The Detective Story

The detective story is a genre based on the detective investigation of a mysterious crime which leads the discovery of the criminal responsible. In fact the story ends when the investigation is carried off and the method and culprit are revealed.
A detective story has as its main interest the solving of a mystery, whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at the beginning of the story, and whose nature arouses a curiosity which is gratified at the end.
It’s also something called a “whodunit” (who done it) because its main aim is to involve the reader with the investigation.

Features of Detective Stories
The father of this genre, Edgar Allan Poe, created a sort of fixed formula which was adopted by later writers and is still used nowadays. This model includes some constant elements:
- an urban setting;
- a mysterious crime;
- the detective who carries out a professional investigation;
- sometimes, the detective’s companion who can also be the narrator of the story;
- a policeman who is usually unintelligent and rather unimaginative;
- the importance of reasoning, including hypotheses and final solution, and of psychological analysis
- the widespread suspicion
- the suspance
- the opposition between “to be” and “to seem”

The Birth of the Detective Story
The beginning of the detective story can be find to Poe’s “Tales of Ratiocination” [“The murders in the Rue Morgue” _ “The Mystery of Marie Roget” _ “The Purloined Letter”]. The date of the publication of the first of them is also the date of the birth of Fictional Stories (1841). Edgar Allan Poe is considered the father of this genre because he created the first important fictional detective, Monsieur Auguste Dupin, a noble and refined man whose method of investigation was based on deduction.
This eccentric figure was also the inspiration for the most famous detective of literature, like Hercule Poirot, invented by Agatha Christie; and Sherlock Holmes, character created by Arthur Conan Doyle, who adopted Poe’s formula and made the plots of his stories more sophisticated; for example although he kept the urban environment, he sometimes introduced some exotic elements.
In the United States the professional detective, a new kind of fictional detective, was born and the crimes were carried out and then solved in the big American city. One of the most famous was Philip Marlowe, character created by Raymond Chandler; another famous American fictional detective-lawyer was Perry Mason, created by Earle Stanley Gardner.

Golden Age Detective Stories
The period between the two world wars (1920-1940) is considered the Detective Stories’ best period; in fact many detective stories, which earn lots success, were written. The stories of Agatha Christie are an example.