Detective novels

Since the very beginning humanity has always tried to solve mysteries, tribes used to tell stories to solve mysteries around the fire in caves about their rough lives and the first civilisations that started the first writings either in hieroglyphs and cuneiform writings in clay tablets from the ancient civilizations of Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and others had mystery stories or riddles like that one of the sphynx about the creature that lives on four, two and three legs that answers to the three ages of man. Romans and Greek had elements of mystery in their literature and the Middle Ages in the Bible was read about the prophet Daniel who solved the mystery of Susanna and the Elders, the mysteries solved of One Thousand and One Nights in the ancient Arabic literature. In the eighteenth century readers were craving for the trendy gothic novels,  a mixture of mystery, terror and supernatural elements such as the eighteenth century novels of "The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole, "The Mysteries of Udolpho" by Ann Radcliffe or "The Monk" by Mathew Lewis. Nevertheless, the gothic novel will continue its production till the present and there are some precursor detective novels in which the protagonist usually a police officer solves a crime in "The Adventures of Caleb Williams" by William Godwin in 1794, "Richmond or stories of the life a Bow street officer" by Thomas Skinner Sturr in 1827, E.T.A. Hoffman wrote "Das Fraulein von Sculeri" and William Evans Burton wrote "The Secret Cell" in 1837 both novels inspired Edgar Allan Poe into "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841.

                                     

Edgar A. Poe is an author considered the first modern detective novelist and he also wrote Southern Gothic stories such as "The Tell Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher". Poe focused the investigation of the crimes upon the detective C. Auguste Dupin in Paris, though he called his novels "tales of ratiocination" they already have the elements common in detective novels, an apparently perfect crime, a wrongly accused suspect, an unexpected denouement and a smart detective that outwits the police, this is the main difference from the crime fiction. There are two different branches in detective fiction located in the United Kingdom and the United States.

-Detective  novels in England: the grandfathers are considered Charles Dickens with works such as  "Bleak House" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" and his protegé Wilkie Collins in "The Woman in White" and "Moonstone" and the lesser known writer Charles Warren Adams with "Notting Hill Mystery" in 1863. The female author Mary Elizabeth Braddon introduced a lower class detective in her novels "The Trail of the Serpent" and "Aurora Floyd". The English detective fiction has a British setting usually in a manor or enclosed place in which social classes are prominent, there is an inside job and a final twist of the plot. At the end of the nineteenth century the authors Anna Katherine Green in "The Leavenworth Case" in 1878 and Arthur Conan Doyle from 1887 by means of the Londoner consultive detective Sherlock Holmes, he solves complex mysteries with forensic skills and deductive reasoning in four novels and fifty-six short stories  narrated by his friend and assistant Dr. J.H. Watson.  

The English British detective novel based its plot in whodunit (who did it?)and reached its Golden Age especially in the interwar period in the 1920s and 30s there are extraordinary female authors such as Josephine Tey, Margery Attingham, Agatha Cristie, Phyllis Dorothy James and Dorothy L. Sayers. A. Christie (1890-1976), nicknamed the "Queen of Mystery" was the best-selling novelist in her eighty works mostly featuring Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, her work in a pharmacy during WWII provided her with knowledge of poisons to enrich her novels. She usually deals with mysteries in confined spaces and detectives are amateur who belong to a community in which they deal with social conventions, her most famous works are "Murder in the Orient Express", "Death on the Nile", "A Murder is Announced", the usual tropes are a crime in a wealthy family and a restrained atmosphere. 

P.D. James wrote more psychological novels in which social conventions and solving the mystery were not as important as empathy with characters, gender and social issues. She created detectives Adem Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray in workds such as "Innocent Blood", "Shroud for a Nightingale", she was awarded with the title of Baroness of Holland Park.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) created the detective Lord Peter Winsey, an aristocratic intellectual who analyses people instead of suspects in novels such as "Whose Body", "Strong Poison" or"Gaudy Night".

Lately,, G.K. Chesterton created masterpieces around detective and Catholic priest Father Brown mysteries and Ronald Knox a Catholic priest and novelist wrote a "Decalogue"for the British subgenre.

                                     

-Detective Novels in the USA: after the pioneer E.A.Poe in his "Gothic and Mystery tales", there were women writers that wrote domestic detective fiction suchas Metta Fuller Victor´s "The Dead Letter". and "The Figure Eight" in 1869. Louis Mary Alcott wrote the thriller "V.V. Plots & Counterplots". Later the American detective novel is divided in the types of hardboiled, police, Southern gothic and thrillers.

-Southern Gothic: they are works centered in regional mysteries in the South of the US with works such as "Razorblade Tears" by S.A. Cosby, Tony Hillerman and his Navajo tribal police mysteries and William Kent Krueger with novels like "Iron Lake" the twenty-two series of detective Cork O´Connor.

-Hardboiled classic detective novels: they are realistic stories centred around a crime, sex and pulp fiction from magazines, usually a femme fatale and the blunt detective flirt and the usual setting is corrupted cities in urban cities of California or New York. 

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) created the cynical detective Philip Marlowe exploring corruption in L.A. in novels like "The Big Sleep", "Farewell", "My Lovely" and "The Long Goodbye"introducing morality, he became a Hollywood screenwriter of noir films.

Dashiell Hammet (1894-1961) also created two tough detectives such as Sam Spade and Continental Op in settings of corrupt society driven by greed and violence in iconic novels such as "The Maltese Falcon", "Red Harvest", "The Dain Curse", "The Glass Key" and "The Thin Man" mostly adapted into gritty though famous films. 

            

-American thrillers: the Classic work "The Black Box" by Michael Connelly became famous in the 1990s, another authors with psychological twists  are Gillian Flynn ("Gone Girl" and "Sharp Objects") and Lee Child ("Killing Floor"), Ross MacDonald (Lew Archer series), Paul Auster ("New York Trilogy"), Rex Stout ("Over My Dead Body"), Jonathan Latimer ("Solomon´s Vineyard"), Thomas Harris ("The Silence of the Lambs"), Tom Clancy ("The Hunt of Red October"), Stephen King ("The Shining"), Mary Higgins Clark ("Where Are the Children?), John Le Carré ("The Spy Who Came in From the Cold"), Patricia Highsmith ("The Talented Mr. Ripley"), Shirley Jackson ("We Have Always Live in the Castle"), Graham Greene ("The Quiet American"), Ian Fleming ("Casino Royale"), John Dickson Carr ("The Three Coffins"), Marcia Muller ("A is for Alibi"), Michael Connelly with the Harry Bosch and Lincoln Sawyer series, Lisa Gardner ("The Neighbour"), Delia Owens ("Where the Crawdads Sing"), Harlan Coben with the Myron Bolitar series of sports mysteries and James Patterson in his police procedural series of Alex Cross. This subgenre is thriving also at present in thrillers and suspense movies or series and many writers turn into screenwrites for TV series or blockbuster movies.