I’ve recently finished reading Talking About Detective Fiction by PD James. It’s a slim book that looks at the development of popular detective fiction from Jane Austin’s Emma onwards.

Casting a critical, analytical eye over Conan Doyle, Poe, Dorothy L Sayers and more recent writers like Patricia Cornwell it’s a masterclass on the structure and workings of detective stories and how they are generally structured. When all of the evidence is gathered in one place like this you see how formulaic a successful detective story is.

Detectives are outsiders who intrude on a settled community (or house, street, village and so on). Most are loners but they generally have a Watson figure with whom they can discuss the case (and of course tell the reader things that need to be told so that the final reveal doesn’t come out of the blue). No detective should have any more information than the reader, or else you’re cheating your audience.

For anyone writing a piece of detective fiction – as I’m attempting – it’s useful stuff from one of the most distinguished and longest-serving practitioners of the craft.

I’ll be keeping it close at hand.

1. The Railway Detective by Edward Marston
   It all looked so promising. A Victorian-era murder mystery set in the 1800s. Except the dialogue felt to this reader more like a script from...
   
   

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