Detective fiction is similar to diphtheria antitoxin. When injected into a patient suffering from diphtheria, its effects are incredible. Without fail, it produces spectacular results, seemingly destroying the very pathogen that causes the disease.
And yet, the pathogen that causes diphtheria still hasn’t been discovered. Even with the power of modern medical science, its true identity remains a mystery. In short, while the cure has already been found, the true identity of the disease continues to be unknown. This is not unlike how while there already may be a trial for a crime in place, the culprit has not yet been caught. It is, in a way, a nonsensical situation.
The true identity of detective fiction is in the same situation as the aforementioned.
To grasp the true identity of the heart that yearns for detective fiction: this thing is like the highest form of nonsense, comedy, adventure, grotesque, mystery… It is like something.
Investigating the true identity of detective fiction: what exactly does this entail?
Truth… finding where the true identity of interest in detective fiction lies doesn’t seem to be an easy task.
If one takes off the lid of an old waste bin labeled with the words ‘detective fiction’, they’ll find in the form of beasts writings that seem to be mystery fiction, adventure fiction, comedy fiction, nonsense fiction, and texts on mental abnormalities wriggling around in a mass, pushing against each other while nesting amongst themselves. If you grab from the center of that mass a creature that appears to be detective fiction, at a quick glance, you’ll find that some other organisms are sticking to its body, intertwined back-to-back like a pair of siamese twins, letting out a shriek as they are entangled together and startling you.
From the flank of detective fiction comes a pair of legs of adventure fiction, flapping around. Reaching out from the hole of its buttocks and beckoning to you are the texts on mental abnormalities. Growing out of the side of its shoulders and lining up with its head is mystery fiction. Joined only by their bottoms is comedy fiction. A lump clinging onto its brow, nonsense fiction. Densely covering each and every part of the detective novel like hair, there are the spices of eroticism and the grotesque. In the end, the creature known as ‘detective fiction’ is one that cannot be merely dissected with a scalpel: it is a true scientific wonder.
A certain person once equated the appeal of detective fiction to the appeal of puzzles.
This is probably the case.
Detective stories can be traced back to the end of the 18th century, when a lady of leisure residing in Paris, motivated by her interest in the secret tactics of spies who operated in high society at the time, began to write in order to kill some time. And so, upon hearing the explanation that detective fiction started with writers competing to create the most complicated plots and stories that would best kill the readers’ time, one thinks “oh, I see, that doesn’t sound too off the mark.”
However, detective stories have developed over the years beyond this. There have come detective stories that shock and make the reader go “ah!”, despite having extremely predictable plots that are clear as day. Even in the absence of any tricks, there are detective stories that are still considered detective stories. Therefore, the appeal of today’s detective stories cannot necessarily be simply equated with the appeal of puzzles. At the very least, we cannot deny that detective stories have a great number of different charms outside of just its mysteries.
Detective stories that show the culprit from the very beginning but are interesting enough to reread over and over: isn’t it just a little unreasonable to claim that these aren’t real detective stories……?
A certain person once explained detective stories as being a kind of psychological bloodletting.
We, who live in a bloodless, passionless, materialistic, and scientific society ruled by capital, like washing a potato…… no, like a potato being washed, we live being pushed and shoved around, bumping and colliding with one another, and in the midst of that, we feel it: all the malicious struggles—the struggle for existence itself gives birth to an intense sense of guilt……the cruel sense of victory, the feeling of being inferior and losing, of eating to the bone, and so on……The mind’s circulatory system, congested and hardened by such baneful agitations, when cut in a certain spot by the scalpel known as detective fiction, spills out venous blood, releasing the poison within. Our blood pressure then lowers, allowing us to sleep in peace. Writers take to the pen with these feelings, and readers likewise read feeling this.
The blacker the blood spilled is, the better we feel, and the more poisonous it is, the more pleasant we feel. Thus, we can conclude that every reader of detective stories is a man of virtue……If a normal story is a story of love, then the detective story is a story of the conscience. A detective story’s mission is to strike fear into one’s conscience……this is one theory.
I feel as if this, too, is a fine theory. I can probably understand where it is coming from. However, if we go by this definition of detective stories, then it should be the case that those traditional detective stories that only consist of a plot and mysteries wouldn’t sell.
However, despite this, there are no signs of traditional detective novels drying up at all. In fact, they hold so much popularity to the point where one may think that anyone who can read human-interest articles can understand detective stories, boldly forming a kind of gate. “Detective stories that don’t follow the traditional format are not detective stories at all. Those stories that call themselves erotic stories, grotesque stories, and nonsense stories must refrain from sticking on the attractive two-word label of ‘detective story’”…Or something like that. Even if they boldly declare these things, they have enough fire in them to the point that there’d be nobody who would dare raise their voice against them. In conclusion, this definition applies to what is known as irregular detective stories, but when applied to traditional detective stories that specialize in their mysteries, it doesn’t seem to hold.
……What……Detective novels are nothing more than fairy tales for adults. Adults want to read detective novels to escape into a world of shock and excitement. Conscience, duty, empathy, the pains of life, they come into contact with these things so much day after day to the point that they tire of them, and so they choose to refrain from reading normal novels that make them deeply experience these subjects once more. They want to be transported to an intensely thrilling and staggeringly wonderful world that transcends these things.
Children are easily taken in by characters like Bikkuri Tarou and Norakuro Gochou. However, this is not the case with adults. And so, even if science, the mechanisms of society, and specialized knowledge is included in a story, the newest and shrewdest of wonderful characters should be in the setting, or else they should be parts of the work. Otherwise, an “exciting world” or a “shocking world” cannot be created. From there, all detective stories are born. Anything different or less than this does not serve the purpose of detective stories.
Lupin and Holmes are, in short, the Mickey Mouse and Norakuro of adults. They have magnificent wealth, a life that other people hold dear, or they otherwise stand restlessly against villains who cause exciting incidents on an international scale. Adults are sure to be delighted by this. Bizarre things, deviance, adventure, comedy: all these various elements that are included within detective stories simply do nothing but shock adults, like fairy tales with children… etcetera…and so on…
To an extent, if told this, we get the feeling that it’s correct. Adults gain nothing from children’s fairy tales, and, because they are such pitiful creatures, adults use the time they have left in the day to feel regret within their beds alongside a detective novel, similar to how children become sleepy when they hear fairy tales.
But, sure enough, that explanation alone doesn’t seem like it explains everything.
I feel as if we are to find the true identity of the charm of detective fiction, we must collect all of the various definitions given so far and investigate even closer.
To this day, the writing of various kinds of detective stories has been tired out, and the devising detective stories have come to a dead end. The writers of detective stories can no longer do it. There are those who cry “we’re at a loss, we’re at a loss”. However, this is not just about the writers.
The readers, even if they’re already tired of it, don’t appear to be at any sort of stopping point. Their very own frightening minds desire even more powerful, more deep, and more novel stimulation, and in between the gaps of their day-to-day lives, they feel this desire sharply. As if they were both starving and deprived of water, they then wander around the fronts of bookstores.
What do those frightening minds of theirs desire?
……Well……I don’t know.
Actually, first of all, those kinds of readers whose eyes are always restlessly wandering to and fro in front of bookstores, even if they try to reflect and ask themselves what exactly they’re looking for, they will not, no matter what, know the answer to this. At times, they’ll pull an interesting-looking book out from a shelf and then read two and three lines from it, but they then immediately click their tongues out of frustration and stick it back in. Even if they ask themselves what made them do that, not a single answer will come to mind. They then, without fail, become frighteningly irritable. Even if they find a book that makes them go “this is the one” and stick it into their pocket, it is certain that this is only an act of desperation, when they’re at the point where they no longer care……But……Even if they’re asked what they want, they’re unable to reply. And thus, they are tortured by this.
……This is said to be vexing, and perhaps there is nothing as vexing as this……If one knew the answer, then they would probably be able to become the most famous writer in the world, but……
I don’t know if there is anybody who, having traced the history of genres in writing alongside the development of society and using induction on all the facts, has clearly determined that detective stories are a reflection of all of society’s psychology. I don’t know if there are critics that have clearly indicated that the modern man desires everything in the future of detective stories.
I can’t say if it’s impossible for there to be somebody that would be able to see through all of those readers fishing through books in bookstores and then come home to write exactly what they desire.
No, no. Everyone: a first-class popular writer would, without a doubt, be able to do this. They surely must be keeping quiet intentionally. Like how adults don’t tell children the truth……
……Ah…… It’s so vexing……