MY FIRST agent said to
me: "If you can't think of anything else, Simon, write a murder
mystery - people can't get enough of those." And he was right. We
do have a passion for a bit of blood and gore, to the extent that
crime fiction, in the publishing world, outsells almost every other
genre.
The truth is there, on
the street. Residents of the Whitechapel area, in London, cannot
move for the numerous Jack the Ripper tours. And where would our
evenings be without those TV detectives on the case? We love a
murder - prefer- ably in serial form. But why do we love them? The
clues are there.
Without murder, there
would be large holes in the TV schedules. The Killing,
Lewis, Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Columbo,
Foyle's War, The Bridge (the filming of
the new series has just finished), Scott and Bailey,
Jonathan Creek, Wycliffe, Cracker,
Frost, Inspector Morse, Endeavour. . .
My apologies if I have missed your favourite, but there isn't room
on the page for every fictional detective, or for every series
built around butchery and annihilation - and that is because we
enjoy them so much.
There is a large supply
because there is so much demand. We get home after a hard day's
work, and like nothing better than a good murder. And,
increasingly, led by the Scandinavians, we're up for the grosser
and grislier sorts. So, again: why?
We are intrigued by the
psychology, of course. We are all amateur psychologists these days,
avid people-watchers. To be able to declare, halfway through the
story, "It's the postman," and be right, is a huge feather in our
cap. Agatha Christie understood this interest, which she expressed
through a character in Towards Zero:
When
you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based
on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all
wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the
culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at
a given moment, at a given point. People are brought into it from
different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. The murder
itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour.
AS CHRISTIE reminds us, a
murder mystery is about more than the murder itself. It is about
the before, and, I would suggest, the after; about cause and
effect; about the people caught up in its web - their psychological
frailties and wretched secrets, exposed in the harsh light of
investigation. In a game of cat and mouse with the writer, the
reader tests his or her psychological skills, weighing each glance,
each clue, as events unfold around the zero hour.
Crime fiction is
something of a newcomer on the literary scene. The genre emerged in
the 19th century, after Edgar Allen Poe's The Murders in the
Rue Morgue was published in 1841, with Auguste Dupin as the
brilliant sleuth. In England, the genre was popularised by Charles
Dickens's friend Wilkie Collins, with titles such as The Woman
in White (1860), and, perhaps his tour de force,
The Moonstone (1868).
But while murder as
fiction is new, it taps into a long-established interest in gory
death. Long before crime writers emerged from the plotting shadows,
crucifixions, drownings, beheadings, and hangings could all draw a
good crowd, appreciative chatter, and dark fascination.
The 16-year-old Thomas
Hardy witnessed the hanging of the unfortunate Martha Brown in
1856. He later based his novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles
on her story, and was still writing about the event in his 80s.
"What a fine figure she showed against the sky," he wrote, 70 years
after the event, "as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight
black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half-round and
back."
Dickens also witnessed
public hangings, and, although he campaigned strongly against them,
spoke of the "fascination of the repulsive, something most of us
have experienced".
DEATH has always been
entertainment, and strangely uplifting. The American author E. L.
Doctorow compares murder to religion for its ability to stir. He
wrote:
Murders are exciting, and lift people into a heart-beating awe, as
religion is supposed to do; after seeing one in the street, young
couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross
themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old
folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon,
because murders are enlivened sermons to be analysed and considered
and relished; they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion,
murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide
joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will
talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.
Doctorow described the
numin-ous quality of murder, echoing observations by the
philosopher Edmund Burke. In 1756, Burke reflected on our love of
horror in paintings, a horror that he called "the Sublime". He
noted the human fascination with depictions of nature at its most
terrifying and intimidatory, such as storms and avalanches - scenes
that would terrify us in real life.
Things that are "dark,
uncertain, and confused", he wrote, inspire horror in us - but it
is pleasurable horror, experienced in both fear and attraction,
because we know we are safe. We are taken to the brink of being
destroyed, and hung over the edge of the abyss - but we are taken
there on our sofas, with popcorn to hand and the remote control
(and possibly a friend) close by.
This is "the Sublime": it
is the place to which murder mystery takes us, where we meet the
terrible in our slippers, and find it rather fine. And, in the eye
of the storm, like a lighthouse in the raging seas, is the
detective, the one who must lead us home to a place of justice and
restoration. As P. D. James observes: "What the detective story is
about is not murder, but the restoration of order."
RAYMOND Chandler's Philip
Marlowe is such a man. He remains a giant among literary
detectives, embodying the author's conception of the private
investigator as "a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual
man". Chandler said:
He
must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour - by
instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly
without saying it. He must be the best man in his world, and good
enough for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he
is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess,
and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of
honour in one thing, he is that in all things.
The dishonour of this
dark world is set against the honour of the detective - who is
almost a Christlike figure, you might say. So it is perhaps not
surprising that the murder-mystery genre has attracted so many
religious versions. A dedicated website (www.detecs.org)
claims that there are 280 clergy - or "near clergy" - detectives in
print. Their titles are tantalising: Clerical Errors;
The Rosary Murders; Reverend Randolph and the Unholy
Bible. To these might be added my own recently published
contribution to the genre, A Vicar, Crucified - the first
in a new contemporary murder-mystery series that features Abbot
Peter.
The most famous of God's
gumshoes, however, is probably G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, who
has a face "as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling" - but is, of
course, much shrewder than he looks. Alongside him is Ellis
Peters's Cadfael, a 12th-century monk of Shrewsbury, popularised by
the TV series. He is joined by Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma -
one of a long list of crime-busting nuns of a mostly medieval
vintage, each trying to save the world in their own small way.
Traditionally, the appeal of a murder mystery is a stool with three
legs: character, plot, research. It is best if we enjoy the company
of the detective, or the relationship between the detectives (if
there is more than one), and find them surrounded by intriguing and
believable characters. It is also good if the plot is plausible,
and honestly told, and no absurd rabbits are pulled from the hat by
the writer in the last chapter, cheating the readers' powers of
detection.
We enjoy being taken into
a world, or setting, which is new to us, and about which we learn
as the story unfolds. What special know-ledge is on display here?
Colin Dexter, for instance, the creator of Inspector Morse, leads
us inside the beautiful but secretive walls of an Oxford college;
C. J. Sansom, through the investigative lawyer Martin Shardlake,
reveals life - and death - in Tudor England, away from the
well-documented court intrigues. Patricia Cornwell, through Kay
Scarpetta, blinds us with forensic knowledge and tasty Italian
recipes.
BUT I would suggest a
fourth leg to the crime-fiction stool: contemplation. The best
detective stories are contemplations on the human condition, in
their social setting. The United States may have adored itself in
the 1950s, but Chandler did not share in this self-congratulation.
Instead, he described "the darkness, degeneracy, depravity, and
sheer nastiness" that accompanied economic growth after the
Depression.
The medium is the
message, and, in murder mystery, sometimes the setting is the
murderer. And so the question: is a murderer always guilty? It is
interesting how often Sherlock Holmes makes his own decision about
the guilt or otherwise of the suspect. He does not always hand him
or her over to the police. Conan Doyle was asking us to consider
not only what people do, but why they do it. The black-and-white
nature of his stories extends only as far as the ink on the
page.
Murder mystery is,
therefore, more than a one-trick pony, with only the grand reveal
in the drawing room to entertain. There is the journey towards the
zero hour, and the consequences of that moment for those who live
on. Who will survive the exposing light of the investigation, when
all secrets are made known? How will they cope as murder brings the
Angel of Judgement to everyone's door? It is nice to experience
judgement with a cup of cocoa in one's hand.
On the face of it, of
course, there is a disconnect here. Hard-core pornography is
sometimes criticised for the effects that it can have on the
behaviour of those who view it; yet crime fiction - in which
writers display endless ingenuity in devising techniques for
killing people, and then describe the cruelty with shocking realism
- is considered healthy.
Pornography found in our
teenage child's bedroom is not something to celebrate. Yet who
would not be pleased to see an adolescent reading a good murder
mystery on holiday? We don't immediately think: "I've helped to
create a psycho." But, then, crime fiction is a medium that
transcends itself, and deals with the biggest two questions that we
face: what is life? and what is death? That is why murder mystery
is sublime.
A Vicar, Crucified, by Simon Parke, is
published by DLT at £7.99 (Church Times Bookshop £7.20 - Use
code CT124 ).
The Name of the
Rose Umberto Eco
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins
Smiley's People
John le Carré
The Virgin in
Ice Ellis Peters
Devices and
Desires P. D. James
The Suspicions of Mr
Whicher Kate Summerscale
Five Little Pigs
Agatha Christie
The Hound of the
Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle
Dissolution C.
J. Sansom
Farewell, My Lovely
Raymond Chandler