Thursday, June 14, 2012

American Popular Literature - Detective Fiction and Its Genres

A. INTRODUCTION


Detective fiction is branch of crime fiction in which emphasizes the search for a solution . The detective fiction is distinguished from other forms of fiction by the fact that it is a puzzle. Although a crime usually has been committed, the reader's attention is directed to mysterious circumstances surrounding the crime rather than to the event itself. The tale's climax is the solution of the puzzle, and the bulk of the narrative concerns the logical process by which the investigator follows a series of clues to this solution. Very often the detective solves the mystery by means of deductive reasoning from facts known both to the character and the reader. In addition to detective stories, other types of crime fiction include spy thrillers, which are concerned primarily with international intrigue and politics, and crime novels, which are stories that deal with the roots and nature of criminal acts.


The detective fiction or story, often called a whodunit, did not spring into being in its current form. Rather, it changed over time, beginning with stories in which the reader is not a participant at all, but a witness, so to speak, looking over the detective’s shoulder. -Encarta


B. EARLY DETECTIVE FICTION
The first true detective stories were written in the 1840s by American author Edgar Allan Poe. A famous example is a 16th-century Italian story that was translated into French in 1719 by the Chevalier de Mailly. Le voyage et les aventures des trois princes de Sarendip (translated into English as The Travels and Adventures of Three Princes of Sarendip, 1722) concerns three princes who are asked how they know that a certain camel is blind in one eye, lame, and has lost a tooth. The blindness is shown by the fact that the camel ate grass from only one side of a track, although the grass was growing more thickly on the other. The lameness is demonstrated by irregular hoof prints in the dust, which indicate a dragging leg. And the missing tooth is apparent from lumps of partly chewed food that were found in the animal's path. Commonly in detective fiction, the investigator has some source of income other than detective work and some undesirable eccentricities or striking characteristics. He or she frequently has a less able assistant who acts as an audience for the explanation of the mystery at the end of the story.

C. TYPES OF DETECTIVE FICTION
Types of detective fiction include the police procedural, where the mystery is solved by detailed police work, as in the work of Swedish writers Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo; the inverted novel, where the identity of the criminal is known from the beginning and only the method or the motive remains to be discovered, as in Malice Aforethought (1931) by Francis Iles.

D. SUBGENRES OF DETECTIVE STORIES
The first amateur railway detective was created by Victor Whitechurch and his stories impressed Ellery Queen and Dorothy L. Sayers.Cozy mysteries began in the late 20th century as a reinvention of the Golden Age whodunnit; these novels generally shy away from violence and suspense and frequently feature female amateur detectives. Modern cozy mysteries are frequently humorous and thematic.
Another subgenre of detective fiction is the serial killer mystery, which might be thought of as an outcropping of the police procedural. There are early mystery novels in which a police force attempts to contend with the type of criminal known in the 1920s as a homicidal maniac, such as a few of the early novels of Philip Macdonald and Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails. However, this sort of story became much more popular after the coining of the phrase "serial killer" in the 1970s and the publication of The Silence of the Lambs in 1988. These stories frequently show the activities of many members of a police force or government agency in their efforts to apprehend a killer who is selecting victims on some obscure basis. They are also often much more violent and suspenseful than other mysteries.

D. MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE FICTION: COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
Detective fiction offers the unique opportunity for the readers to enjoy a plot, to have the fun of anticipating how a puzzle will be resolved, while their comprehension can be deepened by exploration of the dynamics which lead, logically, if occasionally tragically, to certain actions. In this sense, detective fiction is motivationally superior and educationally sound. And detective fiction has always been related to public interest in problems of modern, urban life, particularly in crime. But crime as a feature of western social life was not generally recognized until the rise of large cities in the early 1800s, In mystery fiction the mysteries seen in detective stories are retained, but the investigation focuses more on character than on physical clues or on fooling the reader.

Bibliography
(httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiDetective_fiction).
( Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008)
(http//www.tiscali.co.ukreferenceencyclopaediahutchinsonm0000908.html)
(httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiDetective_fiction)

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