Favorite Detectives - Introduction

Detective stories - mysteries, historical mysteries - are my favorite genre fiction, just ahead of historical fiction. Combining the two genres combined often works well and opens a broad field for storytelling. A historical mystery in the hands of a great writer is sublime.


I just finished a book in this category Morality Play by Barry Unsworth. My review:Morality Play by Barry Unsworth

Detective stories lend themselves to exploration of serious issues; for example, why do people behave the way they do, whether for good or ill or when is it morally sound to do a bad act for a good end. Detective stories can take place anywhere on Earth (or I suppose in the Universe, but I can't think of any sci-fi detectives) and at any time in history (or the future - as in the alternate history mystery Fatherland: A Novel (Mortalis) by Robert Harris).

And anyone can be a detective. And I do mean anyone - a Turkish eunuch, a Laotian coroner and a Russian nun to name three.

The master, of course, was Arthur Conan Doyle. You can buy the "complete" Holmes stories in several editions - none of which seem to be quite the same!

The Complete Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes is my preferred edition because it has Sidney Edward Paget's original illustrations that accompanied the stories in the 19th-century British magazine "The Strand."

Doyle did not invent the detective novel. That honor apparently belongs to the 1859 book The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: Father of the Detective Novel.

The first detective short story was published in 1841 when Edgar Allan Poe introduced Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin in the short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

(Doyle also wrote several non-Holmes works of fiction that are well worth reading. In particular I recommend The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. Here is my review.

The Sherlock Holmes' character has been reborn time and again. My favorite Sherlock pastiche is set in Minnesota! Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders: From the American Chronicles of John H. Watson, M.D. by Larry Millett.

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The next post will list some of my favorites in the detective mystery genre.