The child is father of the man, at least that’s what Wordsworth wrote. (Wasn’t he a loquacious so-&-so?) That means the things we love as kids often influence our tastes as adults. I am (unfortunately) old enough to acknowledge the truth in this observation, but I wonder if writers deliberately trade on this idea. After all, how do you create adult readers who’ll love Fantasy/Science Fiction? Wait until they’re old enough to vote and then give them a copy of Dune? No, you introduce them to the genre while they’re young, with kid’s stories written by great SF authors like Heinlein and LeGuin. But creating under-age Mystery readers is a slightly more difficult proposition. After all, Mysteries almost always involve Violent Crime, and we don’t want the Little Darlings to have nightmares. (Well, we may, but we won’t sell as many books if they do.) So how do you create the next generation of Nero Wolfe and Alex Cross fans? By giving them mysteries with juvenile detectives, of course![amazon_link asins=’0448466759′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’theboothafoly-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’eaafff07-9e68-11e8-ba3f-fd27745ad13e’] Early Juvenile Detectives When I was first learning to read, there were three fictional superstars of kid-lit whodunits. Well, seven characters but three detective teams: Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey…
Hang around book-nerds types long enough and you’ll hear them mention the word “subversive.” Subversive themes, subversive protagonists, subversive…well, you get the picture. Now, before you decide all English professors and book-club members need to be on some government watch list, what they’re talking about are the aspects of a story that make you rethink your assumptions. Part of this rethinking is part of any mystery or detective story. But some literary detectives succeed because they subvert the assumptions other characters make about them. Like that lovely old snoop, Miss Jane Marple. Early Detective Subversives In Agatha Christie’s stories, Miss Jane appears to be the quintessential English Spinster. She gardens, she bakes, she wears nothing but tweed (I think) and she lives in a small, English Village. The kind of lady most people expect is sweet and rather naive. But beneath those fluffy curls and an abominable hat sits an observant and cynical brain. Not much gets past that shrewd, old dame. And when she comes up with some pithy, insightful observation, she subverts the other characters’ expectations. See what I mean? But if Miss Jane set the standard of the unexpected detective, she’s had lots of followers since. One of my…
Detective Fiction’s First Odd Couple There are all kinds of mystery stories, filled with all different types of detectives, but if you’re going back to the roots of the mystery series types, the Granddaddies of them have got to be Holmes and Watson. They’re the original Adama-&-Eve, Mutt-&-Jeff, Odd Couple detective team and the template they set up is fierce. An Early portrait of the Dynamic Duo Thank you, Wikipedia! The most noticeable team member is Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first and foremost consulting detective. Brilliant, acerbic, and emotionally detached almost to a pathological degree, he’s the star of the series and he knows it. But Holmes isn’t chasing villains for glory or cash; he’s in it for the fun and the science. Believe it or not, Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world (and law enforcement agencies) to the world of criminal forensics through Holmes’s obsession with crime scene details and deductive logic. But, if Sherlock Holmes is so great, why did the author need Watson? Simple. Watson is the person who needs to tell the story because that’s the last thing Holmes would do. If “The Great Detective” decided to write up his adventures, what would he emphasize? Would he capture the…