Do you promise that your detective shall
well and truly detect the crimes
presented to them using those wits which it
may please you to bestow upon
them and not placing reliance on nor making
use of Divine Revelation,
Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act
of God?
This oath, written either by Dorothy L. Sayers or possibly
G. K. Chesterton, was (and still is) part of the initiation rites of the famous
Detection Club.
Sayers, one of the founding members, said: “The Detection
Club is a private association of writers of detective fiction in Great Britain,
existing chiefly for the purpose of eating dinners together at suitable
intervals and of talking illimitable shop…. Its membership is confined to those
who have written genuine detective stories (not adventure tales or ‘thrillers’)
and election is secured by a vote of the club on recommendation by two or more
members and involves the undertaking of an oath.”
The club was founded in London in 1930 and had twenty-six
founding members, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton,
Freeman Wills Crofts, Baroness Orczy, Ronald Knox, E. C. Bentley, R. Austin
Freeman, and Anthony Berkeley.
In addition to the oath, the members of the club promised to
follow the Ten Commandments of Mystery in order to “play fair” with their
readers.
1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the
early part of the story but must not be anyone whose thought the reader has
been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are
ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is
allowed.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used,
nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No chinamen must figure in the story [Note: this
was a time in which “dime novels” tended to feature foreigners on whom the
crime could be conveniently blamed].
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor
must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective himself must not himself commit
the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which
are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson,
must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence
must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin
brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly
prepared for them.
Anyone familiar with Agatha Christie’s novels will know she
violated several of the rules. A story still circulates (never corroborated)
that several of the Detection Club members considered expelling her after the
publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but she wasn’t expelled. In
fact, she was its president from 1957 until her death in 1976.
Does the Detection Club still exist?
Yes, although the fair-play rules have been considerably
relaxed. The current president is Martin Edwards, the British crime novelist,
critic, and historian. You may have read his book The Golden Age of Murder
or his masterful introductions to the British Library Crime Classic series.
Some of us have had the privilege of meeting him at mystery conferences.
The original members of the Detection Club were warned by
Chesterton against breaking the rules:
If you fail to remember your promises…may other
writers anticipate your plots; may total strangers sue you for libel; may your
pages swarm with misprints and your sales continually diminish. But should
you…recall these promises and observe the rules, may reviewers rave over you
and literary editors lunch you; may book clubs bargain for you; may films be
made from you (and keep your plots)….”
A copy of the Mystery Writers’ Oath is posted above my desk,
reminding me especially that while coincidences can happen in crime novels (as
they do in life), they are allowed to get your protagonist into trouble but
never out of it.
How about you? Could you sign the oath?
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