Fiction in any form is intended to be realistic.From today's point of view, the old-fashioned novels are pretentious and artificial, almost to the point of being ridiculous, but the people who read them did not think so.Writers like Fielding and Smollett are realistic in the modern sense because their characters are mostly unscrupulous characters, many of whom can outwit the police. Two steps, but from a psychological point of view, Jane Austen's extremely restrained characters, set in the life of a squire, seem to be realistic enough.This climate of hypocrisy, both social and emotional, still abounds today.Just let it go and add a little arty, and you've got a rough idea of ​​the tone of the book-review section of your subscription paper and the prim, ignorant complacency of your club's book group.Bestsellers are made by people like them.The so-called bestsellers actually rely on publicity and promotion, which is based on a kind of indirect arty psychology, which is guaranteed by the imprint of veteran critics, carefully cared for by some extremely powerful behind-the-scenes groups, and constantly watered.These groups are in the business of selling books, but they want to give you the impression that they're promoting culture.As long as you pay the book a little late, you can understand how noble their intentions are.

For various reasons, detective novels are rarely able to do publicity and promotion work.It tends to deal with murders, and thus lacks the spiritual element.Murder is an expression of the frustrated will of the individual, and therefore of the human race as a whole, and may have a great deal of sociological significance, and indeed it does.But murders have become so commonplace that they are no longer news.If mystery novels are to have some realism (and they rarely are), they must be written with a certain coolness; otherwise no one but a psychopath would want to write it or read it.The way murder novels focus on solving their own problems and answering their own questions while leaving other things alone is also frustrating.There's nothing left to discuss, except that it's not well written enough to be a good novel, but half a million readers don't understand that anyway.It's hard enough to appreciate the quality of writing, even for someone who does it professionally, without paying too much attention to the number of reservation sales.

Detective fiction (perhaps I might as well call it that, since the genre is still predominantly British) has to infiltrate slowly in order to expand its readership.It is a fact that this situation exists, and that it has persisted so stubbornly in the future.What is the reason is worthy of study by interested people, but I don't have such patience.Nor is there anything in my argument that the detective story is an important and meaningful art form.There are no important and meaningful art forms in the world, only art, and there are very few of them.The growth of the populations of nations brings no increase in the arts, but only in the dexterity with which art substitutes can be produced and packaged.

Still, even the most old-fashioned detective novels are hard to write well.Good works of this art are much rarer than good serious fiction.Second-rate works outlive most high-turnover novels, and a lot of work that shouldn't have come out at all just won't die.They are as old and as dull as the statues in the park. For so-called discerning people, this is nasty.They don't like it very much that works that were profoundly important not long ago are now sitting in their library on special shelves marked "Last Year's Bestsellers", except for the occasional short-sighted customer who stoops over and glances at them in a hurry. No one will approach them except walk away.And the old ladies are pushing each other in front of the mystery novel bookshelf, grabbing a book titled "Triple Murder" or "Inspector Pinchport's Adventures" or other products of the same year.They also dislike the fact that "really important works" collect dust on the reprint shelves, while "Death in Suspenders" has a print run of 50,000, or even 100,000 copies, and is on display in the country. On the newsstand, obviously not to say goodbye to everyone.

To be honest, I'm not very happy with the situation myself.I also write detective stories when I'm not pretending to be serious.But because of this longevity, the competition is a bit too much.If three hundred papers are published every year in higher physics, and thousands more in various forms are ready, out there, and read, then even Einstein is of little use. Hemingway said somewhere that good writers only compete with the dead.The good detective writers (there are several of them, after all) have to compete not only with all the unburied dead, but with all the great masses of the living.And it is competing on almost equal terms, because one of the characteristics of this kind of writing is that the factors that attract readers to read such works will never become outdated.The hero's tie may be a bit old-fashioned, and the old detective may have arrived in a one-horse carriage, not a streamlined car with sirens, but what he did when he arrived at the scene was still checking the time as in the past, looking for burns. Burnt pieces of paper, researching who stepped on the well-blooming strawberry garden under the study window.

But there is also a less selfish motive for my concern for the matter.It seems to me that if detective stories are to be produced on such a large scale, with such meager immediate remuneration for their authors, and little need for critical acclaim, that the work requires any talent. It is impossible.In this sense, the jaw-dropping of critics and the pushback of publishers is entirely logical.A mediocre detective story is probably no worse than a mediocre novel, but you never see a mediocre novel.Because it doesn't get published.But mediocre - or slightly above - detective stories can get published.Not only have they been published, but they have been sold in batches to lending libraries and read by others.There were even a few enthusiasts who bought it at the official retail price of two yuan, because the book was new and there was a picture of a dead body on the cover.

The strange thing is that this mediocre, very mediocre and dry novel, completely unrealistic and mechanical, is not so different from those works which are called masterpieces of this art.It just drags on a bit more slowly, the dialogue is a bit flatter, the characterizations are a bit stiffer, the tricks on the reader are a bit more obvious; but the stuff is the same.But good novels are not at all the same as bad novels.It's written about something completely different.A good detective story and a bad detective story are about exactly the same thing, and written in a similar way (there's a reason for it, and there's a reason for it; there's always a reason for it).

In my opinion, the main difficulty of the traditional, i.e. typical, i.e. pure reasoning, i.e. logical reasoning, detective story is that, in order to be perfect, it must meet various conditions, and these conditions cannot be found in one person. found at the same time.A person with a calm mind and good layout may not necessarily be able to write vivid characters, sharp dialogues, grasp the rhythm of step by step, and make proper use of the observed details.The unsmiling, logical person can create no more atmosphere than a drawing board.The science-minded private eye has a very up-to-date and beautiful lab, but I'm sorry I can't remember the face.The fellow who could write you a picture-perfect, prolific prose doesn't bother to reason through impeccable alibis one by one, because it's too much work.

From a psychological point of view, the master of unpopular knowledge lives in the era of skirts with rings (referring to the eighteenth and ninth centuries.).If you know everything about the basics of pottery craft and Egyptian knitting art, you know nothing about the police.If you know that platinum doesn't melt on its own until about 2800 degrees Fahrenheit, then you don't know how people made love in the twentieth century.If you know enough about the laid-back life of an antebellum French seaside resort to set your story in that location, you don't know that two little sleeping pills that you swallow together won't just kill a man -- they won't even put him to sleep , as long as he doesn't want to sleep.

Every detective story writer makes mistakes.None of them are self-aware of their mistakes.Conan Doyle's mistakes made some of his stories untenable, but he was a pioneer and Sherlock Holmes was basically an attitude and dozens of memorable lines after all.What really discourages me are the ladies and gentlemen of what Mr. Howard Haycraft (in his Murder for Fun) calls the Golden Age of detective fiction.This era is not far away.According to Mr. Haycraft's division, it began after the end of the First World War and continued until about 1930.In fact, this era still exists today.Between two-thirds and three-quarters of all published detective stories still adhere to formulas created, refined, perfected, and sold to the world as problems of logical reasoning by the giants of the age.

That's a harsh statement, but don't be surprised.This is just talk.Let us take a look at one of the triumphs of this literature, an acknowledged masterpiece which has mastered the art of gimmickling the reader without deceiving him.The work, The Red House Mystery, was written by A. A. Milner, and Alexander Woolcott (what a hyperbole) called it "one of the three best mystery novels ever written or ever written." .Such praise is not easy to say.This book was published in 1922, but it has no timeliness. It could have been published in July 1939, or with a slight modification, it could have been published last week.It was reprinted a total of thirteen times, and remained in print on the original paper for about sixteen years.This is rarely the case with any book.The book is easy to read, with a witty, Punch-like style, and a smooth flow that creates the illusion that it is not as comfortable as it appears. It tells the story of Mark Ablet who pretends to be his brother Robert in front of his friends.Mark is the owner of the Red House, a typical English country house with flowers and plants everywhere, and a caretaker's cottage at the gate.His secretary encouraged and encouraged him to impersonate his brother, because if he succeeded, his secretary would kill him.No one in the neighborhood of the Red House had ever seen Robert, and he had been in Australia for fifteen years, and all they knew was his reputation as a sleazy swinger.There was a letter from Robert about it, but it was never brought out.The letter said he was coming, and Mark had hinted that it would not be a pleasant affair.One afternoon the legendary Robert came, identified himself to two servants, and was led into the study, followed by Mark (according to the testimony at the later arraignment).Then Robert was found dead on the floor with bullet holes in his face, and of course Mark disappeared.The police arrived after hearing the news, suspecting that the murderer must be Mark, they removed the body, conducted an investigation, and then interrogated him. Milner was aware of a very difficult obstacle, and he tried to get over it.Since his secretary was going to kill Mark as soon as he appeared as Robert, the impersonation had to go ahead and hide it from the police.And since the people around the Red House knew Mark well, a disguise was necessary.So Mark's beard was shaved, his hands were roughened (according to the testimony—"not a gentleman's manicured hands"), and he adopted a hoarse voice and rough manner. But that's not enough.The police will examine the body, the clothes the body was wearing, and everything in the pockets.So all these things can't make people think of Mark.So Mirnay tried his best to convince people of this motive: Mark is an extremely conceited showman, and he played the role so thoroughly that he changed his socks and underwear (the secretary removed the manufacturer's logo), just Like a charlatan who painted his whole body black in order to play Othello.If it sells to the readers (and the sales record proves that it must), Mirnay reckons he'll stand.But however flimsy the structure of the story, it is presented to the reader as a question of logical reasoning. It is nothing if not a question of logical reasoning.Because nothing else counts.If the plot is far-fetched, you can't even take it as a light novel because it has no story.A logical reasoning problem is not a logical reasoning problem if there is no factual and self-justifying element in it.If logic is an illusion, there is nothing to reason about.If the conditions necessary for impersonation fail as soon as the reader is told, then the whole thing is fraudulent.Not a deliberate falsification, for Milner would not have shared the story if he had known the difficulties he would encounter.What he encountered were fatal weaknesses, not even one of which he considered.Apparently the same is true of the casual reader, who likes the story and therefore wants to believe it.But readers cannot be required to know the reality of life, writers are experts in this field.What this writer ignores are the following: 1. The coroner convened a jury for a formal arraignment, but failed to produce legally qualified identification of the body.The coroner in a large city will also conduct an arraignment of an unidentified body, as long as the records of such arraignment have value or may be of value (evidence of fire, tragedy, murder, etc.).But there is no such reason here, and no one has identified the body.Two witnesses said the man identified himself as Robert Ablet.This is merely an assumption, valid only in the absence of evidence to the contrary.Identification is a prerequisite for arraignment.Even after death, a person has the right to his own identity.The coroner was to ensure the realization of this right, so far as it was humanly possible.Otherwise it is dereliction of duty. 2. Since Mark Ablet is missing and suspected of murder, unable to defend himself, it is necessary to find evidence of his movements before and after the murder (and whether he has money with him to escape); however This kind of evidence is provided by the person closest to the murder case, and there is no circumstantial evidence.Unless proven, it must be implausible. 3. The police, after a direct investigation, found that Robert Allerette had a bad reputation in his native village.Someone must have known him there.He didn't bring such a person for arraignment (the story doesn't stand up at this point). Fourth, the police knew that Robert's visit was threatening.It had something to do with the murder, they must know that.But they made no attempt to find out what Robert was like in Australia, what his name was there, what his dealings were, or even whether he had actually come to England, and with whom (if they had, they would have will find that he has been dead for three years). 5. The police doctor examined the corpse. The beard was just shaved off (the exposed skin was not exposed to the sun), the rough hands were unnatural, and the body was that of a rich man who had lived in the cold zone for a long time and had a good life.Robert, on the other hand, is a rough man who has lived in Australia for fifteen years.That was as far as the doctor had been told.There was no way he hadn't found the dead body to contradict this. Sixth, the clothes are nameless, the pockets are empty, and the trademarks are removed.But the person who wears this clothes always has an identity.It is safe to assume that he is not who he claims to be.But no action was taken on this suspicious point.And it never even occurred to me that it was suspicious. 7. A person is missing. He is a well-known local person. The body in the morgue looks like him.It is impossible for the police to rule out the possibility that the missing person is dead in the first place.Nothing could be easier than proving it.Didn't think of that at all, unbelievable.This is to make the cops look dumb enough for a reckless amateur detective to come up with a bogus answer and make a big splash. The detective in this case was a nonchalant amateur, a bright-eyed, enthusiastic lad named Anthony Gillingham, with a comfortable little flat in London, and a somewhat pretentious air.He doesn't do the job for the money, but he's always there when the local police forget their laptop.The British police seemed to tolerate him quite well, they always had this good temper.But I shudder at the thought of him falling into the hands of the police in our own town. There are examples of this art that are even less plausible than this.In The Last Case of Trent (often referred to as "the flawless detective story"), you have to accept the premise that an international financial mogul whose slightest frown would make Wall Street tremble Perhaps it was Etonianism in him that he planned his own death by getting his secretary tattooed on the rack, and that the secretary kept a dignified silence when he was cornered. Junior High School).I know very few international financial giants, but I think the author of this novel knows even fewer, if any. There is another example, by Freeman Wells Crofts (the most steady of them all when he is not too whimsical), in which the murderer, with the aid of make-up, makes a critical moment of timing. He took a very clever dodging action and pretended to be the person he had just killed, so he could resurrect and appear in a place far away from the crime.There is also the case of Dorothy Seyles, in which a man was murdered in his house late at night by crushing him to death with a mechanically propelled weight.The reason for this is that he always turns on the radio at this time, always stands in the same position in front of the radio, always bends down to this distance.If it is slightly forward or backward, the audience will have to refund the ticket.This is what the saying goes, God helped.A murderer who needs so much help from Heaven must be in the wrong trade. Agatha Christie has a story (finger) about the brilliant Belgian M. Hercule Poirot who talks in literal translation of schoolboy French.In this story, Mr. Pourge, who is supposed to be busy with his "little gray cells" (referring to Poirot's brain) for a while, comes to the conclusion that no one in the sleeping car is likely to commit the murder alone, and everyone is therefore involved. , Divide the whole process into a series of simple actions, just like assembling an egg beater.This type of story is guaranteed to wow even the sharpest minds.Only a fool would guess. These writers, and others of their kind, also have much better structures than this.There's probably one somewhere that really stands up to scrutiny, and it'll be fun to read, even if you have to go back to page forty-seven and remember exactly when the master gardener put up the first prize. Tea rose begonias transplanted into pots.There is nothing new in this kind of story; nothing old.Some of the examples I mention are British, only because pundits (if they can be called pundits at all) seem to feel that British writers are slightly better at this cliché, while American writers (even Philo Vance— —probably the stupidest character in detective novels—the creator) is only up to the level of Group B. This typical detective story neither learns nor forgets.It's what you'll find almost every week from big, beautiful magazines, beautifully illustrated, with all due respect to virginal love and legitimate luxury.Maybe the speed is a little faster, and the dialogue is a little more slick.Alcohol is more of a chilled daiquiri than vintage wine.The clothes are Vogue, the interiors are Home Beautiful, more stylish, but not necessarily more authentic.We have more time to spend in Miami Beach hotels and Cape Cod summer retreats than strolling by weather-beaten sundials in Elizabethan gardens. But the method of carefully collecting suspects is basically the same.And just as Mrs. Boddington Postlewitt III was drinking Lakmi's bell song down a high half step in front of fifteen assorted guests, someone used hard platinum How the dagger stabbed her, how it was done, is completely incomprehensible, which is basically the same.And the innocent girl in the pajamas trimmed with furs screaming in the middle of the night, startling everyone running in and out of the room in a mess, and I can't tell the exact time, it's basically the same .And the next day when everyone was wearing bowler hats, drinking Singaporean cocktails, all in a bad mood, talking stabs, while the dumb cop was crawling around looking for clues under the Persian rug, Basically the same. Personally, I like the British way of writing.It's not so easy to break, and the characters in it generally wear the same clothes and drink.The backgrounds have a sense of realism, as if the Cheskek mansion actually existed, not just what's seen in the camera, there are more long walks on the hillside, and the characters don't act like they just took an MGM exam.English writers may not be the best writers in the world, but they are at least the best dull writers, and none can compare with them. All these stories can be summed up in a very simple sentence: ideologically speaking, they are not a problem, and artistically, they are not a novel.They are all behind closed doors, too ignorant of things in the world.They have to be honest, but honesty is an art.Bad writers are dishonest without realizing it.A better writer can be dishonest because he doesn't know what to be honest about.He thought that a complex murder case that would confuse the lazy reader would surely confuse the police too.He thought that lazy readers would not go and memorize the details, but he didn't know that the job of the police is to not miss the details. Brothers with their feet on their desks know that the easiest murders to solve in the world are the ones that someone thinks are foolproof; the real troubles for them are the ones that are thought of two minutes before the murder.But if the writers of detective stories are going to write about this kind of real murder, they have to write about the authenticity of real life.Since they cannot do this, they claim that what they write is what they should write.This is taken for granted - the best of them know it. Dorothy Sayles wrote in the preface to the first volume of Anthologies of Crime: "It (the detective novel) does not reach, and it never will reach, the highest level of literary attainment." Fang also stated that this is because detective novels are a kind of "reclusive literature", not "literary literature of speech and ambition".I don't know what constitutes the highest level of literary attainment, certainly neither did Aeschylus and Shakespeare, and I'm afraid Miss Sayers did not.All other things being equal--which can never be--then a stronger subject must have a better grade.But there are some very dull books about God and very good books about how to murder without losing the honesty.The key question is always, who wrote it and what has he to write about it. As for Yanzhi literature and reclusive literature, these are the activities of critics, who love to use such abstract words as if they have concrete meanings.Everything written with energy shows it; there are no dull subjects, only dull heads.Anyone who reads books wants to seek some kind of escape from it; there may be different opinions on the nature of dreams, but the escape produced by dreams is a physiological need.All must sometimes escape from beneath the dead circle of their secret thoughts.This is part of the life of a thinking animal.This is one of the differences that distinguish them from the three-toed sloth.The latter apparently—though no one is absolutely sure—had a great deal of pleasure hanging upside down from the branches, and didn't even read Walter Simpman's political treatises.I'm not particularly advocating the detective story as an ideal escape.I'm just saying that anyone who reads for pleasure is a recluse, whether it's Greek, or mathematics, or astronomy, or Croce's aesthetics, or "The Diary of a Forgotten Man."Otherwise you are a maverick in culture, but an immature child in the art of living. It does not seem to me that Ms. Toddsay Sayles is attempting futile criticism because of these considerations. I think what was really disturbing in her mind was the slow realization that her kind of detective story had become a dry formula, not even capable of satisfying its own conditions.This is second-rate literature because it does not write material that would qualify as first-rate literature.If it sets out to write about real people (and she has the ability, as her secondary characters can attest), those real people will immediately have to do unreal things in order to fit the contrived layout required by the plot.The moment they do something that is unreal, they are no longer real themselves.They become puppets, mechanical lovers, paper villains and detectives, all meticulous and well-mannered. The only writer who can be satisfied with these props is the writer who knows nothing of reality, and Toddsay Syles, as her own novels show, resents the stereotype.That part of these novels which has the element of being a detective novel is their weakest part, and the best part is that which can be omitted without affecting the problem of "logical reasoning."However, she can't, and she doesn't want to let her characters have their own thoughts, let them create their own mysteries.To do that required a much simpler and more direct mind than her own. The Long Weekend is an excellent account of British life and state of affairs in the decade after the First World War.Robert Graves and Alan Hodge also touch on some detective stories in this book.As authentically British as the ornaments of a golden age, these two authors wrote of an age in which detective writers were as famous as almost any other in the world.Their various works have sold in the millions and have been translated into more than ten languages.It was these writers who fixed the form, determined the rules, and established the famous detective novel club, which is the temple of British mystery novels.The membership list includes nearly every important detective writer since Conan Doyle. But Graves and Hodge argue that only one author of the first rank wrote detective stories during this entire period.It was an American writer named Dashiel Hammett.Old-school or not, Graves and Hodge were by no means staid connoisseurs of second-rate writers; they could see the currents of the world, and see what the detective novels of their day couldn't; they knew originality And writers who are capable of producing true fiction will not produce untrue work. What an original writer Hammett really is is irrelevant, and if it were, it's hard to say right now.He was one of their school of writers, but the only one to have gained critical admiration, though not the only one to have written realistic mysteries or attempted such a thing.As is the case with any literary movement, there is always one person who is chosen to represent the whole movement, and he is often its pinnacle.Hammett is a first-rate showman, but there is nothing in his work that Hemingway's early novels and shorts do not contain. However, Hemingway probably learned something from Hammett as well as from Dreiser, Lyn Lardner, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, and himself. Also unknown.For quite a long period of time, there have been people who have made a complete revolution in the language and materials of novels and tried to return to simplicity.It probably started with poetry; almost everything started with poetry.You can even go back to Walt Whitman.But Hammett applies this to detective fiction, which is hard to push with the weight of British gentility and American pseudo-gentleness. I doubt Hammett had any definite artistic purpose.He just imagined writing something for a living for which he had first-hand knowledge.Some of it he made up, as all writers do, but he had a basis for it, and made it out of real things.And the only reality known to the British detective writers is the accents of Sobiton and Bognor Regis.If they write about princes and marquises and Venetian vases, what they know is not based on personal experience, just as a famous Hollywood person writes about the French modernist painting hanging on the wall of his Bel-El villa or his coffee table. The lacquered Pendale Antique Wooden Stool is as ignorant as it gets.Hammett took the murder out of the Venetian vase and put it in the mean street, where it didn't have to stay long, but could begin to be as close as possible to Emily Post's idea of ​​how a well-bred young lady should eat a chicken It would be a good idea to leave the wing idea a little further away. Hammett wrote from the beginning (and almost all the way to the end) for people with a positive outlook on life.They are not afraid of the dark side of things because that is where they live.Violence doesn't frighten them because it's on their streets.Hammett gave murder back to the man who had a reason to kill, not just a corpse; he gave it back to the man who had the weapon in hand, not a hand-forged dueling pistol, poisoned arrows, or tropical fish.He puts these characters as they really are, and they talk and think in the language in which they usually talk and think. He has style, but his readers don't know it, because he uses a language that is generally considered impossible for such refined language.They thought they were talking about a tense, flesh-and-blood drama in their own language.In a sense, that is true, but it is much more than that.All languages ​​begin with speech, and with the speech of ordinary people, but as soon as they develop into literary devices, they only appear to speak.Hammett's style is bad at being almost as formal as a page of Epicurean Marius, but good at expressing almost anything.It's not Hammett's style, it's not anyone's, it's American (and it's not purely American anymore) and I think it expresses what he doesn't know how to express Or feel the need to express words.In his hands the style had few associations, no echoes, no image other than a distant hill. Some people say that Hammett has no heart, but one of his most valued novels is a story about loyalty between friends.He doesn't write much, his words are terse, his emotions are secretive, but time and time again he does what only the best writers can do.He wrote scenes that seemed to have never been written before. For all these peculiarities, he does not destroy the proper detective story.Nobody can; mass production requires a form that can be mass produced.Realism requires too much talent, too much knowledge, too much awareness.Hammett may have loosened it up a bit here and sharpened it up there.No doubt all but the most foolish and pompous writers are more aware of their affectation than ever before.He proved that detective stories can be serious writing. The Maltese Falcon may or may not be a work of genius, but the art that can write it, and "and so on," there is nothing that cannot be written.Once a detective novel can be written so well, only a pedant will deny that it cannot be written better. Hammett is also credited with making detective writing a joy rather than a racket of clues.没有他，很可能就没有象珀西瓦尔·王尔德的《传讯》那样设想巧妙的地域性疑案小说，或者象雷恭·波斯特盖特的《十二人的裁决》那样有力的讽刺作品，或者象肯尼思·菲林的《思想匕首》那样充满了模棱两可的言论的淋漓尽致之作，或者象唐纳·汉德逊的《波林先生买报》那样把凶手美化的悲喜剧，或者象理查·莎尔的《拉北路斯第七号》那样开好莱坞式愉快的玩笑。 现实主义的风格很容易糟蹋：由于匆忙从事，由于缺少意识，由于不能解决作家的表达愿望与表达能力之间的差距。现实主义的风格很容易伪造；残暴并不是力量，俏皮并不是机智，充满刺激的文章可以象平淡的文章一样令人厌倦；跟水性杨花的金发女郎打情骂消如果由一个年轻的色鬼来描写，他除了一心只想描写这种打情写消以外别无其他目的，则写出来很可能是非常沉闷的东西。这样的情况已数见不鲜，因此，如果一部侦探小说里有一个角色开口说了一声“Yeah”。作者就不自觉地成了哈米特的模仿者了。 但是仍旧有不少人认为，哈米特写的根本不是侦探小说，他写的只不过是穷街陋巷的赤裸裸纪事，随便放进一些疑案的成分，就象在马提尼鸡尾酒中放一枚棷榄一样。这种人是些大惊小怪的老太太——应该说两种性别都有，或者说根本没有性别，而且几乎平各种年纪都有——她们喜欢谋杀案带有郁金香花的香味，不喜欢有人提醒她们，谋杀是一件无限残忍的事，即使凶手有时候看上去象个花花公子，或者大学教授，或者头发花白、和蔼慈祥的老太太。 也有少数一些拥护正规的或典型的疑案小说的人给吓怕了，他们认为要是小说中没有提出一个正式严格的难题，环绕着它布置好贴有整齐标签的线索，那就谈不上是部侦探小说。例如他们会指出，在读时，没有人会关心到底是谁杀了斯贝的合伙人（这是这个故事中唯一正规的难题），因为读者一直在忙着想别的事情。但是在中，读者不断被提醒，到底是谁杀了泰勒·亨利，所得的效果完全相同；这种效果是一种充满动作、计谋、矛盾的目的和逐步突出人物性格的效果，反正侦探小说要写的也就此而已。其余都是客厅里练耐心的游戏。 但是在我看来，这一切（加上哈米特）还很不够。写谋杀小说的现实主义作家所写的世界中，歹徒可能统治国家，甚至城市。在那里，旅馆公寓、有名的酒楼餐厅的主人是靠开妓院发财的，电影明星可能是盗匪的眼线，大厅里那个彬彬有礼的人可能是彩票老板。在这个世界里，法官藏有一地窖的私酒，却可能因一个人口袋里有一瓶酒而送他进监牢；你家乡的市长可能为了到手钱财而对谋杀案眼开眼闭；入夜之后无人敢在街上行走，因为法律和治安是句空话，从来没有实行过。在这个世界里，你很可能在光天化日之下见到有人沿路拦劫，明明看清楚是谁在作案，但是你马上躲开，混到人群中去，不愿出来告发，因为拦劫的人可能有朋友为他报复，或者警方可能不喜欢你出庭作证，不管怎样，为被告辩护的恶讼师可以在法庭上对你百般侮辱，因为陪审团里都是他们挑选的低能儿。有党派背景的法官除了敷衍一下外不会加以干涉。 这个世界可不是一个香气扑鼻的世界，却是你生活其间的世界。有些心肠狠硬，冷眼旁观的作家就能够从中找到非常有趣，甚至有意思的材料。一个人遭到了杀害并没有什么意思，有意思的是杀他不是为了什么了不起的原因，他的死是我们社会文明的印记。所有这一切，仍旧还不晚。 凡是可以称为艺术的东西，其中都有补救赎罪的因素。如果这是高度悲剧的话，则可能是纯粹的悲剧。也可能是怜悯和讽刺，也可能是强人的粗声大笑。但是总得有个人到这些穷街陋巷里去，一个自己并不卑鄙，也无污点或者胆怯的人。这种故事里的侦探必须是这样的一个人。他是英雄，他是一切。他必须是个完全的人，普通的人，但是一个不平常的人。用一句陈词滥调，他必须是个讲声誉的人，凭本能出发，从必然出发，不假思索，更不用说出口了。他必须是他的世界中最优秀的人，对其他世界来说也是够好的。我对他的私生活并不怎么在意，他既不是个阉人，也不是个圣人；我想他可能会诱奸一个公爵夫人，但是我敢说他不会糟蹋一个处女。他只要在某个方面是讲声誉的人，那么在其他所有方面也是个讲声誉的人。 他相对来说是个穷人，否则他就不会当侦探了。他是个普通人，否则他就不可能走到普通人中间去。他爱惜自己的名誉，否则他就不知道自己干的是什么工作。他不会无故受人钱财，也不会受了侮辱而不予应有的报复。他是个孤独的人，他有自尊心，你必须待之以礼，否则下次见到他时就后悔莫及。他说话同他同时代的人一样，那就是出语辛辣诙谐，富有幽默感，厌恶弄虚作假，蔑视卑鄙小气。故事就是这个人寻找隐藏的真相面作的冒险，如果不是发生在这个擅于冒险的人身上，则也不成其为冒险了。他的知识之广令你吃惊，但这是理应属于他的，因为这属于他所生活的世界。如果有足够的象他那样的人在，我想这个世界就会是一个可以过太平日子的地方，但是又不免过于沉闷单调，不值得在那里过日子了。