Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Recently I read Lucy Worsley's Art of the English Murder, which mentioned the Ten Commandments adopted by the Detection Club--a group begun around 1930 that included such luminaries as Sayers, Christie, Berkeley, and Chesterton. The Ten Commandments were:
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.
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
No Chinaman must figure in the story.
No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
The detective must not himself commit the crime.
The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
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.
Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
Milne's novel predates the society and these rules, but he follows them closely enough. |
Wonder why no chinaman?
I'm glad they put this in there because modern cozy mysteries do this annoying convenient plot scapegoat all the time --- "No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right."
Christie did not follow these rules ---
The detective must not himself commit the crime.
The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
"No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end." -- You know, Erle Stanley Gardner definitely ignored this one. So many of his Perry Mason novels go into details of a technique of an industry, item, or such and such that are related to the case. I remember a friend of mine commenting in a review that she now knows all she needs to ever know about "glass eyes". I then read the same novel and agree -- you get the history of them, the different shapes and sizes and procedures back in the day