I've just dug out Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès. One thing that I enjoy about certain detective novels is that sort of detached archness which says, 'This isn't intended to be taken seriously'. They aren't 'real' or convincing or factually accurate or based on careful research or believable. They didn't and couldn't happen. They're comedic. They amuse but the problems posed are still worth puzzling over. Life isn't so short that you haven't got time for them.
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It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. -
I have to say I hate that kind of archness, ff. It's the kind of attitude that says, "We both know this kind of stuff is beneath us, but we can both have a smile at the wretched antics of these characters". It's like opera - however intrinsically unbelievable, it has to be portrayed at least as if the characters themselves believed in it or the whole thing falls apart.Originally posted by french frank View PostComment
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I'm afraid, aeloium, that ff is on to something. There seem to be two poles of crime novels: the gritty and the camp. Edmund Crispin is far in the second. Agatha Christie is as well by virtue of the way in which the plot is a (devilishly clever) game and the situations only as a pretext for it.
I suspect Dame Phyllis James' high seriousness is what leads some to admire her, and some to find her a bore.Comment
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I wasn't denying that there was a sort of 'camp' style of det fiction, only that I didn't care for it (I can't read Christie because of her style as much as anything else).
But I don't think the reverse is necessarily 'high seriousness' either. Chandler's Marlowe is almost a self-parody, and yet a deliberate parody of the Marlowe character and the Chandler style by others (and I'm sure there have been many) wouldn't be as funny or as interesting.Comment
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I warmed even more to Chandler when he let an interviewer ( I think) into the secret of his editing processes. His desk was strewn with papers in need of editing and whichever one his cat sat/lay on was the one that Chandler chose next.Originally posted by aeolium View Post
And as Barry Norman would say, "why not?!"
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It's a matter of taste really. I'm not interested in the Dexter/Rankin type of novel - nor, I suspect, the Scandinavian stuff that is the current rage. People have substituted 'camp' for 'arch'. What I meant was what aeolium (albeit critically) identified as a knowingness. I'm not sure that I agree with the idea that it's 'beneath' (us). But it's a bit fun to think of academics letting their hair down as, oh, yes, 'we' have been known to do. Occasionally 
. Ahem 
It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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You & ff have set me a-thinking here, aeolium.Originally posted by aeolium View Post
One of my guilty secrets amongst tec fiction is the early work of the splendid Joyce Porter who wrote three detective novels about her deliberately repellent anti-hero Detective Inspector Wilfred Dover in the imaginatively titled series "Dover One", "Dover Two" and, yes you've guessed it, "Dover Three". There are about a further half-dozen Dover books with more imaginative titles (see link below)
Dover is lazy, egocentric, incompetent, boorish and is habitually rude to everyone especially to his hard-working sidekick Sergeant MacGregor who is keen to solve crimes so that his superiors will notice his undoubted talents and move him well-away from the odious Dover.
However Dover always gets his man or woman by good luck and/or by accident, much to MacGregor's fury and my laughter, and delights in rubbing his assistant's nose into his success.
Once you get further into the series, you begin to realise that her novels are totally formulaic but such is the strength of the two central characters, if you buy into them then you buy into the tale.
Porter also attempted the same trick in parodies of Dorothy L Sayers featuring the Honourable Constance Ethel Morrison Burke (referred to as 'The Hon Con'); and with an incompetent spy called Eddie Brown.
Copies are not easy to find and whether or not you like them will depend on how much you take to her main characters - the stories themselves are not masterpeices of the genre. However, I'm very fond of them in the 'bad is good, awful is better' sub-genre
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Thanks umslopogaas, spot on - I may give it a try, for the sake of completeness. I've heard JLC being asked about it, he sounded rather defensive.Originally posted by umslopogaas View PostComment
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John le Carré is also one of my most thoroughly read authors, though I consider spy novels a different genre (Maybe I'm being too picky here.). I found their intricacy and innuendo difficult to follow at times, but didn't let those traits discourage me. I'm afraid I've burned out on Le Carré too, though I couldn't tell you exactly why.
Scott Turow (1949-)
Another genre related to detective fiction is the courtroom drama. Did the old Perry Mason series make it to the UK? A current bestselling master of this genre is Scott Turow. He doesn't have a huge body of work, but, again, I highly recommend that you begin with the first novel of the lot, Presumed Innocent (1987) and read on from there. I recently read Innocent (2010) and enjoyed it as much as the earlier books. To date three films are listed on his Wikipedia page as having been made from his books.
Amateur51,
I love your story of Raymond Chandler and his cat! I can believe it! Another excellent writer of detective fiction who should have written more books.Comment
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I would go along with this. I re-read The Naive and Sentimental Lover a couple of months ago after a 30 year gap as part of my on-going re-read of all of his books which I promised myself to do following meeting Le Carre last September. A Murder of Quality may be early Le Carre but the touches of the master are there. I now have three of his books personally signed.Originally posted by umslopogaas View Post"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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He did in deed many more years ago than I care to remember!Originally posted by Estelle View PostComment
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Estelle, no you are not being too picky.John Le Carre novels are quite different 'spy' stories to me. My long thread was on Classic 'tec stories but there is room for discussion on all genre surely. I have all the Smiley books [or most of them] and to me Smiley is Alec Guinness as I also keep the old videosI made. He was meant to be old as he was tempted out of retirement surely.Comment
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Saly and estelle both, my post was prompted by Petrushka's #6 which listed "A Murder of Quality" which was very much on-thread - a detectve story, in which George Smiley takes time off to solve a murder in an English public school (Sherborne, in fact, which JLC attended briefly and unhappily). I muddied the waters with my subsequent ramblings on JLC........Originally posted by salymap View PostComment
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Richard, you have again tempted me to stray into a mixed detective-spy area with another novelist I've long admired.
American Novelist Martin Cruz Smith (1942-) is another exceptionally talented writer whose first Arkady Renko novel, Gorky Park (1981), made him famous and was made into a successful film which no one who saw it is likely to forget. Smith has a gift for portraying the outsider and for presenting his stories in 3-D technicolor. The Renko series has run to seven books the latest being Three Stations (2010).
MaryComment
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