Detective
Fiction' gets P.D. James talking
By Carol Memmot, USA TODAY
Last year, P.D. James, one of the grande
dames of crime novelists, published The Private Patient, her 14th novel
starring Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard.
In her new non-fiction title, Talking
About Detective Fiction, James, not Dalgliesh, is on the case as she
investigates and then shares her thoughts on the history of the mystery novel,
a well-loved and sometimes much-maligned genre.
James, 89, has been writing detective
novels for 50 years.
She was asked to write this scholarly
title by Oxford's Bodleian Library. It's a task she is more than capable of
handling.
Her writing shows a vast knowledge and
abiding love for the genre she describes.
"There must be a central
mystery," she writes, "and one that by the end of the book is solved
satisfactorily and logically, not by good luck or intuition, but by intelligent
deduction from clues honestly if deceptively presented."
The book is filled with fascinating
anecdotes about the genre's famous and infamous novelists. If you're trapped in
the library with the butler, a body and a candlestick, you'll have plenty of
detective-novel trivia to throw about until the police arrive.
Here's a sampling:
•The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie
Collins, about a diamond stolen from an Indian shrine, is considered the first
true British detective story.
•The writers who most influenced the
development of the detective genre are Arthur Conan Doyle (The Hound of the
Baskervilles) and Edgar Allan Poe (The Murders in the Rue Morgue).
•The four most "formidable" women
of the genre: Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio
Marsh.
Talking About Detective Fiction is
fascinating.
It's as rich in characters and literary
detail as the novels that have made James famous.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2009-12-17-jamesrev17_ST_N.htm?csp=outbrain&csp=obinsite
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