Why do detectives seem so exciting to us

The first rule of the Detective Club (and five others)

The main rules of the genre were formulated in 1929 by Richard Knox, a Catholic priest, writer, radio host and one of the first members of the Detective Club.

In a real detective story, the action of supernatural or otherworldly forces is not allowed: all events must eventually receive a rational logical explanation.
The killer should be mentioned at the beginning of the novel, but the reader is not allowed to follow his train of thought.
An investigator cannot be a criminal. This rule was violated by Agatha Christie in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Fictional poisons and ingenious devices cannot be used to commit a crime, the action of which must be further explained.
A detective cannot rely on intuition and luck. He must follow logical conclusions and cannot withhold found clues and clues from readers.
Indistinguishable twin brothers and doubles in general cannot appear in a novel unless the reader is warned in advance.

Who is the main character

The basis of any detective is the figure of a detective.

Classic hero

It is believed that the first true detective in the history of literature was created by Edgar Allan Poe. In 1841, under the influence of the memoirs of Eugene François Vidocq - a former criminal and the world's first creator of political and criminal investigation - the English author wrote the story "Murder on the Rue Morgue". The main character of the work, an impoverished aristocrat, an outstanding thinker and intellectual Auguste Dupin, became the predecessor of other detective protagonists: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Father Brown.

The classic detective is a well-rounded personality and outwardly remarkable. Sherlock Holmes smokes a pipe, plays the violin, has a crooked nose, is tall and thin. He is a capable chemist and the inventor of his own deductive method.

Hercule Poirot is a small man with an egg-shaped head, black hair, which begins to dye with age. He is manic about order and punctuality, which helps him solve crimes.

Neither one nor the other have ever been married, each has a long-standing love: Holmes has a swindler Irene Adler, Poirot has Countess Vera Rusakova. They have no friends, only partners or servants. Readers do not know anything about the childhood of these outstanding detectives, nor about who their parents were, what family they grew up in and how they were brought up. The personal problems of the heroes are hidden from the readers.

A good sleuth is a function.

This rule was used by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and other authors of classic detective stories. Doubts, desires, regrets, psychological trauma, resentment and disappointment do not help solve convoluted crimes. Both Holmes and Poirot are needed by the authors only in order to point the finger at the murderer at the end of the novel.

Modern hero

For a long time, the classic detective hero was either a private investigator or an amateur sleuth (like Miss Marple, for example). Professional police officers were assigned a secondary or comic role. The detective played the role of a knight who investigates crimes for the sake of justice, not for the sake of money.

Now detectives are less like a fairy tale. Their heroes are "workhorses": police officers, members of the task force, servants of the law. Their images are more voluminous and lively: the author is important not only the bright features of the main character (like a smoking pipe or a lush mustache), but also his childhood, personal life, psychological portrait.

The modern reader is attracted by the charisma and depth of the hero. The character should be perceived as a real person living here and now. Therefore, the hero, in addition to virtues, has negative qualities, weaknesses, as well as an ambiguous past, which affects his formation as a person.

3 types of modern heroes

Superhero

How to find it out. He saves everyone, outwardly successful, but does not believe in himself.

Example:Mila Vasquez from The Theory of Evil by Donato Carrisi.

Mila Vasquez works in the Missing Persons Department, which employees call among themselves Limb (in medieval Catholic theology, this was the name of the place where the souls of those who did not deserve hell and eternal torment, but cannot go to heaven for reasons beyond his control), - ed.). She is a charming girl who knows psychology well and knows how to intuitively read the crime scene, feeling the killer's emotions.

Mila is a classic psychological type of superhero: everyone knows how good she is at business, she is empathic and knows how to win people over to her. At the same time, the girl herself is not confident in her abilities. Moreover, she considers herself unworthy of motherhood, good work, relationships. Her body is covered in cuts and wounds - while hurting herself, she tries to cope with psychological trauma. She gave her beloved daughter to the upbringing of her mother, because she is afraid of negatively affecting the child.

This girl herself is like a riddle that you certainly want to solve - pleasant, but detached, enthusiastic, but lonely. You can imperceptibly fall in love with her, but she will always be on the alert and will not allow this.

Bad cop

How to find it out. For the sake of justice and the capture of a real criminal, he can break the law - for example, break into the houses of suspects and falsify evidence. In the past, he may have belonged to the underworld, but has changed.

Example: Stephane Corso from "Land of the Dead" by Jean-Christophe Granger.

French writer and screenwriter Jean-Christophe Granger likes to take the classic technique of opposing two geniuses (Sherlock Holmes - Moriarty) and transform it, allowing an equal sign between the criminal and the servant of the law. He does this both in the novel "Kaiken" and in the recently published in Russian "Land of the Dead".

Detective Stefan Corso and his opponent, a serial killer, have similar biographies: they both lost their parents early, ran to orphanages, were physically and sexually abused, grew up on the street, and took drugs.

Corso was more fortunate: investigator Catherine Bompard found him as a teenager, forced him to quit drugs, graduate from high school and go to police school. However, the past does not leave the detective: he is asocial and indifferent to laws and rules. Arranging illegal surveillance, breaking into a suspect's house or falsifying evidence for him is in the order of things. Most of all in the world he is worried about the fate of his son, for whose custody he is fighting with his ex-wife Emilia.

Implicit hero

How to find it out. Initially, the reader does not even suspect that this hero is the main one. It may be the author himself or his alter-ego: postmodernists adore this technique.

Example: Lin Morgan from The Last Manuscript by Frank Thillier.

The most unexpected type of modern hero can be found in the famous French writer Frank Thilier in his novel The Last Manuscript. At first, it seems that the main investigation in the novel is being led by Criminal Police Officer Vic Altran and his partner Vadim Morel. Altran is similar to the classic Sherlock Holmes - he has an encyclopedic memory. This quality can be easily explained: he suffers from hypermnesia - a supernatural ability to remember, or rather, the inability to forget at least something.

Gradually, the focus of the novel shifts to the center is Lyn Morgan: the humble teacher who became the queen of the thriller and wrote the bestselling novel entitled "The Last Manuscript" after the disappearance of her daughter Sarah. It is she who begins to conduct a personal investigation and ends up with the killer one on one.

What the plot is based on

Classic detective

The right detective has to feature murder. Other forms of delinquency, like robbery or fraud, are less common and less popular. Most often, the author concentrates on a single crime.

The plot develops predictably: when the murder is committed, the detective takes the trail, begins to question witnesses, examines the crime scene, notes the details.

The author does not forget about false keys that can confuse the reader and make the solution more unpredictable. This creates an atmosphere of rivalry, but this is only an illusion: the reader is unlikely to win and solve the crime before, for example, Poirot does. In the finale, the detective invariably gathers all the suspects in one place and, explaining the course of the investigation to those present, points to the killer.

The assistant detective is often an important participant in the investigation. This figure is necessary in a classic detective story to ask the protagonist questions, drawing the reader's attention to key details that he might have missed. Classic examples of assistants are Dr. Watson with Conan Doyle and Arthur Hastings with Agatha Christie.

Modern detective

Playing with the form of the work and mixing genres is the main engine of the evolution of literature. Modern authors of detective stories are forced to compete not only with colleagues in the shop, but also with directors and screenwriters of films and detective series. To hook the reader, they modify the plot and form of their works, adopting something interesting from other spheres of art, remembering and transforming the classics or inventing new techniques.

5 plot tricks of a modern detective

1. Cliffhanger

The hero is faced with a difficult dilemma or learns important news, at which point the narrative suddenly ends. This plot technique is often used in TV series to make viewers want to watch the sequel.

Donato Carrisi builds his "Theory of Evil" on the cliffhanger. Each of the 70 chapters ends at an intriguing moment when the hero finds an important piece of evidence, says aloud a terrible secret (which no one knows about, including the reader), or gets caught up in an unexpected plot twist. This is how Carrisi makes his novel dynamic and intense - the reader cannot tear himself away, swallowing chapters one after another.

2. Images of evidence and documents

Marisha Pessl in the novel "Cinema of the Night" fills the text with clippings from articles, documents and photographs. Donato Carrisi uses the same technique, dividing the three parts of The Theory of Evil by forms of protocol and transcripts of telephone conversations. Thanks to this, the reader gets the impression that he is touching the evidence, literally holding it in his hands - this is hypnotizing and addictive.

What makes us read avid detective stories: images of evidence and documents

3. Literary hoax

Tillier's "Last Manuscript" is one of the most mysterious modern detectives, as it is both homage to the authors of classic detective novels (the final scene takes place on the Etretat cliffs, on the footbridge and the Needle Cliff - this is a tribute to Maurice LeBlanc, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie) and exquisite literary hoax, novel in novel.

The story begins with a preface in which a certain J.-L. Traskman talks about his father Caleb Traskman's unfinished book of the same title, The Last Manuscript. At the request of the editor, his father J.-L. Traskman has finished the final two chapters and is now presenting the work to the reader for judgment.

Then begins the novel by Caleb Traskman, in which we learn about the writer Lyn Morgan, who created a bestselling detective story with the identical title "The Last Manuscript" - the story of a simple teacher Judith Modroix, who maintains a relationship with a lonely elderly writer Janus Arpazhon. He gives Judit to read his untitled manuscript, which tells about the rape and murders of teenagers committed by a writer named Kajak Möbius: “Judit considers the plot of the novel to be fiction, she does not know that in fact Arpajon described his own story and that Kajak is him myself".

Tilier puts the novel into a novel like a nesting doll, and it is no coincidence that the last nesting doll refers to the Mobius strip - at the same time a simple and complex object that has no inside out. The book is filled with characters duplicating each other, endless references to classic detective stories and plots embedded in each other.

4. Team investigation

Despite the fact that the main character of the novel "Land of the Dead" is detective Stefan Corso, following his team is no less interesting. A group of four of Corso's subordinates do most of the analytical and paperwork: interviewing witnesses or rummaging through endless credit card statements and invoices. And sometimes teamwork leads to more meaningful results than a single spy on a criminal.

5. Litigation

The classic detective story ends when the culprit is caught, but Granger moves on. He devotes the final part of the novel "Land of the Dead" completely to the trial of a serial killer, leaving the reader to doubt the detective's abilities and continue to torment himself with the questions: “Was Detective Corso right? Has he caught a cruel killer or is he still walking free?"