The Detective Novel

Detective fiction is perhaps one of the most popular literary genres of all time. One of the
sub-genres of detective fiction is the detective novel. The novel as a formwas already,
almost fully-developed before the emergence of the detective fiction. Though traces of
detection techniques can be found in texts as early as The Ramāyāna or even the tale of
"The Three Apples"2 from the Arabian Nights, it was in China that we find the first
tradition3 of the proper detective fiction.

Detective fiction in the West however took a long time to develop. The late
seventeenth & and early eighteenth century saw the rise of a new popular literary genre –
the novel. The early novels dealt a lot with crime but it had very little of detection in it.
The approach though would change in the following centuries. Ian Bell traces this to the
change to the development of a proper governmental policing system and judiciary.

The literature of the eighteenth century is suffused with crime, but handles it in a
wholly different way from that of the nineteenth and twentieth. Looking back across
those centuries, it is easy to trace this difference to the penal realities of the time: the
absence of any reliable system of policing, or of the detection of criminals on any routine
basis.4
The ‘Bloody Code’5 proved to be an imperfect and inadequate legal system. It regarded
that the responsibility of catching and punishing a criminal rested solely with the
offended party. The novels of this period deal with the criminal as a sympathetic hero –
the prime example of this would be Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722). Attitudes
towards crime and criminals however underwent a change in the following decades. It
also changed the way The criminals were represented in literature. Changes can be found
in texts as early as 1773, and the publication of the first Newgate Calendar. Named after
the London prison, the Calendar was a series of collections of stories relating to details
of 'real life' crimes. Although the focus was still on the criminal, the portrayal was not
sympathetic by any means. As Stephen Knight points out in Form and Ideology in
Detective Fiction:
A short moral preface offered the stories as dreadful warnings; an early version
recommended the collection for the educational purposes of parents and also -
presumably as a diversion – or those going on long voyages. 6
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, writings on crime had not only started
to focus more on the mechanism of justice, but was becoming projected as a commercial
literature of relaxation. The popularity of the calendar gave rise to a short-lived sub genre
called the ‘Newgate Novel’- The fictional counterpart of the true crime stories in the
Calendar. One of the most successful of these novels, and the most well known was
Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837-9). Things were changing in the law and order front; the
bloody code gradually disappeared and by 1829 London had a professional police force.
This would start to influence the representation of crime in print. During the same period
Eugene-Francois Vidocq’s7 Memoirs8 were published which would go on to influence the
British ‘yellowbacks’9. Ian Ousby describes these as cheap and cheerful reading, [which]
included a flood of books presented as the reminiscences of real policemen but actually fiction
written by hacks. Of particular prominence in this field was William Russell, who wrote
(amongst others) Recollections of a Police Officer (1856), Experiences of a French
Detective Officer (1861), and Experiences of a Real Detective (1862). Christopher Pittard
notes that
Although contemporary analyses of ‘classic’ detective fiction have often been
concerned with the construction of ‘Englishness’ in the genre, the Victorian detective
story was influenced by the work of overseas practitioners. 10

The first important fictional detective in English literature, Edgar Allan Poe’s C.
Auguste Dupin certainly fits this description. The Parisian appeared in three short stories
- 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' (1841), 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' (1843) and
'The Purloined Letter' (1845). The first British literary detective, would be Charles
Dickens', Inspector Bucket, in the novel Bleak House (1852.) With Bucket, Dickens
created the prototype of the literary detective, and emphasized his uncertain status in
society, as a figure who stands halfway between respectable society and the criminals 11.
The next important figure in the history of the detective novel is Dickens’ protégé Wilkie
Collins who is credited with the first detective novel (gradually shifting from the
‘Sensational Novel11’), The Woman in White (1860). It would anticipate many features of
the 20th century detective novel.12 The Moonstone represents a shift towards detective
fiction in that the mystery was clearly defined. A later novel, The Law and the Lady
(1875), made the shift even more apparent 13. With A Study in Scarlet (1887) arrived the
most popular fictional detective ever – Sherlock Holmes and his friend and assistant Dr
J.Watson. Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective appears in 3 other novels (and also 56 short
stories) - The Sign of the Four (published 1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–
1902), The Valley of Fear (1914–1915).
[1] In the Indian Epic Ramayana Rama traces his abducted wife Sita, through the clues she left.
[2] "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian
Nights). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid
Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman
who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, to solve the crime and find the murderer within three
days, or be executed if he fails his assignment (wikipedia.org)
[3] A tradition of detective fiction is the Ming Dynasty Chinese detective fiction such as Bao Gong An) and the 18th
century novel Di Gong An The latter was translated into English as Dee Goong An (Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee) by
Dutch sinologist Robert Van Gulik, who then used the style and characters to write an original Judge Dee series.The
hero of these novels is typically a traditional judge or similar official based on historical personages such as Judge Bao
(Bao Qingtian) or Judge Dee (Di Renjie). Although the historical characters may have lived in an earlier period (such
as the Song or Tang dynasty) the novels are often set in the later Ming or Manchu period. (Wikipedia.org)
[4] Bell, Ian A. “Eighteenth-Century Crime Writing”, Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press,
2006.
[5] The main tool of law-enforcement was the fear of horrific punishment if caught: the so-called ‘Bloody Code’ which
penalized even minor thefts with death. The code was partly self-defeating, in that juries who felt the punishment too
great for the crime might well acquit; and there were various other means – from bribery to the kind of apparent
Christian repentance shown by the thief-heroine of Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders (1722) – of escaping the death
penalty or commuting it to a lesser punishment such as transportation.-( Bell, Ian A. “Eighteenth-Century Crime
Writing”, Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006.)
[6] Knight ,Stephen. Form and Ideology in Detective Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
[7] Eugène François Vidocq (July 23, 1775 – May 11, 1857) was a French criminal who later became the first director
of Sûreté Nationale and one of the first modern private investigators. Vidocq was Victor Hugo's inspiration for both
reformed criminal Jean Valjean and his pursuer, police inspector Javert, in the novel Les Misérables.
[8] …the four volumes of the Memoires of Eugene-Francois Vidocq (the first head of the Parisian surete) published
between 1828 and 1829. Vidocq's position is particularly interesting, as before becoming a detective he had been an
infamous forger and prison-breaker, and the role of the detective as halfway between respectable society and the
criminal would continue to be developed well into Victoria's reign.(Pittard ,Christopher . ‘Victorian Crime Fiction - An
Introduction –(http:///crimeculture.com)
[9] so called because of their bright yellow covers. Although these publications encompassed all kinds of popular
writing (including the sensation fiction of the 1860s), much of the output of the yellowback publishers was in 'true'
crime stories. Ian Ousby describes these as 'cheap and cheerful reading, [which] included a flood of books presented as
the reminiscences of real policemen but actually fiction written by hacks'
[10}. Christopher Pittard ‘‘Victorian Crime Fiction - An Introduction’’ –(http:///crimeculture.com)
[11] Ibid.
[12] The features are 1) A country house robbery 2) An "inside job"3) A celebrated investigator4) Bungling local
constabulary5) Detective enquiries6) False suspects7) The "least likely suspect"8)A rudimentary "locked room"
murder9) A reconstruction of the crime.10) A final twist in the plot. (Wikipedia.org)

[13]. See,. ‘Victorian Crime Fiction - An Introduction –(http:///crimeculture.com)-

‘‘ The Woman in White is considered to be the first of the sensation novels, but his later work would indicate a move
towards detective fiction. The Moonstone, published in 1868 (coincidentally, the year of the final public hanging in
Britain), employed many of the techniques of sensation fiction, but was more oriented towards the solving of a central
puzzle. Whereas the mystery of earlier sensation fiction had often been concerned with an undefined 'secret' (as in Lady
Audley's Secret, where the mystery surrounding Lady Audley is as important as the disappearance of George Talboys),
The Moonstone represents a shift towards detective fiction in that the mystery was clearly defined. A later novel, The
Law and the Lady (1875), made the shift even more apparent by hinting at a 'secret' (What is Eustace Woodville
concealing from his wife?) which was revealed halfway through the first volume; the rest of the novel followed a more
conventional pattern of literary detection. The detective in that novel, Valeria Woodville, was an amateur (and
furthermore, an early female detective); but The Moonstone hints at the role of the police detective in future crime
fiction in the character of Sergeant Cuff.’’