Thoughts on Whodunnit Mysteries
The only real mystery stories I've read are Sherlock Holmes tales, so while I read "The Typology of Detective Fiction", I tried relating what it was saying to the stories I knew. Some things were obvious for all detective stories, but there were other motives that surprised me that they were true across the genre. For example, I already understood that after the explanation of the crime, not a whole lot of actual plot occurs, mostly just find new clues and extrapolating new information. However, I couldn't believe that the article mentioned how detective stories are often written by a close friend of the detective, and are written as if the narrator is writing a book describing the events. Like I said, Sherlock Holmes was my only reference point (this observation is definitely true with Watson), so I was surprised to learn that this style is a common theme.
Another point I found interesting was the distinction between story and plot. I never thought about how much the way a story is told affects the reader's interpretation compared to the events of the story itself. The metaphor I like to visualize this is to imagine a winding river, where you are trying to get from point A to point B. You start at one place, you finish at another, and some other stuff happens in between. However, the way river bends off of the direct line hugely affects how you get to your destination. It made me reconsider what's more important in the making of a good story: the story itself, or the way the story is delivered?
Another point I found interesting was the distinction between story and plot. I never thought about how much the way a story is told affects the reader's interpretation compared to the events of the story itself. The metaphor I like to visualize this is to imagine a winding river, where you are trying to get from point A to point B. You start at one place, you finish at another, and some other stuff happens in between. However, the way river bends off of the direct line hugely affects how you get to your destination. It made me reconsider what's more important in the making of a good story: the story itself, or the way the story is delivered?
It is interesting that many detective stories are written not from the point of view of the detective. This is also seen in many Agatha Christie novels, where the story is narrated by the great detective Hercule Poirot's friend Hastings. I suppose that this provides a "layman" in the story that is experiencing the investigation much the same as the reader, and it also means that we cannot see into the detective's mind, which would completely ruin the suspense.
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way about the divide between the crime and the detective sections of the novel. I too was only really familiar with Sherlock novels for stories, and when I saw the point that these stories don't really have a plot, I considered why I had enjoyed them so much. For me, I saw that the interesting part in these stories was finding out how the puzzle clues came together, and that's why, after reading those stories once before and coming back to them years later, I still found them to be fun. This principle of the two stories being unaffected by each other I think is best exemplified in Columbo, where the murder is shown at the start of the episode, and the audience knows who the killer is as they wait for Columbo to unravel the crime.
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