Detective Fiction by John Desjarlais

A former producer with Wisconsin Public Radio, John Desjarlais teaches journalism and English at Kishwaukee College in northern Illinois. His first novel, The Throne of Tara (Crossway 1990, re-released 2000), was a Christianity Today Readers Choice Award nominee, and his medieval thriller, Relics (Thomas Nelson 1993, re-released 2009) was a Doubleday Book Club Selection. Bleeder and Viper (Sophia Institute Press, 2009 and 2011 respectively) are the first two entries in a contemporary mystery series. A member of The Academy of American Poets and Mystery Writers of America, he is listed in Who's Who in Entertainment and Who's Who Among America's Teachers.

A helpful way to read detective fiction is to be aware of "the rules of the game," as mystery writers call it. The characteristics of detective fiction that began with Edgar Allan Poe developed into a fairly rigid "code" for other writers to follow, and there are several famous such ‘codes’ compiled by different writers and theorists over the decades. Father Knox’s Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction is one; 20 Rules by SS Van Dine is another; Dorothy Sayers and the Detection Club had another list. Here is a compilation:

1. In its basic structure, the detective story must never vary from being absolutely logical.
2. A completely unpardonable sin is the substitution of accident, chance, or coincidence for logical deduction (no supernatural intervention, either).
3. The detective story must always play fair: no evidence can be made known to the reader, which remains unknown to the detective, and vice-versa.
4. All action must proceed from the central theme of the crime and the pursuit of the criminal.
5. No human frailties, like stupidity or a poor memory, can change or prolong the plot in any way.

There are some secondary rules, especially for the traditional puzzle that involves an amateur killer:

1. The crime must be murder.
2. The killer's motive must be strong enough to induce an amateur to commit murder
3. All suspects must be real suspects, the killer must be one of the suspects (don't bring in a new character at the end)
4. The murder must be pre-meditated, or if it is a crime of passion, or unintended, it must be ingeniously covered up.
5. The killer should be an intelligent, competent amateur, the crime elegantly planned which, except for the brilliant detective, would go unsolved.
6. Clues should be clearly presented. All information given to the detective must be given to the reader. This is called "Fair Play."
7. The detective is not superhuman but uses reasoning to fit the clues together .

These are not rules, but nice to have:

1. The detective is fun if unusual, fallible, and has personal problems.
2. Lead characters should grow and change
3. The detective should have a profession that allows him/her to spend time, money, and energy on the crime
4. Don't treat police as idiots
5. Don't make the victim an angel or the killer thoroughly evil.
6. The killer must be an amateur who has not killed before and does not plan to kill again - no serial killers, psychos, random killings (unless it's a police procedural or a ‘thriller’ – the traditional ‘puzzle’ mystery dislikes such matters).
7. The story must be moral in that BAD is punished, GOOD rewarded, and the universe is restored to harmony and balance.
8. In the classic whodunnit, the killer should be near the victim, and use an ordinary means
9. It is desirable for the murder to occur early in the story so the puzzle is whodunnit, not when-will-the-writer-get-down-to-business.
10. It helps if there is a deadline to beat; a "ticking clock."

Clearly, there are exceptions. Obviously, there are different expectations across sub-genres such as the police procedural, the caper or the PI story. And we know full well that real crime isn’t so tidy as all this; there is random violence, gang shootings and crimes of mayhem that are so horrible they can’t really be treated lightly in ‘the mystery’ as an entertainment. So I realize these ‘rules’ are limited. But they assisted me in writing my first two mysteries and I hope you’ll appreciate reading mysteries more having seen ‘the rules’, such as they are.

The reader only has 2 rules:

1. Don't read the end.
2. Don't tell Whodunnit.

John Desjarlais

Look for John’s newest book, Viper, released by Sophia Institute Press in July, at Ingram or Amazon. John’s website is: http://www.johndesjarlais.com/.

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