/lit/ - Literature

>>15563144
Have a super cute protagonist.

>>15563151
Ugly latina toad, you mean?

>>15563144
Agatha Christie is a safe bet, her mysteries were mostly solid, with a few great ones here and there, namely The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The ABC Murders, etc.

As for the nuts and bolts that make detective fiction satisfying I must refer to Father Knox's Decalogue–the ten commandments for the whodunnit author:
>1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
>2. All supernaural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
>3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
>4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
>5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
>6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
>7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
>8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
>9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
>10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Now, you may notice that some of the greatest detective stories do break most of these rules, if not all of them. But as Picasso has put it so eloquently before:
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist"

>>15563144
generally the most important thing is to have a closed environment with no outside influence or contact. the best murder mysteries are in remote country houses, snowbound cabins, trains etc
another guideline is that there should be no new characters introduced after half way
of course there are loads of books that don't follow the guidelines

>>15563360
>No Chinaman must figure in the story.
What? Why is that a rule?

>>15563397
>The "No Chinaman rule" was a reaction to, and criticism of, racial cliches prevalent in 1920s English writing. Knox explained, "I see no reason in the nature of things why a Chinaman should spoil a detective story. But as a matter of fact, if you are turning over the pages of an unknown romance in a bookstore, and come across some mention of the narrow, slit-like eyes of Chin Loo, avoid that story; it is bad."

>>15563360
>The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson
i like these rules, but this one is mis-stated. Watson isn't stupid, and Doyle didn't intend him to be. Watson is a decorated war veteran, a highly qualified medical doctor, and a skilled writer. of course his attempts to emulate Holmes' reasoning fail, but so do most people's. the idea of Watson being some bumbling old buffer only really started with the Basil Rathbone films of the 1930s/40s.
Wikipedia states rule 9 as "sidekick", not "stupid friend".

>>15563407
[Charlie Chan shuffles away, downcast and disconsolate]

>>15563411
A stupid friend is how it was originally called when Knox first published the rules in the preface to Best Detective Stories of 1928-29. Though I do agree that Watson isn't stupid, and that sidekick is a better catch-all term.

I think that you should have at least three suspects that aren't ruled out until the big reveal at the end. Usually there's a red herring character meant to draw all the suspicion of the unsophisticated reader, but after reading a couple of these stories you quickly learn to discover these characters and realize that they are never the murderers (unless the author thinks that you're really stupid). But if there are only one two suspects not ruled out and one is a red herring, then it's also not really a mystery. I was recently reading a murder mystery book and it had an old lady character introduced in the first half and then the book completely forgot about it until the very end when main character decides to visit her for a cup of tea for no apparent reason after all other suspects have been ruled out or murdered. HMMM, I WONDER WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. Don't be this obvious, pls.

Although I have to say that I don't really like or understand the genre. Knives Out left me completely ambivalent and I didn't feel anything about the book I've mentioned either.

>>15563144
Where do you go to get the old 19th century / early 20th century murder mystery pulp?

apparently people couldn't put the things down.

>>15563144
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpMtrC16v4

>>15563500
Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore.

>>15563509
F

I read the first Gideon Fell book recently and even though the detective genre was like a hundred years old when the novel came out, I was still surprised by the genre-savvy bits. Some of the characters had read a lot of mystery novels and discussed why or why not their murder mystery would involve death traps like in the novels.

>>15563178
Ana is beautiful

The whodunnit tradition was revived in Japan through the Shin Honkaku movement of mystery writers. They put out good stuff and tend to have a meta-bent to it as well since they know how implausible a real locked room situation would be in contemporary times. You also have manga like Detective Conan and Kindaichi Case Files making use of a visual medium for whodunnits. Some VNs and video games are also whodunnits (Kara no Shoujo). If you're interested, check out the mysteries books translated by Locked Room International.

If you enjoyed Knives Out then that is a sign that you are incapable of writing well

>>15563144
Some sort of pushback is, to me, what makes these things work the best. If the story is just "we follow smart guy as he inexorably closes in on the killer", there's a lack of tension there. Having a witness killed, or the clues appear but then vanish, or a deduction turn out to be embarrasingly wrong: these help ensure that the reader doesn't get too comfortable.

>>15563144
there were a lot of memey references in that film, no one reads gravity's rainbow? pft

>>15564367
>read all translated Japanese mysteries
>read Conan
>read and watched Kindaichi
>played Danganronpa, Umineko, 999, portopia, Famicom Tantei Club II
Do you have any obscure recommendations for me? Rare to see another mystery geek here.

>>15563360
>7. The detective must not himself commit the crime
I want to read stories where this happens but at the same time I can't ask for them specifically as it would defy the whole point. Fucking catch-22

>>15563144
Read an essay by Dorothy Sayers on Aristotle's Poetics, and read the Poetics. She's one of the best writers of murder mystery/detective fiction, and basically says the Aritstotle's idea of the perfect tragedy can be applied almost 100% to detective fiction.

What's interesting is that Aristotle uses Oedipus Tyrannus as his model for the perfct tragedy, and in a way that tragedy works very much like a murder mystery, with Oedipus being the detective and the murderer at the same time.

>>15563500
Specifically for the American style of crime/detective pulp, the Black Lizard anthologies by Otto Penzler are great. He has one antology of stories published in the Black Mask magazine.

He also compiled stories of the more British tradition of mysteries in an anthology called Locked Room Mysteries, though that one contains more modern stories too. Still, I really recommend that one.

>>15563144
Knives Out is a poor example, but I'll tell you what happened to the genre: Modern technology. Look at the devolution of the British detective serial from the heydays of Poirot and Morse through to edgier-equals-realism procedurals like A Touch Of Frost and gimmicky but cleverly contrived 90s shows like Jonathan Creek, through to cheap knock-offs like Lewis and Midsomer Murders that are increasingly distanced from what the genre is to appeal to an utterly milquetoast middle-class audience who are so inbred and nepotistic they're practically one and the same as the people who make them, presently culminating in another wave of edgier-equals-realism procedurals like Vera- And in 2020, this is the plot of an episode of Vera:

>cold open that alludes to the murder in an eerie and anticlimactic fashion to vaguely ape some Coen brothers-esque shtick about how real life isn't cathartic like the movies (why are you bothering to make a work of fiction then?)
>body is discovered, usual tropes for this kind of story as they start the investigate, set-up of protag-personal-issues subplot section of the week
>they check the victim's phone, or emails, and find a recent call from an unknown number or similar
>they interview someone close to the victim or someone who found the body who inevitably turns out to know more than they let on about something
>one of them goes chasing one lead, the other goes chasing another lead
>one of these leads turns out to lead to a subplot about some other kind of illegal activity that appears unrelated, probably involving one of the people they interviewed near the start
>another segment where one of the main characters' personal issues for that season are explored a bit e.g. BEING A POLICE IS HARD, TFW NO GF etc.

cont.

>>15565758
>the other leads to something in the victim's personal life such as an affair or an estranged relative
>one of these two subplots is closed off and they both go chasing the other one
>just before the final ad break they get a call from the phone company/internet provider saying they've discovered who the last person the victim talked to is and it turns out to be either A) related to the illegal activity somebody else was doing and the murderer was one of the first people they interviewed or B) related to the personal issues the other subplot uncovered and it's some rando we've barely seen; up until this moment it could just as easily have been either with the information we've been shown and it's as if the writers decided which route to take with a coin flip before sitting down to write that page, total asspull every time - furthermore, the entire second act never needed to happen, if they just sat on their asses and waited for the phone company, HMRC, or whoever to get back to them they'd have found out the exact same conclusion, so the bulk of the story is literally just filler of them fucking around from colour-graded locale to colour-graded locale interviewing people for fun while waiting for TalkTalk to get back to them and give them all the answers regardless
>they go to arrest the guy and get their impassioned justification for why they were right to murder the victim, then the personal-issues segment of the week is wrapped up with a witty quip or a glum montage alluding to how it'll feed into next week's episode

Every fucking time. Mobile phones are the worst thing ever to happen to the detective serial / whodunnit genre. Ironically it's devolved the genre back to the state it was in around Arthur Conan Doyle's time when he was writing brilliant characters with mediocre plots a lot of the time, which also relied on a lot of running about from place to place 3 steps behind the actual events happening and then being fed all the interesting bits in flashback form at the end with barely any "investigation" being done except the witty deduction of clients' details from their appearance at the start of each story.

It's fucking dire.

>>15563360
>5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
I love that I know exactly who he's throwing shade on with this one. lmfao

>4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
Christie broke this one (in a way) with Ackroyd, but it's such a standout example it just goes to show what a great popular author she was that she could deconstruct so many of these rules so cleverly.

>The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
This is another reason I think the plots of a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories are mediocre compared to the characterisation and setting of the stories. Doyle had some brilliant ideas but a lot of the time he just doesn't quite capture the sort of genius he's emulating. Probably one of the few examples where later works loosely based on a property have done better justice to the spirit of the work than the original.

>>15563509
>Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s specialized in science fiction and mystery books, respectively, and were two sides of one business that occupied a century-old commercial storefront that had been expanded with a 1950s-era addition. Pulling into the dentist’s office parking lot next door, Blyly could see flames shooting out the broken front windows of his business.

>He ran around to the back door and pulled it open in hopes of finding the fire extinguisher just inside. Met with thick smoke, he turned back.

>Blyly hurried next door to the dentist’s office, entering through an open garage door in back. He thought he might be able to save that building. Pushed back outside by more smoke and flames, Blyly returned to his car and drove home.

>“I was not especially interested in watching my business burn to the ground,” he said.

>In a letter to his customers and employees, Blyly described driving down Lake Street and passing building after building on fire. “No sign of any cops, national guard troops, or any help,” he wrote after returning home.

>Blyly said he’s been told there are images of the possible arsonist who torched his business online.

>“A white guy with a mask,” he said. “Apparently, out there on the internet there’s video of him doing it.”

>“The Uncles,” as Blyly refers to the stores, contained over 100,000 used and new volumes when they burned. There were rare signed editions and decades of collectibles. He estimated the retail value at around $1 million.

What the fuck is wrong with people

>>15563397
It usually means you need to prepare for a whopping great dues ex machina towards the end of the story involving stolen jewels, ancient religious sects, triads, or some other trendy exotic voodoo of the time.

It's the equivalent of watching a movie or reading a book today that involves a character who's best friends with the protagonist but only interacts with them alone, to such an extent that it's excruciatingly obvious they're going to turn out to be a hallucination (possibly of someone dead) by the end.

>>15563144
Apart from the basic rules of construction, good characterization will save a mediocre mystery. Knives Out has none of this so I'd rather just cross it out. If you want to learn how to write an inviting mystery, study the Greeks along with with some the better Golden Age novelists like Carr and Craig Rice. Now remember, Carr's characterization is very loose and he can be quite unfair but he is still smart enough to deceive the reader, learn from him. Don't impersonate but understand and question. The Greeks will help you with the structure and resolution. Practice enough times and you'll churn a respectable batch of mysteries that will probably get passed over for other low-brow content like litrpgs

Can I get a list of essential detective/mystery fiction?

>fell hard for a red herring in Ten Little Indians
I'm still mad

>>15565830
50/40 on it being either a white supremacist false-flagging, or a white liberal prat getting his kicks without any regard for the consequences of his actions + no actual understanding or knowledge when it comes to radical political stuff like the Blank Panthers, Malcolm X etc. he claims to be supporting. Other 10% being the chance of it being an actual BLM activist who thinks his actions are justified by their ideological cause.

Dorothy Sayers >>>>>>>>>>> Agatha Christie

>>15565758
>>15565762
The phone problem can be easily fixed by having the detective not be from the police or simply not have access to the cellphone of the victim. I don't think the phone itself is the problem, it's lazy writing.

>>15563360
>Agatha Christie is a safe bet, her mysteries were mostly solid
no most of them were pretty bad, her stuff is entry level

I've always wanted to read the detective novel by Ezra Pound's friend which features him as one of the main characters, supposed to be one of the most complex novels of the genre

>>15565879
Why the delete? Also, this is why I keep my rarest CDs and vinyl records in a humidity-controlled and fireproof locker when they're not being played. I live in a shitty UK block of flats with no fire safety stuff, not taking any chances.

>>15565870
someone needs to make a chart for it

>>15565870
https://www.librarything.com/bookaward/The+Top+100+Mystery+Novels+of+All+Time+Mystery+Writers+of+America

>>15565883
I agree, which is why I'm currently 5 chapters into the first draft of a neo-noir novel about two young ketamine addicts under austerity in the UK, investigating the disappearance of a friend who is a county lines runner, who for obvious reasons don't want to get the police involved. Some use of phones is inevitable given the subject matter but I'm making sure those plot beats all happen before the end of the second act, so from there as the tension continues to build it's all all-natural old-fashioned Hitchcock-influenced goodness.

>>15565870
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/124225.Tozai_Mystery_Best_100_int_ver_

>>15565888
Simple isn't the same as bad, just because it's not self-fellating stream of consciousness word puzzles like Joyce doesn't mean it's not worthy literature. Agatha Christie mastered a single genre like few ever have, constructing and deconstructing many of the cliches we now take as standards of multiple subgenres in the span of one career. She had some clunkers but stories like Sad Cypress, The Body In The Library, and Death On The Nile are among some of the best plots in any work of the crime genre.

>>15565891
So, read it?

>>15565888
This. She's okay if you're an ESL trying to read your first book in English. Beyond that, it's just pablum for simpletons.

>>15565126
some anon should drop a lit of ten books, with one of them being the offending work

>>15565891
what is it called

>>15564367
>>15564738
Would you recommend some of the Japanese ones? Is Soji Shimada a good place to start?

>>15565126
If you want a movie that does this well, try the US remake of Insomnia from ~2002. The bigger struggle, however, is to go into it without seeing who else is billed alongside the protagonist (including the posters, trailers, and opening credits), because the movie is way more fun if you have no idea who is playing the (obvious) antagonist until it's revealed because it's an actor you wouldn't expect to play that kind of role so well. I imagine it was always meant to be a surprise from the way it's cut but because it was one of the director's first features the studio probably had to shunt it all over the place for star power marketing. A pretty bleak and atmospheric little neo-noir.

>>15566390
Soji Simada is solid but a bit old school to my taste (muh fair rules). Keigo Higashino is good entry point. (Especially translations are fantastic)

>>15566433
Thanks, I'll check him out. Is he the most famous out of the Shin Honkaku movement? He's the first one I see who's been translated to my language. Any specific book you'd recommend as a starting place? Got a nine hour train ride ahead of me this weekend, perfect opportunity to get into it

bump

>>15566551
>Is he the most famous out of the Shin Honkaku movement?
Yes, I believe he is most famous Japanese mystery writer nowadays.
> He's the first one I see who's been translated to my language.
It is funny, translations to my native language (Russian) appeared way before English translations.
> Any specific book you'd recommend as a starting place
The Devotion of Suspect X is modern classic and best starting point.

>>15564738
Honestly I'm still pretty new to Japanese mysteries, but I just follow the reccomendations of one of the translators at Locked Room International. He has a lot of reviews on stuff that never gets translated.

https://ho-lingnojikenbo.blogspot.com/

>>15563144
Forget about it. Umineko just saturated all the mystery stories.

>>15569171
Seems very interesting thank you

Would strongly recommend The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco. It's a murder mystery with monks and theological discussion.

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv288.html

Van Dine's twenty rules for detective fiction

>>15565783
>Christie broke this one (in a way) with Ackroyd, but it's such a standout example it just goes to show what a great popular author she was that she could deconstruct so many of these rules so cleverly.
Most thallium poisoning cases that get discovered are because someone read her Pale Horse. Even the ones where someone who is a medical professional which get uncovered cite her.

If you haven't seen Murder by Death, check it out. Truman Capote playing an eccentric weirdo who pits fictional detectives against each other to solve his murder. It's absolutely hilarious. (Contains Chinamen)

>>15563144
Bump

>>15569851
read it in high school, explores dope metaphysical concept and satirical murders.

>>15570524
Shit, that's pretty cool. I always thought "Well, Christie is good but she didn't get a guy acquitted of murder using her own detective's methods like Doyle" but I guess this has him beat.

>"In another instance, in 1971, a serial killer, Graham Frederick Young, who had poisoned several people, three fatally, was caught thanks to this book. A doctor conferring with Scotland Yard had read The Pale Horse and realised that the mysterious "Bovingdon bug" (the deaths occurred in a factory in Bovingdon, England) was in fact thallium poisoning."

>>15565783
>Ackroyd
USE SPOILER TAGS FFS

>>15571459
>he reads for the plot

>>15571558
Isn't that the whole point of mysteries tho

>>15571565
It's about the journey, not the destination.

>enjoying Knives Out
Absolutely embarrassing

>>15571579
>It's about the journey, not the destination

Detective fiction is absolutely about the destination you cretin.

>>15571604
Maybe bad detective fiction.
Good stuff like Paul Auster, Umberto Eco and the likes are much more about the journey.

>>15564396
If I never heard of it, is that a sign that I'm the next James Joyce?

>>15564502
kek

>>15571362
Christie is crazy good. Emphasis on crazy. She faked her own death to frame her husband when he had an affair, and hid under the surname of the woman he was having an affair with. Doyle was contacting psychics to try to find her. There's a Dustin Hoffman movie which speculates about what she did over the weeks she was missing.
>Graham Frederick Young
There's a movie called The Young Poisoner's Handbook about him which is probably the best dark comedy about a serial killer I've ever seen. The Bovingdon poisonings happened after he'd already been released for poisoning his family and friends.

>>15571459
It's hardly as if it spoils anything. You can't even guess who the murderer is from that detail, let alone in what way the comment applies to the story.

>>15571882
>The Bovingdon poisonings happened after he'd already been released for poisoning his family and friends.

gotta love the british justice system

>>15564502
Only /lit/ reads GR

>>15565758
Could you recommend some good mystery tv shows? Mini-series preferable