Books, Arts & Manners: The Mystery as Novel of Manners

NOT UNTIL 1969 did the New York Times Sunday Book Review choose a mystery novel (Ross Macdonald’s The Goodbye Look) as the subject of its lead review. That review—or rather the fact of its having been commissioned—was greeted by a good deal of sniffing from beneath elevated brows. Mysteries, we were informed, cannot be dignified with the name “novel.” They are throwaways meant to be read once only, and not susceptible of serious criticism. Yes, of course, serious people have admitted to reading them, but they are at best a sort of exercycle for the mind, slightly inferior to crossword puzzles; more usually they are simply vehicles for escapism. . . .

It’s true enough that not everything on the mystery shelves is a novel. Leaving aside police procedurals, thrillers, and various other sub- and related genres, many actual whodunits are pure puzzle, designed to take people’s minds off their own concerns. But the true mystery novel is intended to put the reader’s mind onto something else—considerations of good and evil, human weakness and temptation, the fallenness of man. And while aficionados of the pure puzzle—early Ellery Queen, say—become impatient with mysteries in which, as they put it, the scenery and characters get in the way of the plot, there is still plenty of scope in the genre for humor and drama, social comment and exotic scenery, character studies and literary flights. The mystery is today’s novel of manners, and its morality novel as well. Had Charles Dickens been born in the later days of Queen Victoria rather than of George III, his London might have resembled Margery Allingham’s or John Dickson Carr’s; Anthony Trollope might have filled his stately homes and country rectories with corpses and rumors of corpses, like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. And a twentieth-century Nathaniel Hawthorne might have created a detective as brooding as P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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NOT UNTIL 1969 did the New York Times Sunday Book Review choose a mystery novel (Ross Macdonald’s The Goodbye Look) as the subject of its lead review. That review—or rather the fact of its having been commissioned—was greeted by a good deal of sniffing from beneath elevated brows. Mysteries, we were informed, cannot be dignified with the name “novel.” They are throwaways meant to be read once only, and not susceptible of serious criticism. Yes, of course, serious people have admitted to reading them, but they are at best a sort of exercycle for the mind, slightly inferior to crossword puzzles; more usually they are simply vehicles for escapism. . . .

It’s true enough that not everything on the mystery shelves is a novel. Leaving aside police procedurals, thrillers, and various other sub- and related genres, many actual whodunits are pure puzzle, designed to take people’s minds off their own concerns. But the true mystery novel is intended to put the reader’s mind onto something else—considerations of good and evil, human weakness and temptation, the fallenness of man. And while aficionados of the pure puzzle—early Ellery Queen, say—become impatient with mysteries in which, as they put it, the scenery and characters get in the way of the plot, there is still plenty of scope in the genre for humor and drama, social comment and exotic scenery, character studies and literary flights. The mystery is today’s novel of manners, and its morality novel as well. Had Charles Dickens been born in the later days of Queen Victoria rather than of George III, his London might have resembled Margery Allingham’s or John Dickson Carr’s; Anthony Trollope might have filled his stately homes and country rectories with corpses and rumors of corpses, like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. And a twentieth-century Nathaniel Hawthorne might have created a detective as brooding as P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh.