American Literature of the 20th century: drama, fiction, detective genres” American science fiction progression Plan

American Detective Fiction in the 20th Century

It is hard to imagine a time when Britain and France did not have a police force and detectives whose job it was to solve crimes. But until the growth of criminal investigation in the form of Scotland Yard in London, and the Sûreté in Paris, there was no formal detection. The Sûreté (the French crime bureau) was created in the 1820s, followed in Britain in 1842 by a detective branch that was part of the Metropolitan Police of London. Detectives as part of the police forces in New York and other American cities came later still. Therefore, it is not surprising that the detective novel did not arise until 1841 with The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). Since the United States lagged behind Europe in its policing, Poe set his three detective stories not in New York but in Paris, a city he admired. He based his detective, C. Auguste Dupin, on Francois-Eugene Vidocq, a criminal turned private detective, whose memoirs were published in 1832.
Considering that Poe wrote only three detective stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842), and The Purloined Letter (1844), it is amazing that they have had such a far-reaching effect. The Murders in the Rue Morgue introduced a type of detective and some plot characteristics that were imitated by other authors on both sides of the Atlantic for the next one hundred years. C. Auguste Dupin is the original omniscient godlike detective, with the narrator, who is never named, acting as an admiring sidekick. Here is the classical detective story as we knew it for years: the inefficient local police, the locked room, deduction, the surprising solution, and the final explanation of how the crime occurred by a rather condescending Dupin. There are numerous clues, which the reader is supposed to notice, and a puzzle formula, which appealed to all those people who enjoyed conundrums and would later enjoy crosswords. It is clear when one reads the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, which were published fifty years later, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was most familiar with Poe's three works.
When we are examining the beginning of detective fiction, we cannot fail to mention the “grandmother” or perhaps “great grandmother” of the genre, Anna Katherine Green (1846–1935). Born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of a criminal lawyer, Green wrote between thirty and forty mystery or detective fiction works. Her first novel was The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878, and she wrote at least one book a year until her death at age eighty-seven. Her better works feature Ebenezer Gryce, but she was also so ahead of her time as to feature a female detective, Violet Strange, in some works. Although many would denigrate her writing as melodramatic, Green nevertheless deserves an important place in the history of the genre as the first female writer.
Also important because she, too, advanced the detective genre is Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958). Having begun her writing career as a short story writer who aimed to help her family in their financial troubles, Rinehart became one of the highest paid authors before World War I. The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909) were her earliest works. Rinehart perhaps influenced later women writers of the cozy genre. Her protagonist is usually an official male detective, but the narrator is usually a woman, often a spinster, who helps solve the crime in an accidental fashion and protects the innocent from suspicion. Rinehart's blending of romance and detection has been criticized by purists, but can certainly be seen imitated in numerous mystery novels to this day.