The Puzzle of Detective Science Fiction - Guest Post from Author Brett Adams

The Puzzle of Detective Science Fiction, 

or Why Humphrey Bogart Never Drove a Hover Car

Have you ever wondered what makes a good detective story tick?

Perhaps it's easier to think about those mysteries that didn't work. Recall the last book you read that was a chore to finish … or worse, that you quit mid-read. The blurb or cover interested you enough to begin reading, but then something went wrong.

What were you thinking when you tossed it aside? Was it something like:

(a) "He couldn't have shot him with the sixth bullet. The insert-gun-here only chambers five slugs."

(b) "But wasn't the suspect having an appendectomy on the day of the murder?

(c) "How could I know that the murderer was a trained topiarist and that the victim was a potted ficus?"

(d) "I'm hungry. What's for lunch?"

Okay, so maybe I'm reading different books to you, but bear with me. Let's examine these accusations one at a time.

The first could be called a violation of verisimilitude--of how believable is the story given how we assume the world works. It's the stuff the author usually doesn't have to specify. Trees are green, the Pope is Catholic, and you can never, ever get a taxi on a rainy day in New York. The story, or a small part of it, just doesn't correspond with what we know of the real world. Or, and I'll get to this, what we know of the fictional world in which the story is set. This is an error of general knowledge.

The second, is narrower in scope, and could be termed a violation of internal consistency. The murder requires B, but we were told A. The author--human that he is--has dropped one of his story threads and it has snarled. This is an error of story logic.

The third is a different kind of problem. There is no error, as such, but the story doesn't feel … right. For now, let's call it a broken narrative contract.

Now, leaving aside (d)--perhaps eat more protein and give that book another try?--which of the above annoys you most? People will put up with a fair dose of (a)--every Bond movie banks on this. And even a touch of (b) will be forgiven by many readers, so long as it isn't central to the plot. But (c), for some reason, seems universally to annoy us. Why is that?

To find the answer, let's take a detour into the past. Have you heard of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction? It refers roughly to the 1920s and 30s, and includes primarily British and American writing. It was the era of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler, and their fictional sleuths, Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. Though styles differed, the genre crystallized to such an extent that it was codified in Ten Commandments, quoted below from Julian Symons' The Detective Story in Britain:

1. The criminal must be mentioned early on
2. Supernatural solutions are ruled out
3. Only one secret room or passage is allowed
4. No undiscovered poisons are permitted
5. No Chinamen should appear in the story (seriously!)
6. The detective must not be helped by lucky accidents or intuitions
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime
8. Nor must he conceal clues from the reader
9. The thoughts of the “Watson” must not be concealed
10. There must be special warning of the use of twin brothers or doubles (I'm not joking!)

Symons listed the above rules under the title: Fair Play. And there's our answer to why it annoys us when the author fails to give us information vital to the crime's solution. More than any other genre, detective stories are viewed as games. Each crime is a puzzle, and much of the reader's enjoyment lies in solving it. But when the author hides a piece of the puzzle, well … that's just cheating. And no-one likes a cheat.

The topic for this post arose from a problem I had while writing a detective novel titled Strawman Made Steel. The novel is in the hard-boiled mode of the Golden Era (if you're unsure what that means, just picture Humphrey Bogart) and is set in two New Yorks--one of which lies in the future and is accessed by time travel. Now, what constitutes fair play in a world that is radically unlike our own? What are valid moves? If time travel is okay, how about telekenesis? Novel poisons? Hovercars? Aliens? The list goes on. If the reader doesn't understand the rules of this make-believe world, then they can hardly be expected to enjoy the game.

Before writing, I researched by reading detective stories, both of the Golden Era and those with a science fiction flavour. One in particular seemed perfect, a collection of novellas titled The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, by Larry Niven. The protagonist is a wise-talking intergalactic PI; the setting is a future earth; and the mysteries are of the locked door kind. But, to my disappointment, and much as I liked the character, I failed to grasp Niven's future society in detail sufficient to try my hand at each crime's solution. Each mystery was a locked door, but the 'key' always seemed to pop out of nowhere.

The solution to this problem of bootstrapping the reader to understand your world can't be to make him or her sit through a hundred pages of explanation. No, somehow, the author must weave those rules through the story. Seamlessly. No at as dry "facts" but charged drama. Which is easier said than done.

Meet Brett Adams

Ever since I discovered that the 1000 page tome my parents left resting against the kitchen TV was not some boring political treatise, but in fact the greatest piece of fantasy ever written―I'm talking, of course, about The Lord of the Rings―I've wanted to write. I was fascinated not only by Tolkien's world and characters, but by how he could plot something so large and intricate.

Which is why my first novel, Dark Matter, was a biology-based-paranormal-fantasy-with-a-twist-of-science-fiction-adventure-and-just-a-hint-of-thriller. It took five years to write and led to a lot of counseling.

My second book, Strawman Made Steel, is hard-boiled detective fiction with a side of sci-fi, and simpler ;)

Connect with Brett Adams

@DweomingWell on Twitter

Read more guest posts from your favorite artists here

Get Free Kindle Books Everywhere You Go

Get This Post & Every Free Kindle Book Sent Right to Your Amazon Kindle Device

You can easily get every book, guest post and featured book sent right to your Amazon Kindle device by subscribing to the Free Book Dude Kindle blog. For less than $1 a month, you can have 48 free Amazon Kindle books wirelessly sent to your device every single day. Check it out for free today.