Hardcover
books were purchased by well-educated, affluent readers; and the
middle-class, themselves a fairly well-educated group, borrowed books
from libraries. The settings for many mysteries were the very places
that well-off readers frequented, and their environments represented a
life style to which middle-class readers aspired. These drawing-room
murders were among the upper-crust, and so were the detectives who
solved them. The fact that the caste system was so much in evidence
also played a role in why the detectives in these stories were so seldom
representatives of the police.
Though they depended on the police to protect their belongings and keep them safe, many fo the rich looked down upon such common public servants as mere working men doing a dirty job. When it came to the art of detection, many times the police in these stories are made out to be inept bumblers, only a half-step above the criminals they seem unable to catch.
In the 1840s, nearly a quarter of the American people were still unable to read, most of those in the lower-income brakcets. By the 1920s, the literacy rate had climbed to over ninety percent, and publishers began tthinking about capturing mystery readers at a younger age. (1929...the Hardy Boys).
from Max Allan Collins, History of Mystery
The draw of the amateur detective for many readers is simple: these sleuths are just like the readers themselves. Amateur sleuths do not have the training or resources of professionals, and so they must rely on their own wits when it comes to solving a crime. Thus, many mystery readers find it easier to relate to someone like Katherine Hall Page's Faith Sibley Fairchild, who has to fit in the occasional bit of detecting with her ongoing, everday duties as a wife and mother, then Patricia Cornwell's coroner sleuth Kay Scarpetta, whose professional raison d'etre involves using her forensic skills to find killers.
from The Reader's Advisory Guide To Mystery, Second edition
Though they depended on the police to protect their belongings and keep them safe, many fo the rich looked down upon such common public servants as mere working men doing a dirty job. When it came to the art of detection, many times the police in these stories are made out to be inept bumblers, only a half-step above the criminals they seem unable to catch.
In the 1840s, nearly a quarter of the American people were still unable to read, most of those in the lower-income brakcets. By the 1920s, the literacy rate had climbed to over ninety percent, and publishers began tthinking about capturing mystery readers at a younger age. (1929...the Hardy Boys).
from Max Allan Collins, History of Mystery
The draw of the amateur detective for many readers is simple: these sleuths are just like the readers themselves. Amateur sleuths do not have the training or resources of professionals, and so they must rely on their own wits when it comes to solving a crime. Thus, many mystery readers find it easier to relate to someone like Katherine Hall Page's Faith Sibley Fairchild, who has to fit in the occasional bit of detecting with her ongoing, everday duties as a wife and mother, then Patricia Cornwell's coroner sleuth Kay Scarpetta, whose professional raison d'etre involves using her forensic skills to find killers.
from The Reader's Advisory Guide To Mystery, Second edition
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