The normal recreation of noble minds
- edwar0
- Sep 17, 2013
- 3 min read
Before writing The Moonstone in 1868, Wilkie Collins first studied the form and narrative techniques of Edgar Allan’s Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin mystery novels, but decided that he wanted to create a more 'authentic' story.
To add a greater sense of verisimilitude to his novel, Collins based The Moonstone on a genuine event — the Road Hill House murder of 1860.
This sensational crime had taken place in a large manor house in Somerset - the family home of wealthy industrialist named Samuel Kent. The brutal murder of Kent’s infant son had both horrified and fascinated the British public and had led to a national obsession with the art of detection.
Collins’ novel was a huge success. Not least, because — being fiction —The Moonstone was able to deliver a far more satisfying sense of ending than had been achieved with the real Road Hill House murder. (Years after the murder, British newspapers were still receiving letters from members of the public, offering personal theories and speculations on the case.)
As well as setting the standard for British mystery writing, The Moonstone also began the convention of murder mysteries being set in isolated English country houses…
But, it wasn’t until the invention of Sherlock Holmes, some twenty years later, that the detective fiction really caught the public imagination.
Arthur Conan Doyle's stories were considerably more accessible than Collins' had been. As well as being much shorter, their relatively simple language and plot structures were also supported by illustrations. This was especially helpful in broadening their appeal, as many working people were only just acquiring the basic skill of reading...
By the late-1920s and early-1930s — when Conan Doyle was finishing off the last of his Holmes stories — detective fiction had hit its ‘golden age’, and the likes of Dorothy L. Sayers, R. Austin Freeman, John Dickson Carr and, of course, the phenomenally successful, Agatha Christie had taken up the mantle.
Detective fiction, by its very nature, has always been fairly formulaic - and, by the 'golden age', the genre had adopted many notable conventions and clichés.
In 1929, Ronald Knox, a Catholic priest and essayist, had read so many detective novels that he was moved to write down what he called the ‘Ten Commandants of Detective Fiction’ — and, though some of these might seem quite strange to a modern audience, Knox’s list was hailed as the vital ‘rules of the game’ by many contemporary mystery writers
Knox’s Ten Commandments (or ‘Decalogue’) are as follows:
The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
No Chinaman must figure in the story.
No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
The detective himself must not commit the crime.
The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
The ‘sidekick’ of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
Not unreasonably, point five on the list has prompted some debate.
Unfortunately Knox didn’t really elaborate on it, so it is really in the realms of conjecture as to why he advocated the banishment of ‘Chinamen’ from detective novels.
It has been suggested, perhaps a tad hopefully, that Knox was complaining about racist caricatures in the novels of Sax Rohmer, creator of the ‘fiendish Oriental mastermind,’ Dr. Fu Manchu. (Certainly, in Rohmer’s The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, the description of Fu Manchu is pretty offensive.)
However, Knox's ‘no Chinaman’ rule could be seen, more reasonably, as simply an extension of his second rule, since — especially in a lot of the cheaper 'mystery shocker' fiction of the golden age — characters from the ‘mysterious East’ tended to be assigned mystical powers, almost as a matter of course.
The inclusion of any supernatural element in a mystery story moves it away from the traditional detective fiction model, by interfering with the reader’s ability to logically determine the story's outcome.
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