I love a mystery! Today The Storytelling Blog turns to my favorite genre, the mystery story. Although I write primarily speculative fiction, the mystery is my first love and worms its way into many of my stories (Water of Life, for example). In case you missed it, the blog has discussed other popular genres: steampunk, fantasy, weird, and horror.

What Makes a Mystery?

Also called murder mystery, detective story, whodunit, or even crime novel, the story problem in this genre is that a crime must be solved. Some tropes of the genre are so common as to become part of its definition for some readers, such as a trail of clues and the inevitable red herring.

Generally, the reader along with the protagonist are in the dark as to the villain’s identify until the denouncement. Sometimes, though, we “witnessed” the crime and are entertained by how the detective catches the culprit. The Columbo TV series is a famous example of this style. 

The overriding feature of the mystery genre is justice. That is, the value the mystery reader expects the story to uphold. If the investigator doesn’t, at least partially, dish out some justice at the end of the story, we feel something is wrong with the conclusion. 

Distinguishing Tropes

Like all genres, mysteries have tropes, and mystery writers are constantly messing with them. For every example given here, you could easily find a mystery story that breaks them in some way.

The Crime

A crime has happened. If the story problem doesn’t flout an established social convention enshrined in law, mores, or taboo, maybe this isn’t a mystery story, whatever the book jacket says: It’s a regular story of people solving problems, like fictional people tend to do. Usually, the mystery story crime is serious so that the stakes are high. However, the infraction can be trivial, but the story so well done the reader is invested. (Example: my very favorite book in the world, Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night.)

The Sleuth

A sleuth, the story protagonist, undertakes to solve the mystery. They may have a forensics team or a vigilant neighborhood watch committee to help them, but some brain is matching wits with the antagonist’s brain. Amateur or professional, PI or policeman, the investigator is driven to solve the crime. And, yes, sometimes the sleuth is a co-equal team, but more likely they are the brain and the sidekick. Holmes and Watson. Poirot and Hastings. Midsomer Murders Inspector Barnaby and the sergeant d’jour. 

The Villain

A villain aims to outwit the sleuth. Someone choses to do the crime. Perhaps they implemented a clever murder. Perhaps they framed their dog for breaking a vase (Hello, Encyclopedia Brown et al.). When the social contract is broken, its repair requires catching the perp and dispensing justice. 

The Clues

A classic whodunit requires a trail of clues, which the sleuth follows to a logical conclusion. And those clues are available to the reader. Of course, delicious red herring clues throw us off the trail; that’s to be expected. However, some mystery writer fudge on the clues in other, not-so-cricket ways. The solution may depend on secret information only available to the detective, not us, or the detective goads the villain into revealing themself, often by attacking the investigator. 

Mystery as an Element in Other Genres

Any genre can involve a mystery as a plot hook. Whether the story theme is the wow of space exploration (The Expanse) or magical crime and punishment (Rivers of London series), the reader still expects cross-genre stories to serve up justice and follow the usual mystery tropes. 

History of the Mystery

Edgar Allen Poe is credited with inventing the mystery story in 1841 with Murders in the Rue Morgue. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series of the late 1800s remains popular into the twenty-first century. It cemented the image of the cerebral, logical detective in the public imagination as the icon of mystery fiction. 

The 1920s and 1930s saw a “golden age” of detective fiction with the work of many British authors such as Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. Similtaneously, a new, grittier detective emerged from sunny southern California and also continues to influence the genre. 

Always popular as the basis for movies (The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon), TV became an important vehicle for mystery fiction enjoyment. We all have our favorites.

While largely invented by white men from the United States and Britain and perfected by British women (a gross over simplification, I know), writers across cultures and from around the world have made themselves at home in  mystery genre from the early days of the genre. In 1932 Rudolph Fisher wrote a mystery novel featuring two black investigators. Hughes Allison, the first black writer published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, had a murder mystery play produced in 1936. Often listed as the first openly homosexual detective in popular genre fiction, Dave Brandstetter first appeared in 1970s Fadeout by Joseph Hansen. 

Subgenres and Crossover

Mystery is a big genre and emphasis on one trope over another has resulted in a number of recognizable subgenres. A few are:

• Traditional detective story: These tales set the rules and pit the dedicated investigator, who finds the overlooked clue and forms the inevitable logical conclusion, against the wily villain. Examples include the genre’s founders like Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, golden age writers like Agatha Christie, mid-century masters like Rex Stout and Ellery Queen, and modern classic authors like Walter Mosley. 
• The cozy: For stories about murder, these works are adorable. Tropes include the idyllic village setting, nosy cats, gentile modus operandi, and amateur sleuths. Extra points for food pun titles. 
• The police procedural: These works tend to have a professional detective and hew to a semblance of accurate evidence gathering. 
• Noir/Hard-Boiled: As the name implies, these stories take place in a dark world. The rules of society are up for grabs, and the investigator is left with little more than a personal code to guide them toward some semblance of justice. A very popular genre, it is rooted in the ways the world changed after World War I, as captured by writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.  These tales tend to be grittier and more action-oriented than the puzzle-oriented cozies and detective stories. 

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor

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