Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, often a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts pr
"It seems to have been taken for granted, quite wrongly, that because murder novels are easy reading they are also light reading. They are no easier reading than Hamlet, Lear or Macbeth. They border on tragic and never quite become tragic. Their form imposes a certain clarity of outline which is only found in the most accomplished ‘straight’ novels."
"As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. ... He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics."
"Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley."
"Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve."
"Why bother yourself about the cataract of drivel for which Conan Doyle is responsible? I am sure he never imagined that such a heap of rubbish would fall on my devoted head in consequence of his stories."
"Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement that any other single subject."
"It is, it ought to be, it must be a morality."
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."
"Detective stories—the modern fairy tales."
"With Agatha Christie ingenuity of plot was paramount—no one looked for subtlety of characterization, motivation, good writing. It was rather like a literary card trick. Today we’ve moved closer to the mainstream novel, but nevertheless we need plot."
"When I’m asked why I write crime fiction, I always answer that I enjoy playing games."
"Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature."
