place of action, the method of investigation, the determination of the motives of the crime create a plurality of plot structures within the boundaries of one genre. If the intrigue itself is non-ideological, then the plot is not only a formal concept, but necessarily associated with author's position, with the system defining this position.

The detective is characterized by the closest grinding in of all three named concepts - intrigue, plot, plot. Hence the narrowness of his plot possibilities, and, consequently, the limited content of life. In the set detective stories the plot coincides with the plot and is reduced to the logical-formal construction of a dramatized criminal charade. But even in this case, which is extremely important to understand, the form is not irrelevant to the ideological content, it is subordinate to it, because it arose as a protective idea of the bourgeois world order, morality, and social relations.

4. Suspense (suspense). Voltage

The structural and compositional features of the detective are a special mechanism of influence. Closely related to all these questions is the suspense problem, without which the genre in question is unthinkable. One of the main tasks of detective storytelling is to create a perceiving tension, which should be followed by relaxation, "liberation". The tension can be of the nature of emotional excitement, but it can also have a purely intellectual nature, similar to what a person experiences when solving a mathematical problem, a difficult rebus, when playing chess. It depends on the choice of elements of influence, on the nature and method of the story. Often, both functions are combined - mental stress is fueled by a system of emotional stimuli that cause fear, curiosity, compassion, and nervous shock. However, this does not mean that the two systems cannot perform in an almost purified form. Suffice it again to turn to the comparison of the structures of the stories of Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon. In the first case, we are dealing with a rebus detective, with its almost mathematical coldness in plotting, correct schemes, and bareness of plot action. On the contrary, Simenon's stories are characterized by the emotional involvement of the reader, caused by the psychological and social reliability of the limited living space on which the human dramas described by Simenon are played out.

It would be a gross mistake to regard suspense as a negative category only. It all depends on the content of the technique, on the purposes of its use. Suspense is one of the elements of amusement; through emotional stress, the intensity of impressions and spontaneity of reactions are also achieved.

Mystery, mystery, so characteristic of detective stories, is made up not only of "interrogation" (who? How? Why?), But also from a special system of action of these questions-riddles. Hints, riddles, clues, understatement in the behavior of the heroes, the mysterious concealment of the VD's thoughts from us, the total possibility of suspecting all participants - all this excites our imagination.

Mystery is designed to cause a special kind of irritation in a person. Its nature is twofold - it is a natural reaction to the fact of violent human death, but it is also an artificial irritation achieved by mechanical pathogens. One of them is the technique of inhibition, when the reader's attention is directed on the wrong track. In Conan Doyle's novellas, this function belongs to Watson, who always misunderstands the meaning of evidence, puts forward false motivation and plays "the role of the boy throwing the ball for the game." His reasoning is not devoid of logic, they are always plausible, but the reader, following him, falls into a dead end. This is the braking process, which the detective cannot do without.

Great detective.

The French scientist Roger Caillois, who wrote one of most interesting works on this topic - the essay "A Detective Story", claims that this genre "arose thanks to new life circumstances that began to dominate at the beginning of the 19th century. Fouche, creating a political police, thereby replaced strength and speed with cunning and secrecy. Until that time the representative of the authorities was given a uniform. The policeman rushed in pursuit of the criminal and tried to seize him. The secret agent replaced the pursuit with investigation, speed with intelligence, violence with secrecy. "

Catalog of techniques and characters.

No other literary genre has such a precise and detailed set of laws that defines the "rules of the game", sets the limits of what is permissible, and so on. The more the detective turned into a puzzle game, the more often and more persistently the rules-constraints, rules-guides, etc. were proposed. The symbolic nature of the riddle novel fit into a stable system in which not only situations, methods of deduction, but also characters became signs. For example, the victim of a crime has undergone a major revolution. She turned into a neutral props, the corpse became just the primary condition for the start of the game. This is especially pronounced in the English version of the detective story. Some authors tried to "compromise" the murdered, as if removing the moral and ethical problem: justifying the author's indifference to the "corpse".

In a more detailed form, the "rules of the game" were proposed by Austin Freeman in the article "Mastery of a detective story." He establishes four compositional stages - statement of the problem, consequence, solution, proof - and gives a description of each of them.

Even more significant were the "20 rules for writing detective stories" by S. Van Dyne. The most interesting of these rules are: 1) the reader must have an equal chance with the detective in solving the riddle; 2) love should play the smallest role. The goal is to put the criminal behind bars, and not bring a couple of lovers to the altar; 3) a detective or another representative of the official investigation cannot be a criminal; 4) the criminal can be detected only by logical-deductive means, but not by chance; 5) there must be a corpse in a detective story. A crime less than murder has no right to occupy the attention of the reader. Three hundred pages is too much for that; 6) the methods of investigation must have real basis, the detective has no right to resort to the help of spirits, spiritualism, reading thoughts at a distance; 7) there must be one detective - the Great detective; 8) the offender must be the person who, under normal conditions, cannot be on suspicion. Therefore, it is not advisable to find the villain among the servants; 9) all literary beauties, digressions not related to the investigation should be omitted; 10) international diplomacy as well as political strife are related to others prose genres etc.

Ambivalence.

One more feature of the detective story should be singled out in order to understand its special place in the literary series. It is about ambivalence, compositional and semantic duality, the purpose of which is the double specificity of perception. The plot of the crime is built according to the laws of a dramatic narrative, in the center of which the event is murder. It has its own characters, its action is due to the usual causal relationship. This is a crime story. The plot of the investigation - the investigation is constructed as a rebus, task, puzzle, mathematical equation and has a clearly playful character. Everything connected with a crime is distinguished by a bright emotional coloring, this material appeals to our psyche, the sense organs. The waves of mystery emitted by the narrative affect a person with a system of emotional signals, which are a message about a murder, a mysteriously exotic decor, an atmosphere of the involvement of all heroes in a murder, understatement, mystical incomprehensibility of what is happening, fear of danger, etc.

The detective's ambivalence explains both the popularity of the genre and traditional attitude to it as pampering, and the eternal dispute about what it should be, what functions to perform (didactic or entertaining) and what is more in it - harm or benefit. Hence the traditional confusion of views, points of view, requirements.

Summing up, it should be noted that the detective genre, despite its general entertainment orientation, is quite serious and self-sufficient. It makes a person not only think logically, but also understand the psychology of people. A distinctive feature of a classic detective story is the moral idea embedded in it, or morality, which marks, to varying degrees, all the works of this genre.

Every good detective story is built "in two lines": one line is formed by the riddle and what is connected with it, the other - by special "extra-mysterious" plot elements. If you remove the riddle, the work ceases to be a detective; if you remove the second line, a detective from a full-fledged artwork turns into a naked plot, a rebus. Both of these lines are in a detective story in a certain ratio and balance. When translating works of this genre, it is important to first familiarize yourself with the entire text, make a pre-translation analysis, isolate sections of the text that carry key information that helps to uncover secrets, and pay the greatest attention to these sections.

GENRE OF MOVIES. DETECTIVE.

Detect́ v(English detective, from Lat. detego - I reveal, I expose) is mainly a literary and cinematic genre, the works of which describe the process of investigating a mysterious incident in order to clarify its circumstances and solve the riddle. Usually, a crime is such an incident, and the detective describes its investigation and the determination of the perpetrators, in which case the conflict is built on the clash of justice with lawlessness, ending with the victory of justice.

1 Definition

2 Features of the genre

3 Typical characters

4 Detective story

5 Twenty Rules for Writing Detectives

6 Ten Commandments of Ronald Knox's detective novel

7 Some types of detectives

7.1 Gated Detective

7.2 Psychological detective

7.3 Historical detective

7.4 Ironic detective

7.5 Fantastic detective

7.6 Political detective

7.7 Spy detective

7.8 Police detective

7.9 "Cool" detective

7.10 Crime Detective

8 Detective in the movies

8.1 Aphorisms about the detective

Features of the genre

An important property of a classic detective story is the completeness of facts. The solution to the mystery cannot be based on information that was not provided to the reader during the description of the investigation. By the time the investigation is over, the reader should have enough information to help him find a solution on his own. Only a few insignificant details can be hidden, which do not affect the possibility of disclosing the secret. Upon completion of the investigation, all riddles must be solved, all questions must be answered.

A few more signs of a classic detective in the aggregate were named by N. N. Volsky as hyper-determinism of the world of the detective ("the world of the detective is much more orderly than the life around us"):

The ordinariness of the situation. The conditions in which the events of the detective take place are, on the whole, common and well known to the reader (in any case, the reader himself believes that he is confidently oriented in them). Thanks to this, it is initially obvious to the reader what of what is being described is ordinary, and what is strange, beyond the scope.

Stereotyped behavior of characters. Characters are largely devoid of originality, their psychology and behavioral models are quite transparent, predictable, and if they have any sharply distinguished features, then those become known to the reader. The motives of actions (including the motives of the crime) of the characters are also stereotyped.

The existence of a priori rules for plotting that do not always correspond to real life. So, for example, in a classic detective story, the narrator and the detective, in principle, cannot turn out to be criminals.

Eremey Parnov points out the following features of the classic detective genre:

the reader of the detective story is offered complicity in a kind of game - solving the mystery or the name of the criminal;

"Gothic exotic" -Starting with the infernal monkey, the founder of both genres (fantasy and detective) Edgar Poe, with the blue carbuncle and the tropical viper Conan Doyle, with the Indian moonstone of Wilkie Collins and ending with the secluded castles of Agatha Christie and the corpse in the boat of Charles Snow the detective is incorrigibly exotic. In addition, he is pathologically committed to the Gothic novel (the medieval castle is a favorite stage on which bloody dramas are played out).

schematic -

Unlike science fiction a detective is often written only for the sake of a detective, that is, a detective! In other words, the criminal adjusts his bloody activities to the detective, just as an experienced playwright adjusts the roles to specific actors.

there is one exception to these rules - the so-called. Inverted Detective.

Typical characters

Detective - directly involved in the investigation. A wide variety of people can act as a detective: law enforcement officers, private detectives, relatives, friends, acquaintances of the victims, sometimes completely random people. An investigator cannot be a criminal. The figure of the detective is the central one in the detective story.

A professional detective is a law enforcement officer. He can be a very high-level expert, and maybe even an ordinary one, of which there are many, a police officer. In the second case, in difficult situations, he sometimes turns to a consultant for advice (see below).

A private detective - for him investigating crimes is his main job, but he does not serve in the police, although he may be a retired police officer. As a rule, he is extremely highly qualified, active and energetic. Most often, a private detective becomes a central figure, and to emphasize his qualities, professional detectives can be brought into action, who constantly make mistakes, succumb to the provocations of a criminal, get on the wrong track and suspect innocent people. The opposition "a lone hero against a bureaucratic organization and its officials" is used, in which the sympathies of the author and the reader are on the side of the hero.

An amateur detective is the same as a private detective, with the only difference that investigating crimes is not a profession for him, but a hobby that he turns to only from time to time. A separate subspecies of an amateur detective is a random person who has never engaged in such activities, but is forced to conduct an investigation due to urgent need, for example, to save an unjustly accused loved one or to divert suspicion from himself (these are the main characters of all Dick Francis's novels). The amateur detective brings the investigation closer to the reader, giving him the impression that "I could figure it out too." One of the conventions of a series of detectives with amateur detectives (like Miss Marple) is that in real life a person, if he does not investigate crimes professionally, is unlikely to encounter so many crimes and mysterious incidents.

A criminal commits a crime, covers his tracks, tries to resist the investigation. In a classic detective story, the figure of the criminal is clearly indicated only at the end of the investigation; up to this point, the criminal can be a witness, a suspect or a victim. Sometimes the actions of the criminal are described in the course of the main action, but in such a way as not to reveal his identity and not to inform the reader of information that could not have been obtained during the investigation from other sources.

Victim - the one against whom the crime is directed or the one who suffered as a result of a mysterious incident. One of the standard options for a detective's denouement is that the victim turns out to be a criminal himself.

Witness - a person who has any information about the subject of the investigation. The perpetrator is often first shown in the description of the investigation as one of the witnesses.

An investigator's companion is a person who is constantly in contact with an investigator, participating in an investigation, but does not have the abilities and knowledge of an investigator. He can provide technical assistance in the investigation, but his main task is to more vividly show the outstanding abilities of the detective against the background of the average level of an ordinary person. In addition, a companion is needed to ask the detective questions and listen to his explanations, giving the reader the opportunity to follow the detective's train of thought and paying attention to certain points that the reader himself might have missed. Classic examples of such companions are Dr. Watson by Conan Doyle and Arthur Hastings by Agatha Christie.

A consultant is a person who has a pronounced ability to conduct an investigation, but does not directly participate in it himself. In detective stories, where a separate figure of the consultant stands out, she may be the main one (for example, the journalist Ksenofontov in the detective stories of Viktor Pronin), or it may turn out to be just an episodic advisor (for example, the detective's teacher, whom he turns to for help).

Assistant - does not conduct investigations himself, but provides the detective and / or consultant with information that he obtains himself. For example, a forensic expert.

Suspect - in the course of the investigation, it is assumed that it was he who committed the crime. The authors act differently with suspects, one of the often practiced principles is “none of those immediately suspected is a real criminal,” that is, everyone who falls under suspicion turns out to be innocent, and the real criminal turns out to be someone who was not suspected of anything. ... However, not all authors follow this principle. In Agatha Christie's detectives, for example, Miss Marple repeatedly says that "in life it is usually the one who is suspected first that is the culprit."

Detective story

The first works of the detective genre are usually considered to be the stories of Edgar Poe, written in the 1840s, but elements of the detective story have been used by many authors before. For example, in the novel by William Godwin (1756-1836) The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), one of the central characters is an amateur detective. A great influence on the development of detective literature was also provided by "Notes" by E. Vidocq, published in 1828. However, it was Edgar Poe who created, according to Eremey Parnov, the first Great Detective - amateur detective Dupin from the story "Murder on the Rue Morgue". Dupin subsequently fathered Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown (Chesterton), Lecoq (Gaborio) and Mr. Cuff (Wilkie Collins). It was Edgar Poe who introduced into the plot of the detective the idea of a rivalry in solving a crime between a private investigator and the official police, in which a private investigator, as a rule, prevails.

The detective genre became popular in England after the release of W. Collins's novels The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868). In the novels "The Hand of Wilder" (1869) and "Checkmate" (1871) by the Irish writer C. Le Fanu, the detective story is combined with a Gothic novel. The 30s - 70s are considered the golden age of detectives in England. 20th century. It was at this time that the classic detective novels of Agatha Christie, F. Biding and other authors were published, which influenced the development of the genre as a whole.

Twenty Rules for Writing Detectives

Twenty Rules for Writing Detectives. It is necessary to provide the reader with opportunities for unraveling secrets, equal to those of the detective, for which purpose it is clear and accurate to report all incriminating traces.

2. With regard to the reader, only such tricks and deception are permissible as can be used by the criminal in relation to the detective.

3. Love is forbidden. The story should not be a game of tags between lovers, but between a detective and a criminal.

4. Neither a detective nor any other professional investigator can be a criminal.

5. Logical conclusions must lead to exposure. Accidental or unfounded confessions are impermissible.

6. A detective cannot be absent from a detective who methodically searches for incriminating evidence, as a result of which he comes to a solution to the riddle.

7. Mandatory crime in a detective story is murder.

8. In solving a given mystery, all supernatural forces and circumstances must be excluded.

9. Only one detective can act in a story - the reader cannot compete with three or four members of the relay team at once.

10. The perpetrator must be one of the most or less significant characters well known to the reader.

11. An unacceptably cheap solution in which one of the servants is the criminal.

12. While the perpetrator may have an accomplice, the main story is about the capture of one person.

13. Secret or criminal communities have no place in a detective story.

14. The method of committing the murder and the method of investigation must be reasonable and scientifically sound.

15. For the quick-witted reader, the clue should be obvious.

16. In a detective story, there is no place for literature, descriptions of painstakingly developed characters, coloring the situation by means of fiction.

17. A criminal can never be a professional villain.

19. The motive of the crime is always of a private nature; it cannot be an espionage act, seasoned with any international intrigues, motives of secret services.

However, as Eremey Parnov writes,

The decade that followed the promulgation of the terms of the Van Dyne Convention finally discredited the detective as a genre of literature. It is no coincidence that we know well the detectives of previous eras and each time we turn to their experience. But we will hardly be able to name the names of figures from the Twenty Rules clan without going into the reference books. Modern Western detective has developed in spite of Van Dine, refuting point by point, overcoming limitations sucked from the finger. One paragraph (the detective should not be a criminal!), However, survived, although it was violated several times by the cinema. This is a reasonable prohibition, because it protects the very specifics of the detective, its core line ... In a modern novel, we will not see even traces of the "Rules" ...

The Ten Commandments of Ronald Knox's detective novel

Also, Ronald Knox, one of the founders of the Detective Club, proposed his own rules for writing detective stories:

I. The perpetrator must be someone mentioned at the beginning of the novel, but it must not be someone whose train of thought the reader was allowed to follow.

II. As a matter of course, the action of supernatural or otherworldly forces is excluded.

III. The use of more than one secret room or secret passage is not allowed.

IV. It is unacceptable to use hitherto unknown poisons, as well as devices that require a long scientific explanation at the end of the book.

V. The work should not feature a Chinese person.

Vi. A detective should never be helped by a lucky break; he should also not be guided by an unaccountable but correct intuition.

Vii. The detective doesn't have to be a criminal himself.

VIII. Having come across this or that clue, the detective is obliged to immediately present it to the reader for study.

IX. The detective's stupid friend, Watson in one guise or another, should not hide any of the considerations that come to his mind; in his mental abilities he should be slightly inferior - but only just slightly - to the average reader.

X. Indistinguishable twin brothers and doubles in general cannot appear in a novel if the reader is not properly prepared for it.

Some types of detectives

Closed-type detective

Edgar Poe, Murder on the Rue Morgue.

Cyril Hare, A Purely English Murder.

Agatha Christie, "Ten Little Indians", "Murder on the Orient Express" (and almost all of the works).

Leonid Slovin, "Additional Arrives on the Second Path".

Gaston Leroux, The Secret of the Yellow Room.

Psychological detective

This type of detective story may deviate somewhat from the classical canons in terms of the requirements for stereotypical behavior and typical psychology of heroes. Usually, a crime committed for personal reasons (envy, revenge) is investigated, and the main element of the investigation is the study of the personality traits of the suspects, their attachments, pain points, beliefs, prejudices, clarification of the past. There is a French psychological detective school.

Dickens, Charles, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Dostoevsky, Fedor, "Crime and Punishment".

Boileau - Narsezhak, "She-Wolf", "The One Who Has Done", "Sea Gate", "Outline the Heart".

Japrizo, Sebastien, "Lady with glasses and with a gun in the car."

Calef, Noel, Lift to the Scaffold.

Ball, John, "A Stuffy Night in the Carolina."

Historical detective

Main article: Historical detective

A historical work with detective intrigue. The action takes place in the past, or an old crime is being investigated in the present.

Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose"

Robert van Gulick, Judge Dee series

Agatha Christie "Death Comes at the End", "Five Little Pigs"

John Dixon Carr The Newgate Bride, The Devil in Velvet, Captain Slit

Ellis Peters, Cadfael Series

Ann Perry, Thomas Pitt Series, Monk

Boileau-Narsejak "In the enchanted forest"

Quinn, Ellery "The Unknown Manuscript of Dr. Watson"

Boris Akunin, Literary project "The Adventures of Erast Fandorin"

Leonid Yuzefovich, Literary project about the detective Putilin

Alexander Bushkov, The Adventures of Alexey Bestuzhev

See also List of detective stories about pre-revolutionary Russia

Ironic detective

The detective investigation is described from a humorous point of view. Often, works written in this vein parody and ridicule the cliches of a detective novel.

Agatha Christie, Partners in Crime

Varshavsky, Ilya, "The robbery will take place at midnight"

Kaganov, Leonid, "Major Bogdamir saves money"

Kozachinsky, Alexander, "Green Van"

Westlake, Donald, The Cursed Emerald (Hot Stone), The Bank That Gurgled

Joanna Khmelevskaya (most of the works)

Daria Dontsova (all works)

Yene Reite (all works)

Fantastic detective [edit | edit wiki text]

Main article: Fantastic detective

Works at the junction of science fiction and detective story. The action can take place in the future, an alternative present or past, or in a completely fictional world.

Lem, Stanislav, "Investigation", "Inquiry"

Russell, Eric Frank, "Everyday Work", "The Wasp"

Holm van Zaichik, cycle "There are no bad people"

Kir Bulychev, "Intergalactic Police" cycle ("Intergpol")

Isaac Asimov, Lucky Starr Cycles - Space Ranger, Detective Elijah Bailey and Robot Daniel Olivo

Sergey Lukyanenko, Genome

John Brunner, The Squares of the City, 1965; Russian translation - 1984

Strugatsky brothers, Hotel "At the Dead Mountaineer"

Cook, Glenn, a series of fantasy detective stories about Detective Garrett

Randall Garrett, a series of fantasy detective stories about the detective Lord Darcy

Boris Akunin "Children's Book"

Kluger, Daniel, cycle of fantasy detectives "Magical Matters"

Edgar Alan Poe - Murder on the Rue Morgue

Harry Turtledove - Toxic Spell Dump Case

Political detective

One of the genres quite far from the classic detective story. The main intrigue is built around political events and rivalry between various political or business leaders and forces. It often happens that the protagonist himself is far from politics, however, while investigating the case, he stumbles upon an obstacle to the investigation by the "powers that be" or uncovers some kind of conspiracy. A distinctive feature of a political detective is (although not necessarily) the possible absence of completely positive characters, except for the main one. This genre is rarely found in its pure form, but it can be a constituent part of the work.

Agatha Christie, The Big Four

Boris Akunin, "State Councilor"

Levashov, Victor, "The Conspiracy of Patriots"

Adam Hall, Berlin Memorandum (Qwilleran Memorandum)

Nikolay Svechin, "The Hunt for the Tsar", "Demon of the Underworld"

Spy detective [edit | edit wiki text]

Agatha Christie, Cat Among Doves, Man in Brown Suit, Hours, Meetings of Baghdad (and most of the works).

John Le Carré, "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"

John Boynton Priestley, Haze Over Gretley (1942)

James Grady, Six Days of the Condor

Boris Akunin, "Turkish Gambit"

Dmitry Medvedev, "It was near Rivne"

Nikolay Dalekiy, "The Practice of Sergei Rubtsov"

Ian Fleming, James Bond series

The history of the creation and development of the detective genre. Detective genre and its types

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Detective plot composition

Required traits

Detective in Russia and the USSR

Collegiate YouTube

Subtitles

Definition

Features of the genre

Twenty Rules for Writing Detectives by Stephen Van Dyne

The Ten Commandments of Ronald Knox's detective novel

Some types of detectives

Closed-type detective

Psychological detective

Historical detective

Ironic detective

Fantastic detective

Political detective

Spy detective