One might now ask, since it is time to direct our attention to the straight novel, is there any advantage to the above? Let the mystery writer learn his craft; let him become facile in plot manipulation, clue planting, and the rest. Does this serve him any useful purpose above and beyond his own specific subgenre in the field of fiction? If one aims to write novels, is the mystery in any way a training ground?
An obvious advantage in writing mysteries lies in the disciplining of a talent. The greatest genius in any field, from athlete to concert pianist, will, to the degree that he develops and trains his talent, be greater than before. The demands that are made upon a mystery writer, if he is to flex his muscles within that framework, will hone his talent.
A counterreply can also arise. If the field of the mystery is so firmly structured, does one need talent to become competent? Is there not a difference between craftsmanship and talent? And would not craftsmanship be a sufficient commodity with which to work successfully in this medium? On the other hand, does not talent rise above rules? Would not a great talent be thwarted and stifled trying to cope with such narrow limits?
Let us return to and amplify the earlier statement that the mystery is to the novel what the sonnet is to poetry. The sonnet is a stylized form of poem which makes rigid meter, length, and rhyme scheme demands upon its practitioners. In like manner, the mystery is a stylized form of fiction which makes rigid storytelling demands upon its practitioners. To this extent they share the same bed. Does the relationship go further?
The sonnet is a discipline. Those who would meet its demands must shape, manipulate, and refine their message so that it fits into fourteen iambic pentameter lines totaling exactly 140 syllables, no more, no less. That is no mean task. Add to these limitations the further requirements of rhyme scheme, and the sonnet becomes a honing strop of awesome proportions. Any poet who masters the sonnet form takes with him into the broader field of poetry sharp skills indeed.
What of the mystery story? Does it, in like manner, refine an author’s skills for other forms of fiction?
It does, indeed! For, it turns out, the disciplines that govern the mystery are actually the rules — masquerading incognito — which structure the whole art of fiction! Truly revealed, they form the complete training ground in the art of communication through storytelling. Let us view them with their masks off:
Rule one: All clues discovered by the detective must be made available to the reader.
In its broader sense, this rule is saying that all stories should be tied together, and the tying requires that coming events cast their shadows before. The clues to the future are planted in the present. The reader is not to be cheated, surprised; or upset by the story’s taking a sudden, irrelevant course. In no way can Hamlet and Ophelia walk off, hand in hand, into the sunset. Nor may Petruchio not tame Katharina. The omens promise a different future.
The course of clue-planting is broader and deeper than just mood. The lottery ticket must be bought before the prize can be won, the ice must be known to be thin before the child falls through. The way must be paved. The reader may be caught unawares — and indeed, it is a part of storytelling to catch the reader unawares — but he should never be caught in ignorance. All surprises must stem from within the universe of the story; they may not be introduced from outside. There should be that totality in a tale which pulls it together as a whole so that the reader is always comfortable. His credulity is never strained because whatever happens can be related to what has gone before. The clues haw been fairly planted.
Rule two: Early introduction of the murderer.
This is only another way of saying that the sooner the cast is assembled, the better. It is not required, of course, that all hands be on deck at the launching, but it is required that the way is paved for the arrival of those who aren’t. This again relates to the enclosed universe of the story and proper concern that the reader is not unfairly and uncomfortably surprised.
Rule three: Tlie crime mast be significant.
This is the warning any novelist must heed — that the events and concerns of his tale must be sufficient to grasp the interest of the reader. For all that an author should write to please himself, it must never be forgotten that he is writing to be read. If, in arrogance, a writer takes a “public be damned” attitude, and writes for himself alone, he reveals himself as failing to understand nature of his craft. Writing is communication. The purpose of words and of language is to transmit as accurately as possible what is in the mind of one person into the mind of another. An author must always write with his reader as well as himself in mind. The more successfully he involves his reader, the more successfully he is communicating. He must create interest in his purposes. Therefore his purposes, like the mystery writer’s crime, must be significant.
Rule four: There must be detection.
In its broader application, this rule means that something must happen. An author, whatever kind of story he may seek to tell, whatever message he may want to deliver, or whatever emotion he may want to share, should couch it in a developing tale. There should be form to the novel, there should be shape and direction. Characters should act and react. They must not drift at the mercy of the fates.
Rule five: The number of suspects must be known and the murderer must be among them.
This is the matter of the enclosed universe which we have mentioned before. Every story must operate in such a system. It is necessary, for purposes of orientation, to help the reader feel comfortable and aware of his parameters. To put it another way: Only the characters in a story can have impact upon other characters in the same story. Consequently they’ve all got to be there.
Rule six: Nothing extraneous may be introduced.
This is the final fence that pens the mystery writer so tightly. This is the discipline that makes the highest demand upon such a writer in terms of skill, economy, and artistry.
What it is saying with regard to fiction as a whole is that an author should not wander or meander. He should have purpose and he should stick to his purpose; everything he puts into his stories should relate to that purpose. Quite obviously, the purposes in a straight novel can be quite different from those of the mystery and they will generally embrace far vaster areas. The lesson, however, is the same. Do not be sloppy, do not be verbose, do not be irrelevant. Writing is communication, and it’s not enough merely to use the right words to transmit the message; one should also take pains to see that the form of the message is not garbled.
What we have been talking about until now has been, actually, the areas of similarity between the mystery and the novel, and what we have been saying, in effect, is that the mystery makes a good training ground for the novel. The claim has been made, and I would give it much truth, that a good mystery writer can write a better novel than a good novelist can write a mystery, This is because the mystery writer has had to develop the disciplines of the novel form to a far higher degree than is required of the straight novelist. The mystery is a craft within a craft and all that pertains to the art of the mystery pertains to the art of the novel.
There is, however, a whole universe beyond the tightly fenced realm of the mystery, a universe wherein only the straight novelist roams. In this vast otherworld lie challenges not available to the mystery author, and demands of craft that are not imposed upon him. Herein resides the fact that the great names in literature belong to the novel, not to the mystery!
But why? What is this forbidden land wherein the mystery writer may not tread? What is it that makes these straight-fiction books, even if they deal with crime and punishment, more than mysteries? What can a novelist do that a mystery writer cannot? What is the difference between the mystery and the novel?
One distinction is pure and simple. The mystery novel does not contain the equipment to carry messages. It is too frail a box to hold the human spirit. It allows an author to speak, but not to explore and instruct. The credo can be expressed as follows: “If you want to write and have nothing to say, write a mystery.” If you have other ambitions, the mystery form had best be eschewed.
Why do we say this? Why is the mystery form inadequate?
The first and most obvious reason is that the mystery is, in actuality, a morality play. Though evil threatens, justice emerges triumphant. Goodness is honored, sin is vanquished. Portia wins and Shylock loses. (But, mark you, The Merchant of Venice is a vehicle that would burst into a thousand fragments if it tried to encompass a Lady Macbeth!)
The real world does not behave as tidily as the make-believe world of mystery. Justice, all too often, suffers defeat. Right does not always make might, and one who would deal with the ills of the world and the lessons to be learned therefrom, cannot use the mystery as a soapbox.
There is a deeper reason too. Its inadequacy is not merely because it holds up a slanted mirror to nature — for sometimes nature does conform to the image. The roots of the problem arc more sinuous and penetrating than that, for the inability of the mystery to deal with matters of serious concern lies in the nature of the animal itself.
In the mystery novel, the story is the core, the be-all, the end-all, the Heart of the Matter. This is its glory, and its liability. This is what sets it apart from the straight novel. This is why it doesn’t serve the purposes of the straight novelist.
The author of a straight novel has other fish to fry. His aim is not to puzzle the reader or tell him stories. His basic aim isn’t even to entertain. He writes for all the other reasons: to save himself, to objectify his life, to express his preoccupations and concerns with the human condition. He writes, more often than not, because he has to write, to get the monkey off his back. Sometimes he is consciously trying to send messages, to argue a cause, put forth a concept, or present a viewpoint, but for the most part his statements are not consciously expressed. The insights he puts forth, for however much or little they are worth, lie hidden in the depths of his prose. They are sought for and argued over by critics, if the ore that is found is deemed worth the mining.
Story is not this author’s goal. It serves instead as the vehicle through which he expresses himself. If he is wise, disciplined, and makes his talent work for him, he will pay attention to his story and obey the injunctions we have been talking about. If not, he will suffer a corresponding loss of effectiveness. In either case, however, story is a sideline; expressing whatever it is inside of him that must come out is the guiding fire of his book.
How does he present his case, then, if not by story? He does it through character. It is people working upon people that is the heart of his novel. Characters, or a character, form the core of the work and everything else is structured around them. The story is created to show off the characters rather than, as in the mystery, the characters being created to show off the story.
But, one may ask, does this claim lie above challenge? Is it indeed true that, in the mystery novel, the story is the heart and core? Are not the adventures of Sherlock Holmes mere vehicles devised for the purpose of putting Holmes on stage? Isn’t Holmes, really, the center, the core, the raison d'etre? Don’t we read Maigret for the sake of Maigret and never mind what he’s up to in this particular case? How can it be said that “the play’s the thing”?
It is true that people, generally, write and read about series detectives for the sake of the detective. I he point is, however, that the detective is not touched by the series. If Philip Marlowe mellows, it is only because Raymond Chandler mellows, not because Marlowe has been tempered by experience. Perry Mason and Delia Street bore the same relationship to each other in 1963 that they did in 1933. They were no more affected by the times and tides of thirty years than Little Orphan Annie.
Admittedly, the Ellery Queen of Double Double is a different person from the Ellery Queen of The Chinese Orange Mystery, but this is not due to growth of character, it is due to tailoring and updating him to suit to times.
The mystery writer is a storyteller. He may use the same character over and over, but it doesn’t change the fact that all he is doing is telling stories.
To an author who tries his hand in both fields, that needed shift of cores from story to character hits with the unexpected impact of an express locomotive. It is not a decision the author makes, it is a realization that is thrust upon him.
To the reader, the essence of the difference is still vivid. The characters in a novel are affected. They think, they feel, they are touched. The working of people upon people produces alteration and what happens to these people — not to their bodies, but to their psyches — is where the author lives. In the novel is people grow, people shrivel, people change. Jeane Valjean is not Raffles.
Can not one, at this point, broach a second challenge? It has been acknowledged that flesh, muscle, blood, and clothing have been added to the bones оf the mystery over the years. Valjean is, admittedly, not Raffles, but do not the characters created by today’s mystery authors more closely approximate Hugo’s creation than Hornung’s? Is not Raffles irrelevant by modern standards?
It is true that the mystery more and more approaches this aspect of the straight novel. It was, in fact, for just this reason that it was deemed necessary to look to the classical age of the mystery form, when it was more appropriately called the detective story, in order to make clear the difference. Over the years the fuzzing of the line of demarcation has increased. More and more, mystery writers are either growing out of that form — like Graham Greene — or being recognized as having overflowed the field even when they were writing within it — like Hammett, Chandler, and James M.Cain.
In fact, there are top practitioners in the field today who will argue that there is no “forbidden land” for the mystery novelist. They claim there is nothing straight fiction can do that the mystery novel cannot also do.
What this is saying, and what it means if it is true, is that there is no longer any difference between the straight novel and the mystery. This is, in effect, suggesting that “Mystery Story” is nothing but a label put on or not put on a book by the publisher according to the public relations department’s assessment of its sales value.
The mystery has grown a lot. It has come a long hay, but in my own opinion it has not — and never can — come quite that far. Let us harken back to the core business again. If it is an author’s aim to write a mystery novel, it must be conceded that his purpose is to confound, puzzle, scare, bewilder, or horrify the reader and, generally speaking, to keep him in a constant state of suspense. This, by definition, has to be what he is up to, otherwise he is not writing a mystery.
If this be his purpose, then, it is up to him to invent a story that will elicit these results. To present this story effectively, he must create characters who will make it happen. Now it is true that he can show these
characters in as much depth as he is capable — which is what most modern mystery writers give attention to and the ancients did not — and he can make them work upon each other, penetrating as many of their seven veils as he can manage. To this extent, the mystery writer can match the straight fiction writer and, if the mystery writer has greater insight, can exceed his counterpart. But the fact remains that his characters were created for the purpose of telling a story. The story is central and upon anyone who would fly from it, it weighs like a lump of lead.
If, on the other hand, an author chooses to write a novel for the purpose of studying the impact of avarice, or jealousy, or love upon the human condition, he does not start with a story. He starts instead with a character, a symbol, a means of conveyance through which his message on these subjects will be made manifest. He will then construct a story created for the purpose of delivering this message.
In short, the one ultimate distinction between the mystery and the novel, and the one which, it seems to me, must always mark the difference, is the question of — appropriately — motive. If the motive is “mystery”, then the story (suspense, of course) is the core, and a mystery it is. If the motive is otherwise, then story (no matter how gory) is not the core, it is the means, and a mystery it is not.
[1976]
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The Mystery Story. Ed. J.Ball. San Diego, California University of California. Publisher’s Inc. 1976