it's a mystery

[calimac]

A couple weeks ago, Jon Carroll reported that "I have just discovered Laurie R. King, a writer of mysteries."

That's interesting, thought I, for I too had recently been reading a mystery novel by Laurie R. King. I was not so enthused as was Jon Carroll.

I was reading King's A Letter of Mary (1996) in search of its Tolkien reference, which turned out to be on page 225, so I had to plow through most of the book to get there. This was in pursuit of my Mythcon paper on "The Inklings in Fiction." Mary Russell, equally-talented partner of and, by this point in the series, wife to the nearly septuagenarian but still hale Sherlock Holmes, visits Oxford one day in 1923 in pursuit of a lead, and reports that evening to Holmes that she "met an odd man named Tolkien." There's no particular reason for her to have mentioned him, and the evidence-gathering mission she's on is so illogical and inane, it'd be a waste of space for me to explain it.

I didn't read any further. On the solution of the mystery posed earlier, I found I had not the slightest interest. Edmund Wilson once wrote a famous article dismissing the mystery genre, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Much as it pains me to find myself in agreement with Edmund Wilson, this time I am. The mystery novels I enjoy most are those that have literary value to me apart from their mystery. Dorothy L. Sayers, most notable among them, writes comedies of manners, and that's what I like about them. It may not be coincidental that my favorite of her books is the one in which it turns out that nobody dunnit; the apparent murder was a horrible accident.

The problem, I think, is that mystery solutions aren't contingent. In an effort to keep all the possibilities open as long as possible, the authors treat all the suspects as capable of the murder, and the solution is dependent on tiny questions of fact and does not grow organically out of character. As a result, it doesn't matter which one did it and I can't be brought to care.

This is most obvious when a mystery-minded writer turns to stories in which the solution is incidental. Jack Vance writes mysteries as well as SF. In his SF story "The Moon Moth", the key question for the protagonist is, which of three men is a disguised murderer? I've read this story several times and, while I can remember how he figures it out, I can never remember which of the three men it is. It doesn't matter. The story is ingeniously plotted: most of the colorful and numerous cultural facts with which it's dotted come back up to swat somebody in the face later on. But the identity of the murderer - as opposed to the fact of identifying him - is of no importance whatever.

Same thing's true of Isaac Asimov's tonally very different "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda," which is also about a detective who has to identify which of three men is his suspect. But the culprit is so good at disguising himself, it doesn't make any difference to the story which one it happens to be. Again, I can neither remember nor bring myself to care which one it is.

The presence of Inklings references in other mystery novels had me reading one by Colin Dexter and two by Edmund Crispin. Same result: I found the references and then put down the books in relief. If Laurie R. King and Colin Dexter are good recent mystery writers, then it's just not the genre for me.

Comments

re: It's a mystery

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts. I too prefer character-driven fiction over plot-driven, or so it would seem via a conversation that I had with the bf last night over his current manuscript. Or at least the plotting should not suck, but the characters must be interesting, or what's the point?

I love DSL and all her works. I just picked up her translation of Roland the other day in a USB, along with something else. Too tired to go check.

Mysteries depend on both plot and character. However, Agatha Christie has interesting characters, more interesting than her plotting, at least to me, and yet she is hailed as the Queen of Mystery Writers. All her red herrings tire me out in the end. :) I prefer Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, or P. J. James amongst the ladies. For men, Conan Doyle and Dick Francis. Francis isn't always about the horsie set, btw. His late wife Mary did a ton of research for him, and he moved on into the art world, other countries, wine trading, weather forecasting, and much more. At any rate, you might think of giving him a chance. :)

I've never read the King novels, and yet I am fond of Holmes "fan-fiction". But something that so obviously smacks of Mary-Suism doesn't sound like my cuppa. Holmes married? Don't think so. Mary Russell is not Irene Adler, is she? And that's the only woman in the Canon that I could ever imagine Holmes with, and even then, it's a bit difficult.

Re: It's a mystery

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

No. She's an entirely original character, who is 16 or 17 when she first meets Holmes, after he'd retired to the Sussex Downs (so he is in his 50s, possibly his 60s). The first book has him taking her on as an apprentice, since she is smarter than the average bear, and I was fairly gob-smacked in the second book when the proposal happened -- while I could see HER having a crush on HIM, I wasn't convinced he would want to have a wife thirty or so years younger than him who was a feminist, a Jewish scholar, and rich. (Yeah, Mary Sue coming out. But... I do like the character and I like her Holmes more than most pastiches.)

Re: It's a mystery

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I like Conan Doyle, glaringly implausible as Holmes often is, because the author isn't playing the "give the reader a fair chance to guess the murderer" mystery-writer game. The purpose of a Holmes story is to dazzle the reader with Holmes' intellect, not to hold the reader in suspense over a meaningless solution.