Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James

Settings, particularly landscapes, are often most effectively described when the writer uses a place with which he is intimately familiar. If we want to know what it is like to be a detective in twenty-first-century Edinburgh we can learn more from Ian Rankin's Rebus novels than we can from any official guidebook, as we move with Rebus down the roads and alleyways of the city and into its pubs and its public and private buildings. Ruth Rendell has used East Anglia and London, both places with which she is familiar, for some of her most admired novels written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. East Anglia has a particular attraction for detective novelists: the remoteness of the east coast, the dangerous encroaching North Sea, the bird-loud marshes, the emptiness, the great skies, the magnificent churches and the sense of being in a place alien, mysterious and slightly sinister, where it is possible to stand under friable cliffs eaten away by the tides of centuries and imagine that we hear the bells of ancient churches buried under the sea.

-Talking About Detective Fiction

When I was a teenager I read a fair amount of Agatha Christie, starting with the twisty, clever And Then There Were None. At one point, I thought maybe I could write a detective story too. I looked over all of the books of Christie's that I owned in an attempt develop a sort of formula for writing mysteries. I remember being particularly concerned with how many suspects I would need. Nothing came of it, of course, except me dreaming up character names (always amusing), but it's certainly illustrative of why I would pick up a book like Talking About Detective Fiction.

P.D. James, grande dame of modern mysteries, is (unsurprisingly) a big fan of detective novels. In Talking About Detective Fiction, she traces the history of the genre (hello, Wilkie Collins!), delves into some points of to consider while writing (such as setting, above), then takes a moment to consider detective fiction today. It's a quick read, and a great overview of what is possibly my favorite genre of fiction.

I especially enjoyed reading James's thoughts on mystery authors over the years, many of whom I was familar with (Arthur Conan Doyle, Christie; also Rendell and Rankin, to a lesser extent). I am eager to try out some of the authors I've never read before, like Dorothy L. Sayers and some of the other Golden Age novelists. She also mentions Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe series, which I've wanted to try for some time now solely because I think the name Dalziel is so wonderful.

One other point that James makes that I thought was interesting is on the modern convention of the flawed detective. Although Sherlock Holmes would fit in well with some of the more psychologically complex detectives today — indeed, James notes that his seeming modernity is probably part of why that series has remained so popular — many detectives from years gone by had much more stable lives.

But are we in danger of reducing the fictional police officer to a stereotype - solitary, divorced, hard-drinking, psychologically flawed and disillusioned? Real-life senior detectives are not stereotypes. Would anyone, I wonder, create a fictional detective who enjoys his work, gets on well with his colleagues, is happily married, has a couple of attractive, well-behaved children who cause him no trouble, reads the lesson in his parish church and spends his few free hours playing the cello in his amateur string quartet? I doubt whether readers would find him wholly credible, but he would certainly be an original.*

I have to confess that I wonder how interesting this detective would be. Perhaps that's unfair. I'd probably give it a try if the premise seemed engaging, but I do enjoy those damaged detectives.

Up next: Surprisingly, not a mystery, although that would have been a nice segue. I've started The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and I'm really enjoying it so far. Fingers crossed.

*Yes, this excerpt is from the same page on which she discusses Kurt Wallander, who ticks all of the boxes pretty nicely, although he's not particularly hard-drinking — compared with a Harry Hole or a McNulty, at least — and generally seems to go for junk food more than alcohol.

PS - My 100th post, just one day shy of the one-year anniversary of this blog. Neat.