Detective Fiction Where did it come from and how is it done?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Classic English Detective Novel Formula 1)a "closed setting" such as an isolated house or a train 2)a corpse 3)a small circle of people who are all suspects 4)an investigating detective with extraordinary reasoning powers 5)As each character in the setting begins to suspect the others and the suspense mounts, it comes to light that nearly all had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime. 6)Clues accumulate, and are often revealed to the reader through a narrator like Watson - a loyal companion to the brilliant detective. 7)The detective grasps the solution to the crime long before anyone else, and explains it all to the "Watson" at the end.

1841 – birth of detective fiction Edgar Allan Poe: - August Dupin in Murders in the Rue Morgue Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes: 4 novels & 56 short stories Crime fiction: 1920s with Sam Spade & Mickey Spillane

Hard-boiled Detective Formula Popularized in "pulps" –cheap magazines featuring short, violent crime stories Detective hard-drinking, tough-talking "private eye," often an outsider to the world of upper- and middle-class values Setting is brutal and corrupt city Suspects? anyone at all Action does not move in a series of orderly steps toward a logical solution, but, instead, careens from place to place and scene to scene.

Your Assignment List the elements of the classic Conan Doyle style in one column and the more modern elements in another. Then, compose a paragraph where you defend your view of why Will Thomas’s Some Danger Involved (or The Limehouse Text) is a successful blend of the two.