Chapter 10 Chapter 3 The Great Revolution

The psychological level will surpass the mathematical level. In the previous section, we talked about Ronald Knox's Ten Commandments and Van Dyne's Twenty.It is not difficult for readers to see that these rules certainly played a pivotal role in that era, but with the passage of events, their drawbacks inevitably restricted the development of detective novels.Some entries seem childish and ridiculous today. Feel free to give some examples.For example, the "Twenty Articles" pointed out that the murderer cannot be a detective, cannot be a policeman, and cannot be an insignificant person.Such a setting makes the murderer's backup candidates very limited, seriously restricting the creative space.When the only three or five candidates who met the "Twenty Points" were "rectified" by the previous creators one by one, the later writers became helpless.

For another example, the "Ten Commandments" and "Twenty Articles" stipulate that unconventional means cannot be used to commit crimes.This was understandable at the time, but with the advancement of technology, readers' horizons have become wider, and the concept of "unconventional" has become difficult to define.If you stick to the rules, some elements that readers love (such as science fiction, martial arts, etc.) will never have the opportunity to be used in detective novels, which is undoubtedly what creators and readers do not want to see. Finally, the love that readers talk about the most is also explicitly prohibited by the "Twenty Articles", which is simply intolerable.Just imagine, what would happen to a novel without any emotional elements today?

In fact, even at that time, the "Ten Commandments" and "Twenty Rules" were repeatedly "ignored" by some talented writers.It can even be asserted that all the classic works of the "Golden Age" are the products of conflicting these rules. ,,, "The Mystery of the Greek Coffin", "The Tragedy of X", etc., are all like this.Japanese reasoning writer Shoji Shimada once pointed out: "Van Dyne's 'Twenty Points' is a ridiculous thing. Only writers without talent will follow it to create, and excellent writers can use all elements and ensure that the works are still reasonable."

It can be seen that some rules of the "golden age" have a binding effect on most creators.If you create under such constraints for a long time, you can imagine the quality of the works you write. In addition to external restraints, classical detective novels themselves also encountered bottlenecks that could not be broken through.The problem is simple: that is the exhaustion of tricks. We have mentioned more than once before that the detective novels of the "Golden Age" follow the principle of "puzzle solving first".Once the puzzles are exhausted, the prospects for such novels can be imagined.Beginning with the short "golden age" at the end of the 19th century, classical detective novels have been glorious for half a century, and thousands of creators racked their brains to construct various mysteries.At such a speed of "reclamation", the tricks that the human brain can derive are already on the verge of exhaustion.Even reprocessing the previous mystery twice or even three times is far from being able to continue the glory of the "Golden Age".The famous detective novel critic Julian Simmons said: "'Golden Age' has exhausted all the tricks that human beings can think of, which makes the later writers face unprecedented embarrassment and crisis."

If the "Ten Commandments" and "Twenty Rules" are just a kind of external restraint of "if there is nothing", then the exhaustion of tricks is like pulling the bottom out of the classic detective novel. What to do without the core trick?Some creators chose to give up, while others chose to "shoddy".As a result, there has been an avalanche of "regression" in detective novels from quantity to quality.The tricks and background settings of some works are not only divorced from real life, but even violated scientific common sense-there is only a thin line between detectives and liars.

For a time, "whimsical" and "fabricated" became the only two evaluations of detective novels by readers and critics at that time.American Raymond Chandler once commented harshly: "For this kind of detective novels, only geniuses and idiots can guess the ending of the story." the key. In fact, the doom of classical detective novels was predicted as early as 1930.Moreover, this prophet is neither an outsider nor an opponent of detective fiction, but a master of classic detective fiction, the founder of the British Detective Writers Club (this institution we have mentioned earlier).

The man's name was Anthony Berkeley, who was born in Watford, near London, England in 1893.Berkeley was extremely gifted in literature and was a top student in Classics at Oxford University.He experimented with poetry and other genres before writing detective stories. World War I gave Berkeley the opportunity to serve his country.He once went to fight in France, was wounded many times before and after, and returned to England after the war.After that, he joined the business world and became a director of a company. In 1924, Anthony Berkeley published the detective debut "The Mystery of Leiden Court", and shaped the serial detective Roger Sheringham in the story.Afterwards, he created a number of detective novels, among which "Poisoned Chocolate Murder" published in 1929 established Berkeley's master status in one fell swoop.The structure of this work is unimaginable. Regarding a murder problem, seven "detectives" put forward seven completely different answers.The cleverness is that these seven kinds are based on facts, and the logical deduction based on the facts can be regarded as rigorous-however, there must be only one kind of truth... Many critics regard "Poisoned Chocolate Murder" as "the most Fantastic detective novel", Berkeley's skill can be seen.

It should be pointed out that Berkeley's famous works are all out-and-out classical detective novels, full of the atmosphere of "golden age". As early as 1928, Berkeley founded the British Detective Writers Club; in 1939, he inherited a large amount of property from his father-it is said that until Berkeley's death, his fixed assets still exceeded 100 million pounds!Berkeley immediately decided to stop the creation of detective novels, and instead began to devote himself to the operation of the detective writers club and the theoretical research of detective novels.He wrote a large number of incisive theoretical articles, which pointed out the direction for the development of detective novels.

We have no doubt that Anthony Berkeley was once a staunch advocate of classical detective novels; however, this genius has made a magnificent turn and made a subversive "criticism" of his life-long career! In 1930, Anthony Berkeley said in an essay: "I personally believe that the simple and pure crime puzzle, which relies entirely on plot design, is not good at character development, writing style, or even a sense of humor. In the hands of the judge. Detective fiction has reached a stage where the detective or crime novels of the future will attract readers' interest more on the psychological level than on the mathematical level."

It is clear that Anthony Berkeley was a great "prophet".During his creative career and the peak of the development of classical detective novels, he rationally discovered the limitations of such works, and accurately predicted the future development direction of detective novels.Novels that simply enjoy "solving puzzles" will surely dry up. Only by working hard on characters, writing, writing, etc., can detective novels avoid the fate of being eliminated. Anthony Berkeley used the words "mathematics" and "psychology" to accurately summarize the characteristics and differences between the "golden age" and "post-golden age" detective novels.We also mentioned earlier that the essence of classical detective novels is logical deduction at the mathematical level, which is a battle of wits between the author and readers; as for the psychological level of detective novels, we will discuss them in detail in the next section.In short, it has been proved that Berkeley is great and wise.

Berkeley did not stay at the theoretical level, but worked hard to turn his predictions into reality.Under the pseudonym "Francis Els", he successively created two novels and "Before the Facts".The styles of these two works are very different from those of the "Golden Age". Instead of taking puzzle solving as the highest principle, they focus on the shaping of characters and the depiction of criminal psychology.There is no doubt that these are two landmark works. Now let's sum up: the rigidity of the extension of creation, the exhaustion of the core of creation, the liberation of creative thinking-everything indicates that the "golden age" and the classic detective novels unique to this era have come to an end. The trend of history is inevitable.In the dark, there will always be some irresistible force that nails the last nail in the coffin for things that have fallen.The "burial" of the "Golden Age" were two unprecedented catastrophes in human history - the economic crisis that broke out in 1929 and the Second World War that broke out in 1939. Throughout the history of detective novels, we will be surprised to find such a tried and tested rule: the development of detective novels is always accompanied by the rapid development of the national economy.Let’s verify it: American Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective novel in 1841, but in the next 50 years, this type of literature hardly developed in the United States; It became the "Empire on which the sun never sets".And the "golden age" of short detective stories that we have repeatedly mentioned and triggered by Sherlock Holmes happened to be this period; in the first half of the 20th century, the United States came from behind and replaced Britain as the world hegemony.So we can see that although the novel "Golden Age" started in Britain, most of the brilliance later was created by the compatriots of Uncle Sam; The rise of mystery novels seems to be faster than the rise of the economy... In fact, if you think about it carefully, this is not difficult to understand.The essence of the detective story (whether mathematical or psychological) is nothing more than a casual reading.Under this premise, economic prosperity will inevitably become the basis for the prosperity of detective novels.Not only detective novels, almost all types of literature have this characteristic. Specific to the works of the "Golden Age", this rule is especially obvious. The "Golden Age" is the era in which the capitalist system moves from establishment to prosperity.Therefore, the works of this period are full of an atmosphere of stability, peace, affluence, and fulfillment. Even murder will happen very politely, without the slightest sense of horror and blood. Gentlemen and wealthy people who have already obtained great satisfaction in material life will of course fall in love with this kind of detective novels after dinner.Someone commented on the phenomenon at that time: "In an unbearably comfortable life, there seems to be no greater event than the publication of Agatha Christie's new works. People of all ages and genders will immediately put Buy a new book home, and then spend the night reading it. Because, the next morning, it will be the topic of everyone's talk." This shows that the works of "Queen" are full of charm, and on the other hand, it also shows that the society at that time What a comfortable environment. However, the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 1929 put an end to this life forever.Overnight, unemployment, poverty, hunger, despair... almost all the unhappiness climbed into everyone's heart.The somewhat illusory ideal world carefully created by the bourgeoisie turned out to be so vulnerable.It is not difficult to imagine that when people continue to be beaten to death for receiving relief food, no one will have the leisure and elegance to sit in an easy chair and read detective novels. The economic embarrassment has not yet been shaken off, and more brutal world wars are ensuing.The dilapidated houses were turned into ruins, hundreds of millions of lives were turned into cannon fodder, and people's hearts were tortured beyond measure. If the previous economic crisis just made people nostalgic for the good things gone, then the war made many people question the past way of life.Prosperity, beauty, enjoyment...beautiful things are so vulnerable, is it necessary for fragile human beings to work hard for such beauty?Isn't this self-anesthesia and deception? When the world view of despair, grayness and self-doubt is filling every corner, the detective novels of the "Golden Age" withdraw from the stage of history, which is really a kind of "natural selection". Then, such a question was pushed out: Does the withdrawal of classical detective novels herald the decline of this type of literature?The answer is of course no, otherwise Anthony Berkeley's prediction would have come true. What kind of new detective novel will the classical detective novel be replaced by?Readers should vaguely feel that it is the "psychological level" novel mentioned by Berkeley before.Where does this kind of fiction come from?Of course, in line with the spirit of "art originates from life", it comes from the real life after the great crisis and the great war. The crisis passed, the war was over, and a group of powerful men returned home.However, the unrecognizable world is already very strange to these returning guests from afar. They need to re-understand the world and try to change the world, otherwise, simply destroy the whole world!