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
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário