The Classic Detective Fiction Novel

What makes one, and why?

     Among good reads, the classic detective fiction novel should come in somewhere near the top, mixed with various other genres. Such collections as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is still a good seller and can be found at nearly any bookstore due to the still common popularity.

    Such readers may occasionally have to special order some items though; due to the length of time those novels have been in existence. If there were more good fictional detective novels gracing the shelves of the bookstores today, there would not still be the demand for those fantastic pieces that were created so many years ago.

    The reader requires constant entertainment, and most of these classic detective fiction novels can provide that to them easily. Although some of the terms and phrases are now somewhat outdated, it is still a most interesting read for the well versed reader to pick up and follow.

    The books that aren’t exactly highlighted or featured any longer always pique the interest of the most self respected reader. To find such books, one must simply do the research, and ask if need be, since there are many that are still in print.

    In these stories, the reader embarks upon an interesting journey through time to a world where things are much simpler than the life of today. There are still crimes however, since that is what the book focuses on in depth. A theft may have occurred and subsequently often (usually) a murder.

   The hero is, of course, the detective. This character is proficient in the means of detecting crime. His attitudes and morals can be described by the author in several different ways, but the general attribute of the detective is intelligence.

   If the detective is not perceived as intelligent, how should he be able to solve the crimes that the police cannot? The author makes it interesting of course, using clever phrases and great character descriptions to involve the reader as much as possible in the storyline.  Great authors involving the reader, and encouraging them to try to figure out who the culprit is that committed this crime.

    This is why a lot of these novels are referred to more commonly as the “Whodunnit” type of book. The author creates an issue, a crime, and the reader is ultimately trying to figure out who committed the crime all throughout the book.

     If it is written in any great detail whatsoever, the reader will be roped into the book in no time flat; desperately reading on to try to figure out which character committed the crime and exactly how it was pulled off by that character. Arthur Conan Doyle was definitely one of the leading writers of the fiction detective novel with his amazingly unusual novels portraying crimes that some would not have thought about being committed.

    But Doyle could not have accomplished the worldwide recognition of such stories without his leading character, Sherlock Holmes, gracing the pages and solving the crimes at just the right point in the story. This is one of the reasons that his character is so loved, and has to rate today as the classic detective in the classic detective novel.

Chris Haycock

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