Mystery Stories, Genres, and Childhood
While reading The Typology of Detective Fiction, two things immediately came to my mind. The first was just my stream of consciousness while reading the passage. I thought back to elementary school when (for me at least) everyone was reading some sort of mystery novel. Whether it was Cam Janson, The Box Car Children, Nancy Drew, or even The Hardy Boys, it seemed that everyone had their favorite mystery series (I'll always be partial to The Box Car Children). Once we moved into middle school we had all shifted away from mystery and into science fiction and futuristic distopias. My freshman year of high school I was reintroduced to the Mystery Genre with Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I had forgotten how much I loved the suspense of trying to figure out what would happen next in a mystery story. I knew that Christie's story was geared towards a much older audiance, but something about her story felt very different than those from elementary school. Maybe it was because no one's life ws on the line, but the stories played with my emotions differently.
As The Typology of Detective Fiction goes on I really understood what point it was trying to make. Can we break down mystery stories into a smaler category of detective stories and then break down that subcategory yet again? Yes, Cam Janson and And Then There Were None are different but both are still mystery stories. Just because we definea genre one way does not mean that everything in that genre must fit perfectly. Even music is the same way. An artist or album can fit into any number of genres. With this idea in mind then truly anything can be a mystery story. The Five Essential Elements of a Mystery Story truly allow any story to be placed in the mystery genre.
I like your point, but I wonder what you think about when the article describes how sometimes we like it better when a story fits a defined, predictable mold? Obviously, like you mentioned, some mystery stories seem very different from others, but do they still all fit within the same genre? Does it make the story better if it's in that genre, and if so, how much should each story differentiate itself?
ReplyDeleteAnd Then There Were None is an interesting example because according to the rules in the article, it isn't detective fiction. It doesn't really have a protagonist and none of the main characters solve the crime. Maybe it would be appropriate to classify mysteries that follow many characters without a central detective. I think the "Five Essential Elements" oversimplified what constitutes a mystery because according to those rules, And Then There Were None is not a mystery because there is no main character so we receive all information from a variety of individuals. Maybe classification should focus less on specific events that occur and instead use the reading experience as a benchmark, because we know from reading And Then There Were None that it's definitely a mystery story.
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