I finally finished the rewrite of my most recent mystery story, The Body and the Bomb. It bloated a bit: up to almost 8,500 words, which makes me a little unhappy, but it’s better.
This was a bit of an experiment. I printed out the last draft, went through it with a pen -- then instead of opening up the original file, I typed it all back in. The theory here is that this is what writers used to have to do in the bad old days of typewriters and hand writing and clay tablets and oral tradition (that last one probably got ugly when you were really embarrassed about a draft). The results were mixed.
On the plus side, I had to give everything at least some attention. Having just finished a read-through, I had the whole thing in my head and I knew exactly where it was going. This was a great help in terms of deciding what clues had to go where, and which bits weren’t pointing in the right direction. I think that the result is a smoother piece of work. Also on the plus side was that I was more willing to junk large sections of text that I hadn't recopied yet. Heck, the laziness factor probably saved me a few hundred needless words. This was particularly true at the end: I had never been happy with the last two sections, and on retyping I just balked at doing all that work on something I thought was sub-par. This prompted me to produce what I consider a much better ending.
On the minus side, it was not nearly as helpful as I thought it would be in terms of making structural changes. Part of this was my failure to think ahead and put page breaks between sections, to see how things read in a different order. As a result, I focused far more on tactics rather than strategy, and had to go back through later to make the more sweeping high-level changes that the story needed. Also on the minus side was the fact that retyping was an opportunity to introduce new and interesting typos.
Bottom line for this experiment: It's a worthwhile thing to try, but only when I'm alread very happy with a draft, but when I expect to have the time and energy to go back through it again. I am not sure that this would work well for a much longer work, but I may try it.
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Second Draft
I’ve finished the second draft of The Body and the Bomb -- up to almost 7,000 words now. I strengthened the co-investigator character, making her a bit less of a Watson, and added a couple interviews to fill in some gaps. It’s got a nuclear weapon, and black market human organs, and a pyramid scheme. Fun, fun fun.
If anyone wants to give it a read and offer feedback, let me know. I think I’ve plugged all the logical leaks -- and yes that’s a challenge!
If anyone wants to give it a read and offer feedback, let me know. I think I’ve plugged all the logical leaks -- and yes that’s a challenge!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Out the door!
I bet you thought I forgot about Viable Paradise! Not so, I sent off my application this morning. I admit though, that I did dither a bit: I just finished a draft of a story that I like better, another mystery entitled "The Body and the Bomb". But when push came to shove, that one was just not polished enough and could take months to bring up to the level where it would be a good representative piece.
Unfortunately, all I have of "Death in a Tin Can" (my submission piece) is the PDF, thanks to a rather nasty bug in either the software I use or the MobileMe service which wrecked the RTF bundle I'd originally written in, so I need to hurry and reconstruct the RTF for the electronic part of the submission, which should be in their hands before the physical copy arrives. Fortunately I'm working from an RTF only a week older than the PDF, but it's aggravating nonetheless...
Wish me luck!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Round the World
As I've mentioned on other occasions, I like to keep track of the search terms that people use to find this site. There are two major categories of terms that bring people in from around the world: robots and Agatha Christie. For the robot posts, I get clumps of hits, nearly all of them from school districts. But the Christie hits never cease to amaze me. I knew in principle that her work was known the world over, but it's interesting to see near-daily reminders of the fact that readers in Thailand and Saudi Arabia are reading her stories, which I frequently discover in the context of Google searches containing her name that arrive at my blog. I suspect that most of these searches are looking for context for her stories: 1930s London is a long way away for a lot of modern readers even in the English-speaking world, and the Labors of Hercules stories have an added layer below that.
Sadly, I've never been able to coax any of these individuals to explain what brings them to my site in particular* but it does seem to come in waves. The Nemean Lion page is one of the most-loaded, but the Stymphalean Birds page has recently gotten much more attention. I looked to see whether the (excellent) Poirot series with David Suchet is doing the Labors, but as far as I can tell, while that is planned, they have not gotten to it yet -- and would be released in the US before much of the non-English-speaking world anyway. There is at least one anime series based on these books, but that's nothing new.
So for anyone who arrives here looking for those things, mind if I pick your brain? I'm dying to ask about your mystery reading habits :)
In the meantime, back to working on that post explaining why Robert Parker (sadly recently deceased) was an excellent fantasy novelist. (And why he'd scowl at me for so saying)
* Actually, I suspect that I am primarily seeing browser pre-caching.
Sadly, I've never been able to coax any of these individuals to explain what brings them to my site in particular* but it does seem to come in waves. The Nemean Lion page is one of the most-loaded, but the Stymphalean Birds page has recently gotten much more attention. I looked to see whether the (excellent) Poirot series with David Suchet is doing the Labors, but as far as I can tell, while that is planned, they have not gotten to it yet -- and would be released in the US before much of the non-English-speaking world anyway. There is at least one anime series based on these books, but that's nothing new.
So for anyone who arrives here looking for those things, mind if I pick your brain? I'm dying to ask about your mystery reading habits :)
In the meantime, back to working on that post explaining why Robert Parker (sadly recently deceased) was an excellent fantasy novelist. (And why he'd scowl at me for so saying)
* Actually, I suspect that I am primarily seeing browser pre-caching.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Labors of Hercules: The Stymphalean Birds
It's been a while since I posted the last one of these, but they haven't been far from my mind. These are the stories, after all, that I remember so fondly after all these years, and from which I have a lot to learn! Spoilers follow.
The Stymphalian Birds (Christie uses an alternate spelling, which appears to be deprecated) were a flock of nasties, possibly among the first cyborgs in fiction: man-eating birds with bronze beaks and claws, and metallic feathers that (in some versions) could be shot as weapons. (They appear in other tales as well, as described here) They nested in a backwater swamp, terrorizing a nearby village. Worse, they were pets of the god Ares. Hercules, charged for this labor to drive them away, enlisted the help of the goddess Athena, who provided him with a set of castanets. He used those to startle the birds into flight, whereupon he shot as many as he could in the confusion.
The Poirot version takes place off in an Eastern European backwater (the fictitious "Herzoslovakia" on the shores of Lake Stempka), a small hotel in a small village where well-off English people go for a vacation away from it all. Poirot himself does not appear until nearly the end of the story, the narrative instead focuses on the experience of Under-Secretary Harold Waring, vacationing "away from it all". His mind fixates upon a pair of elderly spinsters, with long thin noses and loose shawls, who reminded him of a pair of sinister birds -- harpies. (Ah hah! Midway through this series we know that these are the people to watch!) Staying at the hotel also are two English ladies, a younger woman (Mrs. Clayton) and her mother (Mrs. Rice), who Waring naturally gets to know as the only other English speakers. Better yet, they speak some German and French, and so he (who speaks nothing but English) finds them to be most useful companions, as well as pleasant.
The two ladies are very friendly, but somewhat nervous. Mrs. Clayton has married unwisely, and her husband Philip is insanely jealous -- not to mention violent. Waring sympathizes, such a pretty lady ought not be tied to such a brute! And he shares with them his unease with those two harpies (Polish ladies from good families says the concierge). Some time later, he receives a frantic visit: Philip Clayton has returned, and in a fight with his wife, he has been killed! It is a plain case of self-defense, that is plain to the chivalric Mr. Waring, but oh, the backwards Herzoslovakians will not understand that. They must be bribed, indeed, many of them must be bribed. Mr. Waring, gentleman that he is, graciously offers to pay.
The affair, it is settled... but wait, remember those old birds? They speak to Mrs. Rice, who comes back horrified -- they know all about the death, she says, and are blackmailing them!
Waring is outraged, and afraid. He goes for a walk, cursing out loud, and why not? Nobody here speaks English... except for that foreign gentleman he stumbles upon by the name of Hercule Poirot. Poirot listens carefully and agrees that the blackmailers must not be given into. He rings his modern castanets (the telegraph wires) and has the guilty parties arrested: [SPOILER] Mrs. Rice and Mrs. Clayton, who have preyed upon Mr. Waring (alone and gullible in a foreign land) and induced him to not only hand over sums of money but to do so with intent to bribe the police!
This one plays on blind spots more than anything else. The point of view character has some serious ones: he's utterly reliant on two people he'd never met before, by virtue of the language barrier. And, as Poirot points out, he has some rather nasty assumptions: that foreigners are suspicious, that foreign police are corrupt, and that English ladies are harmless flower-like creatures who ought to be protected from brutes both foreign and domestic. To a certain extent, the story turns on the reader either sharing or at least being sympathetic to those assumptions -- if the reader does not share the assumption that foreign policemen may be open to bribery, then the reader at least should be willing to believe that Agatha Christie herself believes it. On top of that, one of the blinds used took advantage of the reader's expectation that the Stymphalian Birds would come into play, and the identification of the two Polish ladies as bird-like. There was quite a lot of manipulation in this little story, wasn't there?
The structure of this story as well is interesting to me in two ways. First, the detective doesn't even appear until the last couple pages of the story. He is appealed to almost by accident, and immediately understands what has happened. Christie has had several stories and novels with this structure, usually relying upon a smart protagonist who ultimately comes up short and needs a little extra push. (I seem to recall that Cat Among the Pigeons followed this formula, though not to this extreme, and many of the Miss Marple mysteries follow this pattern)
Using a different viewpoint character gives a number of freedoms, not least among them the freedom to have the protagonist take a stupid but necessary step: in this case, Waring paying the bribe. If your detective is supposed to be intelligent, after all, it would not do to be taken in too easily. In this, the story mirrors the structure favored by Isaac Asimov in his Black Widowers stories, where a story is told recounting events that have already happened and the "detectives" (the Black Widowers, in theory, but in practice always their waiter, Henry) unravel it and demonstrate the solution.
The second way in which the story structure is interesting to me is that until after Poirot first appeared, it was not even obvious that there was a mystery to solve: everything was perfectly straight-forward. A tale of woe, perhaps, with ominous figures, but few hints that anything was not what it appeared to be.
I've seen a number of stories of the first type (detective brought in at the end) but I cannot off the top of my head name another where it is not obvious until the detective arrives that things are not as they seem. (Well, maybe those old Scooby Doo TV shows, but in most of those there was not only the inevitable illusion of supernaturality, but periodic protests that it couldn't be real (could it?)) It works so well here because the viewpoint character, Waring, is so entirely at the mercy of the ladies that he (and we) accept everything presented as much as fact as the translation of the dinner menu. Come to think of it, wasn't that the idea behind Monty Python's Hungarian Phrasebook sketch?
Next up, when I get the time: The Cretan Bull.
The Stymphalian Birds (Christie uses an alternate spelling, which appears to be deprecated) were a flock of nasties, possibly among the first cyborgs in fiction: man-eating birds with bronze beaks and claws, and metallic feathers that (in some versions) could be shot as weapons. (They appear in other tales as well, as described here) They nested in a backwater swamp, terrorizing a nearby village. Worse, they were pets of the god Ares. Hercules, charged for this labor to drive them away, enlisted the help of the goddess Athena, who provided him with a set of castanets. He used those to startle the birds into flight, whereupon he shot as many as he could in the confusion.
The Poirot version takes place off in an Eastern European backwater (the fictitious "Herzoslovakia" on the shores of Lake Stempka), a small hotel in a small village where well-off English people go for a vacation away from it all. Poirot himself does not appear until nearly the end of the story, the narrative instead focuses on the experience of Under-Secretary Harold Waring, vacationing "away from it all". His mind fixates upon a pair of elderly spinsters, with long thin noses and loose shawls, who reminded him of a pair of sinister birds -- harpies. (Ah hah! Midway through this series we know that these are the people to watch!) Staying at the hotel also are two English ladies, a younger woman (Mrs. Clayton) and her mother (Mrs. Rice), who Waring naturally gets to know as the only other English speakers. Better yet, they speak some German and French, and so he (who speaks nothing but English) finds them to be most useful companions, as well as pleasant.
The two ladies are very friendly, but somewhat nervous. Mrs. Clayton has married unwisely, and her husband Philip is insanely jealous -- not to mention violent. Waring sympathizes, such a pretty lady ought not be tied to such a brute! And he shares with them his unease with those two harpies (Polish ladies from good families says the concierge). Some time later, he receives a frantic visit: Philip Clayton has returned, and in a fight with his wife, he has been killed! It is a plain case of self-defense, that is plain to the chivalric Mr. Waring, but oh, the backwards Herzoslovakians will not understand that. They must be bribed, indeed, many of them must be bribed. Mr. Waring, gentleman that he is, graciously offers to pay.
The affair, it is settled... but wait, remember those old birds? They speak to Mrs. Rice, who comes back horrified -- they know all about the death, she says, and are blackmailing them!
Waring is outraged, and afraid. He goes for a walk, cursing out loud, and why not? Nobody here speaks English... except for that foreign gentleman he stumbles upon by the name of Hercule Poirot. Poirot listens carefully and agrees that the blackmailers must not be given into. He rings his modern castanets (the telegraph wires) and has the guilty parties arrested: [SPOILER] Mrs. Rice and Mrs. Clayton, who have preyed upon Mr. Waring (alone and gullible in a foreign land) and induced him to not only hand over sums of money but to do so with intent to bribe the police!
This one plays on blind spots more than anything else. The point of view character has some serious ones: he's utterly reliant on two people he'd never met before, by virtue of the language barrier. And, as Poirot points out, he has some rather nasty assumptions: that foreigners are suspicious, that foreign police are corrupt, and that English ladies are harmless flower-like creatures who ought to be protected from brutes both foreign and domestic. To a certain extent, the story turns on the reader either sharing or at least being sympathetic to those assumptions -- if the reader does not share the assumption that foreign policemen may be open to bribery, then the reader at least should be willing to believe that Agatha Christie herself believes it. On top of that, one of the blinds used took advantage of the reader's expectation that the Stymphalian Birds would come into play, and the identification of the two Polish ladies as bird-like. There was quite a lot of manipulation in this little story, wasn't there?
The structure of this story as well is interesting to me in two ways. First, the detective doesn't even appear until the last couple pages of the story. He is appealed to almost by accident, and immediately understands what has happened. Christie has had several stories and novels with this structure, usually relying upon a smart protagonist who ultimately comes up short and needs a little extra push. (I seem to recall that Cat Among the Pigeons followed this formula, though not to this extreme, and many of the Miss Marple mysteries follow this pattern)
Using a different viewpoint character gives a number of freedoms, not least among them the freedom to have the protagonist take a stupid but necessary step: in this case, Waring paying the bribe. If your detective is supposed to be intelligent, after all, it would not do to be taken in too easily. In this, the story mirrors the structure favored by Isaac Asimov in his Black Widowers stories, where a story is told recounting events that have already happened and the "detectives" (the Black Widowers, in theory, but in practice always their waiter, Henry) unravel it and demonstrate the solution.
The second way in which the story structure is interesting to me is that until after Poirot first appeared, it was not even obvious that there was a mystery to solve: everything was perfectly straight-forward. A tale of woe, perhaps, with ominous figures, but few hints that anything was not what it appeared to be.
I've seen a number of stories of the first type (detective brought in at the end) but I cannot off the top of my head name another where it is not obvious until the detective arrives that things are not as they seem. (Well, maybe those old Scooby Doo TV shows, but in most of those there was not only the inevitable illusion of supernaturality, but periodic protests that it couldn't be real (could it?)) It works so well here because the viewpoint character, Waring, is so entirely at the mercy of the ladies that he (and we) accept everything presented as much as fact as the translation of the dinner menu. Come to think of it, wasn't that the idea behind Monty Python's Hungarian Phrasebook sketch?
Next up, when I get the time: The Cretan Bull.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Death in a Tin Can
The first draft of my latest short story is finally DONE! Inspector Crandall has his work cut out for him: there are space ships and robots and (of course) a murder. Can he solve the murder? Will his space sickness get the better of him?
Well, you can find out for yourself if you volunteer to read through it and tell me your thoughts ;)
I'm intending this piece as my submission to Viable Paradise. The word limit for that is 8,000 (this draft stands at 7,900 words). As such, I want it to be as good as I can get it by early January, while hopefully tightening it up enough that I can add things as necessary. I will also be sending this to Critters for feedback, but they work best when the piece is already reasonably polished.
Well, you can find out for yourself if you volunteer to read through it and tell me your thoughts ;)
I'm intending this piece as my submission to Viable Paradise. The word limit for that is 8,000 (this draft stands at 7,900 words). As such, I want it to be as good as I can get it by early January, while hopefully tightening it up enough that I can add things as necessary. I will also be sending this to Critters for feedback, but they work best when the piece is already reasonably polished.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Still Working...
Sorry for the radio silence lately -- I've been hard at work on the third Jonas Crandall mystery, tentatively titled "Death in a Tin Can". Yes, there are robots in this one, sheesh.
This one has a hard 8,000-word limit, because I'm planning to apply to Viable Paradise, a writing workshop in Martha's Vineyard. It's a long shot and expensive, but given the list of instructors, it's really worth it. I'm planning to use Tin Can as my application piece, hence the word count. That means it needs to be shorter than the other pieces, and hopefully better than them too.
Shorter pieces are tough for me. I don't think I ramble, but I do tend to be able to deal out the verbiage like nobody's business. This plot is, I think, easily simple enough to fit in 8,000 words, but having not really accomplished something so short yet, that makes me worry whether it will actually be any good.
Well! There's only one way to find out, right?
This one has a hard 8,000-word limit, because I'm planning to apply to Viable Paradise, a writing workshop in Martha's Vineyard. It's a long shot and expensive, but given the list of instructors, it's really worth it. I'm planning to use Tin Can as my application piece, hence the word count. That means it needs to be shorter than the other pieces, and hopefully better than them too.
Shorter pieces are tough for me. I don't think I ramble, but I do tend to be able to deal out the verbiage like nobody's business. This plot is, I think, easily simple enough to fit in 8,000 words, but having not really accomplished something so short yet, that makes me worry whether it will actually be any good.
Well! There's only one way to find out, right?
Friday, October 23, 2009
Drafty!
I forgot to mention the results of sending my short story (well, technically novella) Where Do They Bury the Survivors? off to Critters: I got eight very thoughtful critiques, almost uniformly positive. This is quite heartening, but I got several times a disheartening criticism: it's too long for a new writer. Very few short fiction markets take 20k word stories, and I'm told that those that do, are highly unlikely to take one from a new author. If they're going to devote that many pages to someone, they want the name to sell copies.
I have a dilemma, then. Do I shorten the story, perhaps using some of the lessons I'm learning from Dame Agatha? Or do I lengthen it into a short novel and find a regular publisher? I admit, I'm awfully tempted to try the novel route, but I just don't think the story will take that much extra text. Even the shortest novels are usually twice the length of this piece.
Of course, this dilemma is false. Nothing stops me from revising the story according to the feedback I got, and sending it out to one or two of the markets that might consider it. I lose nothing but printing, postage, time, and possibly self-respect doing this, after all. In fact, that's the most sensible next step for this story.
I say "this story" -- I've been working on another one this last two weeks, trying to apply some of the lessons I've been learning from The Labors of Hercules. I just finished the first draft, at about 9,000 words -- a much better length. I'll send it to Critters this week, I think. If it gets a similar positive reception I think I'll shop it around while I work on Survivors. If that gets sold, then that will be a significant boost to the prospects of the other.
I have a dilemma, then. Do I shorten the story, perhaps using some of the lessons I'm learning from Dame Agatha? Or do I lengthen it into a short novel and find a regular publisher? I admit, I'm awfully tempted to try the novel route, but I just don't think the story will take that much extra text. Even the shortest novels are usually twice the length of this piece.
Of course, this dilemma is false. Nothing stops me from revising the story according to the feedback I got, and sending it out to one or two of the markets that might consider it. I lose nothing but printing, postage, time, and possibly self-respect doing this, after all. In fact, that's the most sensible next step for this story.
I say "this story" -- I've been working on another one this last two weeks, trying to apply some of the lessons I've been learning from The Labors of Hercules. I just finished the first draft, at about 9,000 words -- a much better length. I'll send it to Critters this week, I think. If it gets a similar positive reception I think I'll shop it around while I work on Survivors. If that gets sold, then that will be a significant boost to the prospects of the other.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Labors of Hercules: The Augean Stables
The next Labor of Hercules was to go to King Augeas, who assigned him to go to his stables, kill ten rats, and bring him their tails. Erm, excuse me. [1] King Augeas was the proud owner of a herd of 3000 divine cattle, which he kept in a stable, which he never cleaned. In this way, he is often credited with the invention of factory farming. Augeas, so convinced that this nasty, demeaning job would conquer Hercules, bet him a tenth the herd that he could not do it in a single day.
Hercules diverted two rivers, cleaned out the stables in an hour or so, then went to claim his reward, whereupon we learn the moral of the story: don't mess with a naked bodybuilder. Augeas didn't pay up, Hercules killed him. A lot of people wind up dead around Hercules -- isn't that how he was assigned the Labors in the first place?
Hercule Poirot takes on the modern day equivalent of the Augean Stables: Politics. A popular prime minister has recently stepped down, and his son-in-law (by all accounts a "sound man") has taken office. Almost immediately, a tabloid gets wind of scandal, and manages to prove that the previous prime minister was a total crook. The new guy looks into it and discovers that it's all true. He and one of his ministers come to Poirot for help. Poirot seriously considers whether to take this case.
What follows is more of a caper story than anything else. Poirot attempts bribery somewhat half-heartedly. (And here Christie breaks the fourth wall in a way she very rarely does, remarking that this refusal was his excuse to do what followed)
Most of the rest of the story is in a very broad view: no characters as such, just very short snippets of reaction to the news coming out. We get a surprise -- the allegations about the Prime Minister take a back seat to allegations of his wife's improprieties. There are pictures of her with some lothario, and there are rumors of all manner of debauchery until finally she has a nervous breakdown!
Her husband, the current (good) PM sues for libel. A star witness is produced who completely refutes the charges. Now nobody believes anything the tabloid says, and it folds. Poirot emerges at the very end, and explains that he was behind the false charges -- he swept away the muck with a different force of nature: sex.
On a personal level, I vacillate on whether I like this story or not. On the one hand, it's well-written and exciting, and a refreshing change of pace from the other stories. On the other hand, it's not very satisfying. True, he allowed the tabloid to do itself in: if it had not been greedy and salacious, it would have never fallen prey to Poirot's trick. But it drives me nuts that he didn't suggest the simple expediency of coming clean, beating the tabloid to the punch.
Anyway, from a writing point of view, I was struck by the sort of zoom effect: it starts focused tightly on Poirot, then completely zooms out for an omniscient view of public reaction as it evolves over weeks. Then it zooms back in.
I have seen this technique before, in works that I thought were not well done. Here, I think it works primarily because it is coupled with a change in style. The writing becomes choppy, abrupt. Several short segments, each starting with, "People were talking." In each we get snippets of nameless people talking, showing how these representative samples are focusing on the salacious details and leaving alone the (true!) political matters. It works well, but only because it is short. The alternative, focusing on Poirot, would have been weaker: he would have betrayed himself to the reader, for one thing, but he would also merely be a filter between the reader and the public whose reaction is at the heart of the story. (There's also a reprise of the "no smoke without fire" theme from earlier, which I thought a nice touch)
I'm also struck by how hard Christie works to make the prime minister an obvious "good guy": oh, he wants honesty, he mocks himself for being just another politician. This is where his companion is useful: the other minister (who wants to hush it up) is an excellent contrast. Tom DeLay would look moral and forthright next to this guy. Oh, and the fellow who would win the election if this government fell would be most unsuitable! Out of the question.
In the end, it's not a bad story, but I think it's fatally weakened by not addressing what I feel is the obvious solution, that of coming clean. By not addressing what looks like an obvious potential solution (it need not be done, just discounted) I felt a little like the whole rigmarole was a bit of a farce. More than that, I felt it broke Poirot's character a bit.
Lessons learned for me: brief periods of "clever" reaction writing can work well. If you're presenting the reader with a Gordian knot, clean the area of would-be Alexanders. (It need not be too explicit, just enough to let a reasonably intelligent reader discount it)
[1] But seriously, I've been struck several times by how similar the Labors of Hercules are to modern RPG quests. "Go here, kill this thing, come back." All it needs is pixellated graphics, a repetitive soundtrack, and a 3/4 perspective and you've got half the RPGs ever made. Most platforms would require the characters to wear more clothing, though.
Hercules diverted two rivers, cleaned out the stables in an hour or so, then went to claim his reward, whereupon we learn the moral of the story: don't mess with a naked bodybuilder. Augeas didn't pay up, Hercules killed him. A lot of people wind up dead around Hercules -- isn't that how he was assigned the Labors in the first place?
Hercule Poirot takes on the modern day equivalent of the Augean Stables: Politics. A popular prime minister has recently stepped down, and his son-in-law (by all accounts a "sound man") has taken office. Almost immediately, a tabloid gets wind of scandal, and manages to prove that the previous prime minister was a total crook. The new guy looks into it and discovers that it's all true. He and one of his ministers come to Poirot for help. Poirot seriously considers whether to take this case.
What follows is more of a caper story than anything else. Poirot attempts bribery somewhat half-heartedly. (And here Christie breaks the fourth wall in a way she very rarely does, remarking that this refusal was his excuse to do what followed)
Most of the rest of the story is in a very broad view: no characters as such, just very short snippets of reaction to the news coming out. We get a surprise -- the allegations about the Prime Minister take a back seat to allegations of his wife's improprieties. There are pictures of her with some lothario, and there are rumors of all manner of debauchery until finally she has a nervous breakdown!
Her husband, the current (good) PM sues for libel. A star witness is produced who completely refutes the charges. Now nobody believes anything the tabloid says, and it folds. Poirot emerges at the very end, and explains that he was behind the false charges -- he swept away the muck with a different force of nature: sex.
On a personal level, I vacillate on whether I like this story or not. On the one hand, it's well-written and exciting, and a refreshing change of pace from the other stories. On the other hand, it's not very satisfying. True, he allowed the tabloid to do itself in: if it had not been greedy and salacious, it would have never fallen prey to Poirot's trick. But it drives me nuts that he didn't suggest the simple expediency of coming clean, beating the tabloid to the punch.
Anyway, from a writing point of view, I was struck by the sort of zoom effect: it starts focused tightly on Poirot, then completely zooms out for an omniscient view of public reaction as it evolves over weeks. Then it zooms back in.
I have seen this technique before, in works that I thought were not well done. Here, I think it works primarily because it is coupled with a change in style. The writing becomes choppy, abrupt. Several short segments, each starting with, "People were talking." In each we get snippets of nameless people talking, showing how these representative samples are focusing on the salacious details and leaving alone the (true!) political matters. It works well, but only because it is short. The alternative, focusing on Poirot, would have been weaker: he would have betrayed himself to the reader, for one thing, but he would also merely be a filter between the reader and the public whose reaction is at the heart of the story. (There's also a reprise of the "no smoke without fire" theme from earlier, which I thought a nice touch)
I'm also struck by how hard Christie works to make the prime minister an obvious "good guy": oh, he wants honesty, he mocks himself for being just another politician. This is where his companion is useful: the other minister (who wants to hush it up) is an excellent contrast. Tom DeLay would look moral and forthright next to this guy. Oh, and the fellow who would win the election if this government fell would be most unsuitable! Out of the question.
In the end, it's not a bad story, but I think it's fatally weakened by not addressing what I feel is the obvious solution, that of coming clean. By not addressing what looks like an obvious potential solution (it need not be done, just discounted) I felt a little like the whole rigmarole was a bit of a farce. More than that, I felt it broke Poirot's character a bit.
Lessons learned for me: brief periods of "clever" reaction writing can work well. If you're presenting the reader with a Gordian knot, clean the area of would-be Alexanders. (It need not be too explicit, just enough to let a reasonably intelligent reader discount it)
[1] But seriously, I've been struck several times by how similar the Labors of Hercules are to modern RPG quests. "Go here, kill this thing, come back." All it needs is pixellated graphics, a repetitive soundtrack, and a 3/4 perspective and you've got half the RPGs ever made. Most platforms would require the characters to wear more clothing, though.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Labors of Hercules: The Erymanthean Boar
[Spoilers]
The next labor of Hercules was the live capture of the Erymanthean Boar. This is the sort of thing that Hercules excels at. The more interesting part of the story, in some tellings, is that he got drunk with a centaur buddy, the other centaurs got angry at him for drinking their sacred wine, and he shot them with poisoned arrows. And shot Chiron, a kindly and immortal centaur, who was so tormented by the poison that he voluntarily gave up his immortality. So, Hercules kinda screwed the pooch on this one, but he did get around to capturing the boar by driving it into deep snow, and brought it back to his cousin the king, who was terrified of it. (Presumably they ate the boar)
Hercule Poirot's Erymanthean Boar is the French murderer Marrascaud, a dangerous and desperate criminal. He receives word of the criminal's planned rendezvous at the same remote Swiss chalet at which Poirot is staying, but fortunately there is a policeman already on the scene. (The person who passed the note would have recognized Poirot's mustaches anywhere!)
There are very few people staying at the chalet: an over-friendly American, a woman who visits every year, a trio of horse-racing enthusiasts (apparently at this time these people are seedy or dangerous and not hopelessly quaint), and a famous Austrian doctor. Poirot is sure that one of these is the killer Marrascaud -- but who?
The waiter reveals himself as the police officer mentioned to Poirot, and the two consult. He took the place of the old waiter, who the chalet owners were happy to get rid of as a complete incompetent. During the night, the train up to the chalet had broken down -- a suspicious accident. They are trapped with the killer, and those horse enthusiasts are surely his gang! But who is Marrascaud? And why did he choose to rendezvous here?
The investigations are cut short, however. The "waiter" is assaulted in the night, and his face cut up very badly. Poirot is also attacked, but fortunately the American, like all Americans, is carrying a pistol and rescues him from those knife-wielding Frenchmen. (... yeah...) They search the chalet, and find the body of the old waiter, stabbed and with a note on him indicating that this was Marrascaud, and this is what happens to people who cross his gang! But Poirot knows exactly who Marrascaud really is, and why he was there.
So how do you tell an effective thriller in *estimates* 5,000 words? Christie gets a bit of savings out of the fact that chasing a killer is always prime Poirot provender: no need to explain! She jumps into the action relatively quickly. She takes a mere thousand words to set the scene, including the lengthy letter from the Swiss police (pro tip: apparently learning about your case in a letter removes the need for lengthy dialog!) and introduce most of the characters. Another short section introduces the scene, the little hotel in which Poirot is staying, posing briefly as a silk merchant.
These scenes still managed to be fairly slow, but coming after the information about the killer on the loose, I think that serves the story rather than detracts: it adds a little to the tension. If the letter had come later, say after Poirot arrived at the hotel, then the long discussion of his fellow passengers on the funicular train would take on a much different cast. He would be merely people-watching (as he does in many of the novels) and the short scene would be more difficult to take, I'd have been much more likely to skim.
There is very little madness in Poirot stories. The violence is rarely senseless. Christie's killers may be passionate, but they do not kill or wound indiscriminately. When the policeman shows up with his face bandaged, I've been trained to wonder: why was he not killed? What imbecile thugs merely leave a threat cut up and not put out of the way for good? And once you think of them as rational, then why on earth would they leave a note on Marrascaud. Really, the only point of the note was to say, "Hey, the guy you're chasing is dead, stop looking!" ... and nobody really believes that.
That brings me, I think, to my real take-home lesson from the Erymanthean Boar: crazy villains are a cheat. The villains might be reckless or desperate, but they're not killers just for the sake of killing, nor can they be beyond rational acting. I am sure that there are authors out there who understand mental illness well enough to be able to actually write an insane villain, but for most of us "insane" just means "I'm going to have this guy do this, and I don't have to think up a reason because he's craaaaaaazy!"
To put it another way, in a fair mystery, whenever the reader starts to think, "That was really dumb of the killer" the reader should always be able to conclude, "I'm not getting a clear picture of what's really going on." Confusion should be an excuse for re-examination. The point of seeing the policeman's bandaged face should for the trained reader be the first point of saying that, and the point of finding the body should be the second.
And Christie does something else interesting: there's almost no time to breathe between those two points. The reader could stop and think, I suppose, but there's just a few more pages... I think that once the main clues start coming in like that in a short story, pauses are fatal. Only after it is all in place, and she's had a little opportunity to sow some doubt, does the story slow down again. And there is a somewhat satisfying length of time before the twist, which I also appreciate.
Had I been in Christie's editor's shoes, though, I'd have advised against the bit with the American and the gun. There's no reason for it, and it's such a Deus Ex Machina -- especially when Poirot boasts about having been so careful in another matter and of knowing all along certain identities. Maybe she felt bad about having gently mocked the character [1], but if she feels the need to have Poirot pre-emptively complain that it might have well been "a drama upon the stage" then it could have stood a rewrite. (Of course, she also disliked Poirot, so maybe she enjoyed the opportunity of having him slip up in a potentially fatal way)
Anyway, it's getting late. Next time, the Augean Stables.
Edit: I had forgotten to point out a subtle way that Christie has been fitting these stories to the originals. While the dangerous killer is very much like a wild boar, it's true, there's also an interesting parallel between Hercules catching the boar by driving it into deep snow, and Marrascaud being caught while trapped in a snow-bound Swiss hotel.
[1] Among other things she called him a "bore" which I had hoped was a pun and the American would turn out to be Marrascaud, but no. I would not be at all surprised to learn that in a previous draft, the American had been the villain, though.
The next labor of Hercules was the live capture of the Erymanthean Boar. This is the sort of thing that Hercules excels at. The more interesting part of the story, in some tellings, is that he got drunk with a centaur buddy, the other centaurs got angry at him for drinking their sacred wine, and he shot them with poisoned arrows. And shot Chiron, a kindly and immortal centaur, who was so tormented by the poison that he voluntarily gave up his immortality. So, Hercules kinda screwed the pooch on this one, but he did get around to capturing the boar by driving it into deep snow, and brought it back to his cousin the king, who was terrified of it. (Presumably they ate the boar)
Hercule Poirot's Erymanthean Boar is the French murderer Marrascaud, a dangerous and desperate criminal. He receives word of the criminal's planned rendezvous at the same remote Swiss chalet at which Poirot is staying, but fortunately there is a policeman already on the scene. (The person who passed the note would have recognized Poirot's mustaches anywhere!)
There are very few people staying at the chalet: an over-friendly American, a woman who visits every year, a trio of horse-racing enthusiasts (apparently at this time these people are seedy or dangerous and not hopelessly quaint), and a famous Austrian doctor. Poirot is sure that one of these is the killer Marrascaud -- but who?
The waiter reveals himself as the police officer mentioned to Poirot, and the two consult. He took the place of the old waiter, who the chalet owners were happy to get rid of as a complete incompetent. During the night, the train up to the chalet had broken down -- a suspicious accident. They are trapped with the killer, and those horse enthusiasts are surely his gang! But who is Marrascaud? And why did he choose to rendezvous here?
The investigations are cut short, however. The "waiter" is assaulted in the night, and his face cut up very badly. Poirot is also attacked, but fortunately the American, like all Americans, is carrying a pistol and rescues him from those knife-wielding Frenchmen. (... yeah...) They search the chalet, and find the body of the old waiter, stabbed and with a note on him indicating that this was Marrascaud, and this is what happens to people who cross his gang! But Poirot knows exactly who Marrascaud really is, and why he was there.
So how do you tell an effective thriller in *estimates* 5,000 words? Christie gets a bit of savings out of the fact that chasing a killer is always prime Poirot provender: no need to explain! She jumps into the action relatively quickly. She takes a mere thousand words to set the scene, including the lengthy letter from the Swiss police (pro tip: apparently learning about your case in a letter removes the need for lengthy dialog!) and introduce most of the characters. Another short section introduces the scene, the little hotel in which Poirot is staying, posing briefly as a silk merchant.
These scenes still managed to be fairly slow, but coming after the information about the killer on the loose, I think that serves the story rather than detracts: it adds a little to the tension. If the letter had come later, say after Poirot arrived at the hotel, then the long discussion of his fellow passengers on the funicular train would take on a much different cast. He would be merely people-watching (as he does in many of the novels) and the short scene would be more difficult to take, I'd have been much more likely to skim.
There is very little madness in Poirot stories. The violence is rarely senseless. Christie's killers may be passionate, but they do not kill or wound indiscriminately. When the policeman shows up with his face bandaged, I've been trained to wonder: why was he not killed? What imbecile thugs merely leave a threat cut up and not put out of the way for good? And once you think of them as rational, then why on earth would they leave a note on Marrascaud. Really, the only point of the note was to say, "Hey, the guy you're chasing is dead, stop looking!" ... and nobody really believes that.
That brings me, I think, to my real take-home lesson from the Erymanthean Boar: crazy villains are a cheat. The villains might be reckless or desperate, but they're not killers just for the sake of killing, nor can they be beyond rational acting. I am sure that there are authors out there who understand mental illness well enough to be able to actually write an insane villain, but for most of us "insane" just means "I'm going to have this guy do this, and I don't have to think up a reason because he's craaaaaaazy!"
To put it another way, in a fair mystery, whenever the reader starts to think, "That was really dumb of the killer" the reader should always be able to conclude, "I'm not getting a clear picture of what's really going on." Confusion should be an excuse for re-examination. The point of seeing the policeman's bandaged face should for the trained reader be the first point of saying that, and the point of finding the body should be the second.
And Christie does something else interesting: there's almost no time to breathe between those two points. The reader could stop and think, I suppose, but there's just a few more pages... I think that once the main clues start coming in like that in a short story, pauses are fatal. Only after it is all in place, and she's had a little opportunity to sow some doubt, does the story slow down again. And there is a somewhat satisfying length of time before the twist, which I also appreciate.
Had I been in Christie's editor's shoes, though, I'd have advised against the bit with the American and the gun. There's no reason for it, and it's such a Deus Ex Machina -- especially when Poirot boasts about having been so careful in another matter and of knowing all along certain identities. Maybe she felt bad about having gently mocked the character [1], but if she feels the need to have Poirot pre-emptively complain that it might have well been "a drama upon the stage" then it could have stood a rewrite. (Of course, she also disliked Poirot, so maybe she enjoyed the opportunity of having him slip up in a potentially fatal way)
Anyway, it's getting late. Next time, the Augean Stables.
Edit: I had forgotten to point out a subtle way that Christie has been fitting these stories to the originals. While the dangerous killer is very much like a wild boar, it's true, there's also an interesting parallel between Hercules catching the boar by driving it into deep snow, and Marrascaud being caught while trapped in a snow-bound Swiss hotel.
[1] Among other things she called him a "bore" which I had hoped was a pun and the American would turn out to be Marrascaud, but no. I would not be at all surprised to learn that in a previous draft, the American had been the villain, though.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Labors of Hercules: The Arcadian Deer
[Spoilers...]
Hercules was charged for his third (or fourth) labor with the capture of the Arcadian Hind, a sacred deer belonging to the goddess Artemis, an uncatchable animal. Hercules chased it all over Greece until he got sick of the chase and shot it in the leg. He then carried it back, but who did he run into but Artemis? He talked his away out of that one and brought it in for full credit. (Presumably they ate the deer)
Poirot's Arcadian Deer is a beautiful young lady's maid being sought by a poor country mechanic who met her at a rich fellow's house when he was there to do repairs. Poirot discovers that she was the maid to a Russian ballet dancer. His chase leads him all over England and to the maid's native Italy... and a graveside. Does Poirot give up there? Mais, non! On a hunch, he goes to Switzerland to the hospital bed of the dancer herself. Guess who was playing lady's maid at a friend's house and met a cute mechanic? Aww.
Didn't enjoy this one as much, it seemed like a straight-forward chase with a predictable end. Christie flirted with a subplot involving blackmail, which had the effect of confounding the chase, but I felt it didn't amount to much.
What to learn from The Arcadian Deer? If I were writing a chase story, sure: the irrelevant subplot wasn't bad, and Christie gave the reader credit by not allowing the story to seriously consider the death theory for long. But it's not a mystery. Only the one twist (the mechanic's lady not being a maid) is fair in the sense that it was telegraphed, but I thought it was pretty weak.
Edit: I may have written off that subplot too soon. While at first I considered it weak, I thought it over and realized that in addition to confounding the chase, it did so in a clever way: it introduced the theme of mistaken identity into the plot. Everyone thought the maid being asked about was the more recent maid, not the dead one. Poirot got led down the garden path because he was not specific enough about his quarry. There are lots of potential ways to confuse a chase, but this confuses matters in a thematically appropriate way, and constitutes an additional clue.
Sorry, kid, they can't all be winners. But hey, this puts Poirot in Switzerland, just in time for the story of the live capture of the Erymanthean Boar!
Hercules was charged for his third (or fourth) labor with the capture of the Arcadian Hind, a sacred deer belonging to the goddess Artemis, an uncatchable animal. Hercules chased it all over Greece until he got sick of the chase and shot it in the leg. He then carried it back, but who did he run into but Artemis? He talked his away out of that one and brought it in for full credit. (Presumably they ate the deer)
Poirot's Arcadian Deer is a beautiful young lady's maid being sought by a poor country mechanic who met her at a rich fellow's house when he was there to do repairs. Poirot discovers that she was the maid to a Russian ballet dancer. His chase leads him all over England and to the maid's native Italy... and a graveside. Does Poirot give up there? Mais, non! On a hunch, he goes to Switzerland to the hospital bed of the dancer herself. Guess who was playing lady's maid at a friend's house and met a cute mechanic? Aww.
Didn't enjoy this one as much, it seemed like a straight-forward chase with a predictable end. Christie flirted with a subplot involving blackmail, which had the effect of confounding the chase, but I felt it didn't amount to much.
What to learn from The Arcadian Deer? If I were writing a chase story, sure: the irrelevant subplot wasn't bad, and Christie gave the reader credit by not allowing the story to seriously consider the death theory for long. But it's not a mystery. Only the one twist (the mechanic's lady not being a maid) is fair in the sense that it was telegraphed, but I thought it was pretty weak.
Edit: I may have written off that subplot too soon. While at first I considered it weak, I thought it over and realized that in addition to confounding the chase, it did so in a clever way: it introduced the theme of mistaken identity into the plot. Everyone thought the maid being asked about was the more recent maid, not the dead one. Poirot got led down the garden path because he was not specific enough about his quarry. There are lots of potential ways to confuse a chase, but this confuses matters in a thematically appropriate way, and constitutes an additional clue.
Sorry, kid, they can't all be winners. But hey, this puts Poirot in Switzerland, just in time for the story of the live capture of the Erymanthean Boar!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Labors of Hercules: The Lernean Hydra
[Spoilers of very good stories]
The Hydra is one of those monsters that people tend to still know: the many-headed beast, whose heads grew back double when amputated. The Hydra of legend also had incredibly poisonous blood and a single immortal head. Hercules did not take on the Hydra alone, he went in a-chopping while his nephew used a firebrand to sear the bloody stumps, thereby preventing the heads from re-growing. When he finally found the immortal head, he tore it off, and buried it so that while alive, it could not regrow. On re-reading these old stories, I'm impressed by how much each story has a component of outsmarting (which we'll revisit for the Augean Stables) rather than just pure strength.
Hercule Poirot's Hydra is a rather more slippery beast: Rumor. Dr. Oldfield, a middle-aged country doctor, has discovered just that with the death of his wife. Now his practice is falling off, people give him stares on the street, and he's even received nasty letters. Poirot eventually gets out of him the particulars: people believe that he poisoned his wife with arsenic in order to marry his pretty young assistant.
Poirot visits the town and interviews a few people, including a servant (dismissed immediately after the wife's death) and a nurse. He tells people in "strict confidence" that he is there to investigate Mrs. Oldfield's death, so naturally word gets around town much faster than otherwise. The assistant, Jean, is horrified by the idea of exhuming the body for an official investigation. Nurse Harrison, on the other hand, comes around to the idea, and recounts an overhead conversation that seems quite damning to Jean and Dr. Oldfield. Poirot calls up the Home Office, who exhume and autopsy the body, and discover lethal levels of arsenic.
Someone comes forward with further information: another suspect behaved quite suspiciously in the days leading up to Mrs. Oldfield's death! Poirot encourages her, but when she comes forward with news of a compact filled with arsenic, she's gone too far. She's been followed in secret by Poirot's valet Georges, who saw her purchase the compact and hide it. She is the one who poisoned Mrs. Oldfield, under the delusion that Dr. Oldfield was in love with her and would marry her. She started the vicious rumors, and then seized on the chance to do away with her rival when Poirot arrived -- oh, but she overstepped.
This story is even shorter than the first, between 5,000 and 6,000 words by my estimation. The cast of main characters is kept small, and I noticed that the character names are very different so that it's easy to keep track. Which is helpful, because the story is entirely populated with stock characters and stock motivations. That doesn't make it a bad story, but it's hard for a character to catch in one's mind without anything interesting to grab hold of. Ergo, differentiating the characters as much as possible through names and speaking styles.
"There's no smoke without fire" is the most important phrase of the story, almost a theme. It's a horrible phrase in terms of spreading gossip, circular logic that lets a rumor perpetuate itself. But instead of repudiating it, Poirot takes it as true in a way that Dr. Oldfield refused, and that was enough of a clue for him to find a way forward.
I had been thinking of this as a very fair puzzle, but in that case it's hard to account for the compact. I spent the morning thinking about it, and I decided that a mystery in fact has two basic parts: figuring out whodunnit, and figuring out how to prove it. I believe that the Fairness Doctrine applies only to the first part by necessity.
My thinking is as follows: the reader has only access to a certain subset of the clues available to the detective, and has the inability to act in the detective's space. The first part of the story, then, is a matter of presenting all the information needed to come to the correct conclusion. This is do-able, like writing a logic puzzle. With care, you can ensure that the reader has all the information that the detective uses to solve the crime (or more!) and thereby make the puzzle fair.
The second part, however, is where real art comes in. In a good story, the reader can become convinced of the guilt of one of the suspects -- but a real mystery can remain about how on earth to prove it. And this second part, it seems to me, is often where mystery stories fall down. This is where the detective tends to do things behind the scenes, where coincidences tend to most help the detective, and where suspects do dumb things and fall into traps. And frequently the reader doesn't have a fair chance to evaluate just how artificial it all is, because he or she does not know who the detective is targeting (even if it is known exactly what the detective is doing!).
Proof, the essential element of this second part, requires certain things: a solid understanding of the setting and the people, and the ability to act in this space. In order to feel fair, the reader needs as much of the first as possible in order the judge the outcome -- but the reader will never have the second. There will always be more than one way to do it, as Mr. Wall would say. One person would have Georges follow the suspect, another person might lay a careful logical trap and prove a contradiction, another might reconstruct the crime and prove that only one person had means, motive, and opportunity.
I'm unsure about how well Christie manages the second part in The Lernean Hydra. She loves these "induce the criminal to incriminate herself" endings, but they're so hard to get right, and the reader is left with a sense of a house of cards, that by making one sensible move, the criminal could have evaded detection. Remember too that often in this step the detective is proving his case not only to the characters but also to the reader! Poirot's actions in this story just seem reckless on first examination. If the murderer had just remained calm, then Dr. Oldfield would likely have been hanged. Of course, Poirot relies always on "the psychology": he tailored his plan according to the sort of person the criminal was. (And had this plan failed, we assume, he would have had another up his sleeve.) This is not the sort of plan he would have used for a stolid and cautious individual who doesn't care about blaming someone else for the crime.
From a craft point of view, this suggests an easy way to expand a short story into a novel: making plans fail and then recovering from them, or simply taking more time with it. Stretch it out, throw in lots of red herrings to make it look like someone else might have done it, and build up the tension a bit more. The best example of this is Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (public domain in the US), where it was perfectly clear who did it and why, but proving it was a terrible ordeal that involved shifting attention from the real criminal.
So, what did I learn from the Lernean Hydra? Again, a simple plot is necessary, something that won't take too long to explain, giving you room to elaborate and confuse the issue. Second, that as long as you're careful and spend a lot of thought on it, you can save a lot of space in the proving step with a trap rather than a careful (and potentially boring) logical analysis. If you writer the story knowing how the criminal will get caught, then you can probably do a better job of setting the stage early on. Third, Christie's use of stock characters is interesting to me. The country doctor, the invalid wife, the inveterate gossip -- varying too much from the stereotypes would attract too much attention. It might have made the doctor more interesting as a person to have a passion for juggling, but it would be distracting and Chekhov would definitely disapprove.
The Hydra is one of those monsters that people tend to still know: the many-headed beast, whose heads grew back double when amputated. The Hydra of legend also had incredibly poisonous blood and a single immortal head. Hercules did not take on the Hydra alone, he went in a-chopping while his nephew used a firebrand to sear the bloody stumps, thereby preventing the heads from re-growing. When he finally found the immortal head, he tore it off, and buried it so that while alive, it could not regrow. On re-reading these old stories, I'm impressed by how much each story has a component of outsmarting (which we'll revisit for the Augean Stables) rather than just pure strength.
Hercule Poirot's Hydra is a rather more slippery beast: Rumor. Dr. Oldfield, a middle-aged country doctor, has discovered just that with the death of his wife. Now his practice is falling off, people give him stares on the street, and he's even received nasty letters. Poirot eventually gets out of him the particulars: people believe that he poisoned his wife with arsenic in order to marry his pretty young assistant.
Poirot visits the town and interviews a few people, including a servant (dismissed immediately after the wife's death) and a nurse. He tells people in "strict confidence" that he is there to investigate Mrs. Oldfield's death, so naturally word gets around town much faster than otherwise. The assistant, Jean, is horrified by the idea of exhuming the body for an official investigation. Nurse Harrison, on the other hand, comes around to the idea, and recounts an overhead conversation that seems quite damning to Jean and Dr. Oldfield. Poirot calls up the Home Office, who exhume and autopsy the body, and discover lethal levels of arsenic.
Someone comes forward with further information: another suspect behaved quite suspiciously in the days leading up to Mrs. Oldfield's death! Poirot encourages her, but when she comes forward with news of a compact filled with arsenic, she's gone too far. She's been followed in secret by Poirot's valet Georges, who saw her purchase the compact and hide it. She is the one who poisoned Mrs. Oldfield, under the delusion that Dr. Oldfield was in love with her and would marry her. She started the vicious rumors, and then seized on the chance to do away with her rival when Poirot arrived -- oh, but she overstepped.
This story is even shorter than the first, between 5,000 and 6,000 words by my estimation. The cast of main characters is kept small, and I noticed that the character names are very different so that it's easy to keep track. Which is helpful, because the story is entirely populated with stock characters and stock motivations. That doesn't make it a bad story, but it's hard for a character to catch in one's mind without anything interesting to grab hold of. Ergo, differentiating the characters as much as possible through names and speaking styles.
"There's no smoke without fire" is the most important phrase of the story, almost a theme. It's a horrible phrase in terms of spreading gossip, circular logic that lets a rumor perpetuate itself. But instead of repudiating it, Poirot takes it as true in a way that Dr. Oldfield refused, and that was enough of a clue for him to find a way forward.
I had been thinking of this as a very fair puzzle, but in that case it's hard to account for the compact. I spent the morning thinking about it, and I decided that a mystery in fact has two basic parts: figuring out whodunnit, and figuring out how to prove it. I believe that the Fairness Doctrine applies only to the first part by necessity.
My thinking is as follows: the reader has only access to a certain subset of the clues available to the detective, and has the inability to act in the detective's space. The first part of the story, then, is a matter of presenting all the information needed to come to the correct conclusion. This is do-able, like writing a logic puzzle. With care, you can ensure that the reader has all the information that the detective uses to solve the crime (or more!) and thereby make the puzzle fair.
The second part, however, is where real art comes in. In a good story, the reader can become convinced of the guilt of one of the suspects -- but a real mystery can remain about how on earth to prove it. And this second part, it seems to me, is often where mystery stories fall down. This is where the detective tends to do things behind the scenes, where coincidences tend to most help the detective, and where suspects do dumb things and fall into traps. And frequently the reader doesn't have a fair chance to evaluate just how artificial it all is, because he or she does not know who the detective is targeting (even if it is known exactly what the detective is doing!).
Proof, the essential element of this second part, requires certain things: a solid understanding of the setting and the people, and the ability to act in this space. In order to feel fair, the reader needs as much of the first as possible in order the judge the outcome -- but the reader will never have the second. There will always be more than one way to do it, as Mr. Wall would say. One person would have Georges follow the suspect, another person might lay a careful logical trap and prove a contradiction, another might reconstruct the crime and prove that only one person had means, motive, and opportunity.
I'm unsure about how well Christie manages the second part in The Lernean Hydra. She loves these "induce the criminal to incriminate herself" endings, but they're so hard to get right, and the reader is left with a sense of a house of cards, that by making one sensible move, the criminal could have evaded detection. Remember too that often in this step the detective is proving his case not only to the characters but also to the reader! Poirot's actions in this story just seem reckless on first examination. If the murderer had just remained calm, then Dr. Oldfield would likely have been hanged. Of course, Poirot relies always on "the psychology": he tailored his plan according to the sort of person the criminal was. (And had this plan failed, we assume, he would have had another up his sleeve.) This is not the sort of plan he would have used for a stolid and cautious individual who doesn't care about blaming someone else for the crime.
From a craft point of view, this suggests an easy way to expand a short story into a novel: making plans fail and then recovering from them, or simply taking more time with it. Stretch it out, throw in lots of red herrings to make it look like someone else might have done it, and build up the tension a bit more. The best example of this is Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (public domain in the US), where it was perfectly clear who did it and why, but proving it was a terrible ordeal that involved shifting attention from the real criminal.
So, what did I learn from the Lernean Hydra? Again, a simple plot is necessary, something that won't take too long to explain, giving you room to elaborate and confuse the issue. Second, that as long as you're careful and spend a lot of thought on it, you can save a lot of space in the proving step with a trap rather than a careful (and potentially boring) logical analysis. If you writer the story knowing how the criminal will get caught, then you can probably do a better job of setting the stage early on. Third, Christie's use of stock characters is interesting to me. The country doctor, the invalid wife, the inveterate gossip -- varying too much from the stereotypes would attract too much attention. It might have made the doctor more interesting as a person to have a passion for juggling, but it would be distracting and Chekhov would definitely disapprove.
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Labors of Hercules: The Nemean Lion
[ As mentioned earlier, these posts will contain spoilers. I do recommend you read the stories involved, because they're good and they're short ]
The original story of Hercules and the Nemean Lion was simple: go kill this ginormous lion that's been gnawing on the peasantry. After an arrow or two, Hercules discovers that the lion, like Achilles, has an impenetrable hide. Unlike the entire freaking Trojan army, he realized that the solution was to simply (depending on the version) either strangle it or beat it to death -- no need to break the skin! He then used the beast's own claws to skin it, and thereafter wore its hide (somewhat ineffectively) as armor. That's a big cloak to fill for the little Belgian detective!
Hercule Poirot's version of the tale is rather more mundane. His attention is caught one morning by a letter set aside by his secretary: a society lady has lost her Pekinese dog. Not exactly the stuff of legends. And yet he is intrigued, for while he receives no end of letters from society ladies who have lost their yapping little dogs, this is the first he has received from one of their husbands!
Things get more interesting: the dog has already been recovered! The husband (Sir Joseph Hoggin) objects, rather, to his wife having paid the £200 (without consulting him), discovered that one of his friends' wives had paid £300 over a similar kidnapping and wishes the thief to be caught. His wife objects to bringing in the police, so Poirot is consulted.
Poirot interviews Lady Hoggin and her companion, an older and somewhat batty woman named Carnaby who is much put-upon, not least because she was the one who was walking the dog at the time of its capture. There's some observation of the pair, and the cut leash is produced. Poirot then interviews the companion's references, visits both the scene of the kidnapping and the hotel where the money was to be sent, goes to visit the other victim (another society lady with a Pekinese and a timid put-upon companion), and goes home. From home, he instructs his valet to make certain investigations (we are not at this point privy to the instructions) and an address is produced. Poirot arrives at the address and finds the first companion, Amy Carnaby, along with her invalid sister... and a third Pekinese dog.
The plot, then, had been simple: Carnaby had taken advantage of being called upon to walk her employer's dog. She brought the dog home, then walked her own dog, Augustus. She'd go to the park, be seen by lots of people, then cut the leash. Augustus, being well-trained, would simply trot home, and she would make a big scene, then tell her employer that she'd been distracted by a baby in a perambulator. She had in fact done this many times, enlisting friends of hers whose employers owned Pekinese dogs, and sharing the ransoms in a pool. Augustus, the Nemean Lion of the story, had a hide that made him not invulnerable, but invisible: one yappy dog looks just like another, after all.
I estimate the length of the story (25 mass-market paperback pages at the standard 250 words per page estimation) to be between 6,000 and 7,000 words: just about the length I'm hoping to learn about. The simplicity of the plot seems to be a major help. And Christie has developed a number of ways to get a lot of information across quickly. For example, by naming the second Pekinese dog "Nanki Poo" she really doesn't need to describe the dog's owner very thoroughly: the reader already has a very clear image of the sort of people who give Pekinese dogs that sort of name. In fact, she gets a lot of mileage out of stereotypes.
One thing that fascinated me is that she didn't make use of all the clues she dropped. Poirot didn't explain himself that much when he confronted Carnaby. Two clues in particular were not mentioned: there was a nod to Conan Doyle in that the stolen dog did not yap at its kidnapper (though instead of knowing the kidnapper -- yappy dogs yap at everyone anyway -- there was no kidnapper), and the fact that the case involving Carnaby was for less money than the others (she was not splitting the money with an extra partner). I think that last one was important, as there is otherwise a bit of a plot hole: if there really were dozens of these kidnappings, who's to say Carnaby was the mastermind and not just one of the serial accomplices? But then, paying the money into a pool seems to defeat this, perhaps this is a remnant of an early draft? Either way, there's a kind of confidence at work in letting clues slide that I don't think I developed in my own stories. I'll have to give this some serious thought.
The final lesson from this story is the significant role played by inter-personal relationships. The story revolves around how wealthy society ladies relate to the world: their relationships to their paid companions, to their husbands, and to their dogs. All combine to expose a neat little blind spot through which money may escape. The relationships and the results need very little in the way of explanation.
All told, a neat little story. By having a fairly simple mystery behind the scenes and leaning pretty heavily on the personal relationships, Christie had a lot of space in which to work. She was also very clever in identifying which bits of the story did not need to be shared: no need to go into the effort to track down Carnaby's invalid sister, for example, nor more than one other kidnapped Pekinese to establish the pattern. So, by keeping these details to a minimum, using easily-grasped personal relationships, and not even going into all the clues, there was plenty of room for setting and texture (not to mention a subplot I haven't gone into here!).
The original story of Hercules and the Nemean Lion was simple: go kill this ginormous lion that's been gnawing on the peasantry. After an arrow or two, Hercules discovers that the lion, like Achilles, has an impenetrable hide. Unlike the entire freaking Trojan army, he realized that the solution was to simply (depending on the version) either strangle it or beat it to death -- no need to break the skin! He then used the beast's own claws to skin it, and thereafter wore its hide (somewhat ineffectively) as armor. That's a big cloak to fill for the little Belgian detective!
Hercule Poirot's version of the tale is rather more mundane. His attention is caught one morning by a letter set aside by his secretary: a society lady has lost her Pekinese dog. Not exactly the stuff of legends. And yet he is intrigued, for while he receives no end of letters from society ladies who have lost their yapping little dogs, this is the first he has received from one of their husbands!
Things get more interesting: the dog has already been recovered! The husband (Sir Joseph Hoggin) objects, rather, to his wife having paid the £200 (without consulting him), discovered that one of his friends' wives had paid £300 over a similar kidnapping and wishes the thief to be caught. His wife objects to bringing in the police, so Poirot is consulted.
Poirot interviews Lady Hoggin and her companion, an older and somewhat batty woman named Carnaby who is much put-upon, not least because she was the one who was walking the dog at the time of its capture. There's some observation of the pair, and the cut leash is produced. Poirot then interviews the companion's references, visits both the scene of the kidnapping and the hotel where the money was to be sent, goes to visit the other victim (another society lady with a Pekinese and a timid put-upon companion), and goes home. From home, he instructs his valet to make certain investigations (we are not at this point privy to the instructions) and an address is produced. Poirot arrives at the address and finds the first companion, Amy Carnaby, along with her invalid sister... and a third Pekinese dog.
The plot, then, had been simple: Carnaby had taken advantage of being called upon to walk her employer's dog. She brought the dog home, then walked her own dog, Augustus. She'd go to the park, be seen by lots of people, then cut the leash. Augustus, being well-trained, would simply trot home, and she would make a big scene, then tell her employer that she'd been distracted by a baby in a perambulator. She had in fact done this many times, enlisting friends of hers whose employers owned Pekinese dogs, and sharing the ransoms in a pool. Augustus, the Nemean Lion of the story, had a hide that made him not invulnerable, but invisible: one yappy dog looks just like another, after all.
I estimate the length of the story (25 mass-market paperback pages at the standard 250 words per page estimation) to be between 6,000 and 7,000 words: just about the length I'm hoping to learn about. The simplicity of the plot seems to be a major help. And Christie has developed a number of ways to get a lot of information across quickly. For example, by naming the second Pekinese dog "Nanki Poo" she really doesn't need to describe the dog's owner very thoroughly: the reader already has a very clear image of the sort of people who give Pekinese dogs that sort of name. In fact, she gets a lot of mileage out of stereotypes.
One thing that fascinated me is that she didn't make use of all the clues she dropped. Poirot didn't explain himself that much when he confronted Carnaby. Two clues in particular were not mentioned: there was a nod to Conan Doyle in that the stolen dog did not yap at its kidnapper (though instead of knowing the kidnapper -- yappy dogs yap at everyone anyway -- there was no kidnapper), and the fact that the case involving Carnaby was for less money than the others (she was not splitting the money with an extra partner). I think that last one was important, as there is otherwise a bit of a plot hole: if there really were dozens of these kidnappings, who's to say Carnaby was the mastermind and not just one of the serial accomplices? But then, paying the money into a pool seems to defeat this, perhaps this is a remnant of an early draft? Either way, there's a kind of confidence at work in letting clues slide that I don't think I developed in my own stories. I'll have to give this some serious thought.
The final lesson from this story is the significant role played by inter-personal relationships. The story revolves around how wealthy society ladies relate to the world: their relationships to their paid companions, to their husbands, and to their dogs. All combine to expose a neat little blind spot through which money may escape. The relationships and the results need very little in the way of explanation.
All told, a neat little story. By having a fairly simple mystery behind the scenes and leaning pretty heavily on the personal relationships, Christie had a lot of space in which to work. She was also very clever in identifying which bits of the story did not need to be shared: no need to go into the effort to track down Carnaby's invalid sister, for example, nor more than one other kidnapped Pekinese to establish the pattern. So, by keeping these details to a minimum, using easily-grasped personal relationships, and not even going into all the clues, there was plenty of room for setting and texture (not to mention a subplot I haven't gone into here!).
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Labors of Hercules
When I started reading mysteries long ago as a teenager, I went straight for Sherlock Holmes. I still like those stories. But on vacation one year, visiting my grandparents, I was up late and had finished the last of the books I'd brought. Fortunately my grandmother has a good collection of books, including some nicely bound volumes of Agatha Christie -- the one that grabbed my eye was entitled, "The Labors of Hercules". I don't remember what I thought it would be when I picked it up, but I enjoyed it thoroughly... and then picked up another Poirot book, then another. Fast forward to now where I've got a notebook full of partial mysteries of my own devising, one of them completed and just finished with a round of workshopping.
I've been thinking a lot lately about effective short mysteries -- how do you tell a compelling mystery story in so few words? I decided to go back to the Labors, reread them and take notes this time: what works, and what doesn't? And while I'm at it, why not do the classic blog move of posting my thoughts on each one? That never gets old!
*ahem*
So, I'll probably be posting spoilers for the stories in this book over the coming days as I go through each one. [1] I'll try not to gratuitously spoil them, of course, but now would be a great chance to pick up a copy from your local library :)
Anyway, the basic conceit is pretty simple. Hercule Poirot, nearing retirement, has become wealthy and famous and wants to pick his last cases with care. Having a glass of wine with a friend, the subject comes up of his unusual first name. What a difference between this dandified little gentleman relaxing in his modern sitting room, compared to his namesake! Poirot would never retire and breed squash (ugh, what a thought) because his were labors of love, not the punishments of Hercules. Poirot rejects the thought: is he not a modern version of that ancient hero, roving the countryside righting wrongs? He'll pick his remaining cases, then, to correspond to the Labors of Hercules. Ta-da.
Christie then has Poirot take on each Labor in turn -- with, of course, a modern twist and a healthy dose of humor. Some of them are a stretch, most are at best tangentially related to the original story. But they're all entertaining, and as I recall, they're all good short mysteries.
Coming up next: my thoughts on The Nemean Lion.
[1] OK, OK. I realize that there is something of a time limit on spoilers. Hamlet's dad was murdered. Odysseus gets home. But mysteries have a longer time limit, it seems to me, and there's just no sense in spoiling a good one, I don't care how old it is.
I've been thinking a lot lately about effective short mysteries -- how do you tell a compelling mystery story in so few words? I decided to go back to the Labors, reread them and take notes this time: what works, and what doesn't? And while I'm at it, why not do the classic blog move of posting my thoughts on each one? That never gets old!
*ahem*
So, I'll probably be posting spoilers for the stories in this book over the coming days as I go through each one. [1] I'll try not to gratuitously spoil them, of course, but now would be a great chance to pick up a copy from your local library :)
Anyway, the basic conceit is pretty simple. Hercule Poirot, nearing retirement, has become wealthy and famous and wants to pick his last cases with care. Having a glass of wine with a friend, the subject comes up of his unusual first name. What a difference between this dandified little gentleman relaxing in his modern sitting room, compared to his namesake! Poirot would never retire and breed squash (ugh, what a thought) because his were labors of love, not the punishments of Hercules. Poirot rejects the thought: is he not a modern version of that ancient hero, roving the countryside righting wrongs? He'll pick his remaining cases, then, to correspond to the Labors of Hercules. Ta-da.
Christie then has Poirot take on each Labor in turn -- with, of course, a modern twist and a healthy dose of humor. Some of them are a stretch, most are at best tangentially related to the original story. But they're all entertaining, and as I recall, they're all good short mysteries.
Coming up next: my thoughts on The Nemean Lion.
[1] OK, OK. I realize that there is something of a time limit on spoilers. Hamlet's dad was murdered. Odysseus gets home. But mysteries have a longer time limit, it seems to me, and there's just no sense in spoiling a good one, I don't care how old it is.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Sherlock Holmes
It's hard to talk or think about detective fiction without bringing up Sherlock Holmes. To be sure, there were detective stories before Conan Doyle came along: Poe, Wilkie, even Dickens came before him, many of them originally inspired by real life detective stories. But Holmes created a mold that would go pretty much unbroken until 1929 by Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest [1].
Conan Doyle pioneered a number of things. Although it would be left to folks like Knox and Van Dine to formalize the idea, the Holmes stories made a stab at the concept of fair play: these were stories based on science, where the reader could in principle solve the mysteries based on the clues therein. Indeed, Holmes was himself a published author of various criminology pamphlets, and was continually performing experiments to find ways to further the art, and was said to be based on Dr. Joseph Bell.
He also introduced the, er, Watson: realizing that a story written from the point of view of the Great Detective would be insufferable (not to mention not very suspenseful, though he pulled it off a couple times later in his career) this viewpoint character was added. One important point that's often lost is that John Watson was not dumb at all, he was a successful physician, after all. A lot of the impression of stupidity comes from the framing story, that of Watson retelling the story afterward for publication in a way intended to highlight Holmes's genius.
Lastly, although the stories drip with Holmes-worship, Conan Doyle was careful to make his detective distinctly imperfect. His personal habits include slovenliness, drug use[2], and playing the violin at all hours of night. Moreover, he suffered for his perfection, having a personal life almost devoid of anything but work. This notion of the flawed genius is repeated very often in detective fiction: Hercule Poirot's fastidiousness, Nero Wolfe's obesity and foul moods, Peter Wimsey's obnoxiousness (that one might have been unintentional, actually), and more recently Adrian Monk's crippling phobias and Gregory House's general personality.
With all that in mind, I recommend the following short movie from Hulu, The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes, which includes old interviews with Conan Doyle himself (also features Christopher Lee, who's definitely styling):
[1] Red Harvest, by the way, would later (by way of a film adaptation) be the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai flick Yojimbo, which in turn inspired Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, which spawned pretty much the whole spaghetti western genre, plus Clint Eastwood's career. If you watch these two movies, you'll get a lot more of Quentin Tarantino's references. Red Harvest also happens to be a pretty good book, with the detective playing the new role, that of gritty avenger: this idea in turn gave rise to, among many others, the Batman.
[2] I am fond of repeating Holmes's saying, "The best rest is a change of work" and then noting, "But then again, Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict." To be fair to Mr. Holmes, cocaine was at the time considered something of a wonder drug (advocated by none other than Sigmund Freud on behalf of Merck), and he did eventually kick the habit.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Fair Play
I've spent a lot of time thinking about detective fiction lately. I'm an unabashed fan of Golden Era detective stories: you know, the ones with the brilliant detective who goes to an English country house and discovers that the doctor killed the matron of the family even though everyone says it's either the butler or some mysterious outsider. Agatha Christie is widely regarded as the queen of the format, and remains one of the best-selling English-language authors ever. If you're going to strike up a literary conversation with a stranger, you're statistically better off bringing up Hercule Poirot than Harry Potter.
But there are Commandments to be obeyed when writing GE-style fiction! Knox's list, as posted in Wikipedia, is pretty useful. Reasonably applicable to sci-fi mysteries, too. I'll annotate with my thoughts.
I'm a bit too tired to go into Van Dine's 20 commandments in this much detail, not least because there's so much overlap. A few do stick out, though:
But there are Commandments to be obeyed when writing GE-style fiction! Knox's list, as posted in Wikipedia, is pretty useful. Reasonably applicable to sci-fi mysteries, too. I'll annotate with my thoughts.
-
- 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. Agatha Christie famously broke this one in a book that a lot of people think was a total cheat. What Knox is getting at, I think, is that the reader shouldn't be coerced into identifying with the criminal. For a sci-fi story this has a different reading: it is traditional in these works to have a character stand in for the reader. Knox would say that this character should not be the killer.
- All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course. This holds true, of course, for science fiction, but I'd go further: any science related to the murder itself ought to be impeccable or the story will feel like a double cheat. I've never seen this broken in a way that was done well: this may very well be the one truly unbreakable rule on this list. A number of excellent stories have had the appearance of breaking this rule, right up until the last page, but these days you'll just invite unflattering comparisons to Scooby Doo.
- Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable. My take on this is that the reader deserves to know the lay of the land as soon as possible. One twist on this, says Mr. Knox, is acceptable in the name of an interesting plot, but more than one wears thin. I'd go so far as to say that any such cartographical twist ought not be introduced after the first two-thirds of the story. As far as science fiction goes, I think this can be extended to the laws of physics and the rules of the milieu as well: all of a sudden faster-than-light travel turns out to actually be possible? OK, there's your one allowed "secret passage," good luck with it. But there's a caveat...
- No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end. This one's a lot more important in sci-fi, I think. Part of fairness is understanding what's possible. But also, these things let the readers off the hook, lets them say, "Oh, I had a good excuse not to get that." Rubbish! This gets back to #3, in terms of knowing what's possible. One twist is fine, but it had better not be the key to the whole mystery!
- No Chinaman must figure in the story. Like the man says, no Chinaman. Er, wait. How about, no inscrutable foreigner who the audience simply can't relate to, and automatically suspects? (Aliens might well apply, depending on milieu) Even then, this is kind of a lame rule. I'd rephrase it, "No Chi -- er, no inscrutable foreigner should be the killer" Otherwise the author is pretty much let off the hook for a believable motive, and the reader's only clue will be simple xenophobia. Then again, the presence of the Chinaman can't be an excuse not to cast doubt on some other character.
- No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right. This one holds up pretty well, but is damned hard to pull off. This commandment is most often partly broken in the "Dimwitted assistant accidentally says something that puts the detective on the right track" trope. Watson did this, Captain Hastings did this, Magersfontein Lugg did this, countless one-appearance befuddled Scotland Yard detectives did this -- and then were obliged to feel good about having contributed! This trope can be done well, especially if it is a way of giving an extra clue to the reader, but often is not, and just seems like an unfair insult to the poor benighted Dr. Watson.
- The detective himself must not commit the crime. This is related to the first commandment, as the detective is also often a focus for audience sympathy. This is not to say, however, that the detective must not commit a crime, just not the crime being solved. Otherwise you're just toying with your readers, making them play catch-up.
- The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover. This is an important one, and so often broken. The clues don't have to be declared in a way that highlights them ([BLINK]CLUE HERE!!![/BLINK]), but the reader should have access to all the information the detective does, at about the same time (if not more and earlier!) Context is key during an investigation: you'll read an interrogation differently if you already know that the suspect's alibi has been blown. If the detective merely suspects something, however, that information can be safely kept. As far as science fiction goes, that means that relevant science and facts about the milieu have to be trotted out as early as possible. It's not fair for a detective to sit and interrogate someone who obviously doesn't know how anti-gravity works and not clue in the reader.
- The stupid friend 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. If you're going to have such a character, he needs to be a comfort to the reader, as a companion and guide through the universe being inhabited. Any story with a Watson tends to result in a dozen put-downs: if Watson's ahead of the reader, those are going to sting. This is not to say that Watson should not have information in his own right! Just that any information he has (such as resulting from his medical training) should be provided quickly and clearly to the reader. Having a Watson who knows the milieu well can be a real benefit in a science fiction story, but I would say that there's a serious risk of being ham-handed here, overwhelming the reader with exposition. Tread lightly!
- Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them. Ditto clones, holograms, and someone time-traveling from the future back to his own timeframe.
- 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. Agatha Christie famously broke this one in a book that a lot of people think was a total cheat. What Knox is getting at, I think, is that the reader shouldn't be coerced into identifying with the criminal. For a sci-fi story this has a different reading: it is traditional in these works to have a character stand in for the reader. Knox would say that this character should not be the killer.
I'm a bit too tired to go into Van Dine's 20 commandments in this much detail, not least because there's so much overlap. A few do stick out, though:
- There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much bother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded. This one makes me laugh, and yet it does give me pause. Grand larceny plots (jewels, natch) are a favored exception to this rule, and yet it's hard to imagine this translating well in a future society. The scarcity and value of physical belongings may seem odd, even tawdry, in many possible settings. If the victim's response to the loss of a diamond the size of a bowling ball ought to be, "Damn, I'll have to grow another one. At least my poor aching back will get a week's rest." then grand larceny may not work. Grand larceny has to be really ludicrously grand for this to work in many milieus. And of course, "Recover the secret files!" plots (except maybe blackmail) are in many ways already outdated: cats leap out of their bags and simultaneously pop out a million kittens these days. Also: be careful in choosing your metaphors. Moving on.
- A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion. No robot killers, unless you're Asimov. And, as I recall, not even then.
- Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds. Agatha Christie famously broke this one in The Big Four, and it was pretty much her worst book ever, by an enormous margin. This notion that the murderer ought to be individually culpable can be broadened in a science-fiction to include, for example, the Borg. The military and government tend to be far more sinister in the sci-fi tradition than in Golden Era detective fiction, or Van Dine would probably have included them as well.
- A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no "atmospheric" preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude. This one is a challenge to the science fiction author, who must carefully weigh the needs of the milieu. If the setting is so cliched that the reader won't need much introduction, then you may lose that reader for whom the science is first and the mystery second. On the other hand, if the setting is so outlandish that explaining it takes forever, your story might only progress at a snail's pace.
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