WHAT IS A DETECTIVE STORY?

Detective Story, tale that features a mystery and/or the commission of a crime, emphasizing the search for a solution. The detective story is distinguished from other forms of fiction by the fact that it is a puzzle. Although a crime usually has been committed, the reader's attention is directed to baffling circumstances surrounding the crime rather than to the event itself. The tale's climax is the solution of the puzzle, and the bulk of the narrative concerns the logical process by which the investigator follows a series of clues to this solution. Very often the detective solves the mystery by means of deductive reasoning from facts known both to the character and the reader.

EARLY DETECTIVE FICTION

The first true detective stories were written in the 1840s by American author Edgar Allan Poe, but many earlier works used some of the elements of detection. A famous example is a 16th-century Italian tale that was translated into French in 1719 by the Chevalier de Mailly. Le voyage et les aventures des trois princes de Sarendio (translated into English as The Travels and Adventures of Three Princes of Sarendip, 1722) concerns three princes who are asked how they know that a certain camel, which they have not seen, is blind in one eye, lame, and has lost a tooth.

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The blindness, they reply, is shown by the fact that the camel ate grass from only one side of a track, although the grass was growing more thickly on the other. The lameness is demonstrated by uneven hoofprints in the dust, which indicate a dragging leg. And the missing tooth is apparent from lumps of partly chewed food that were found in the animal's path. In Zadig (1747) by French writer Voltaire, the hero achieves similar deductive feats, describing a horse and a dog that he has never seen.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish-born author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of "deductive reasoning" while using abductive reasoning (inference to the best explanation) and astute observation to solve difficult cases.

SHERLOCK HOLMES & CONAN DYLE

Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that featured Holmes. All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson; two are narrated by Sherlock Holmes himself, and two others are written in the third person. The first two stories, short novels, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two serialised novels appeared almost right up to Conan Doyles death in 1930. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914.

TOP TEN DETECTIVE AUTHORS

Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple novel) Dorothy L Sayers (Gaudy Night) Ngaio Marsh ( Inspector Alleyn series) P D James (Unsuitable Job for a Woman) Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley) Sue Grafton (Kinsey Millhone series) Ruth Rendell (Inspector Wexford series) Sarah Paretsky (V I Warhsawski series) Donna Leon (Inspector Brunetti series ) Val McDermid (series and standalones -"Killing the Shadows")

HOW TO WRITE A DETECTIVE NOVEL

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described. 2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself. 3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar. 4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wildgoose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker. 6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

 10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest. 11. 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 worthwhile person one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion.

MADE BY:RUTUL K. SHAH IX A ROLL NO. 27 (ENGLISH PROJECT)