(The author of this article is a reasoning critic) At the beginning of the development of the writing genre of mystery novels, there are several classical principles that cannot be easily surpassed and destroyed. For example, logical reasoning and puzzle solving must be emphasized, superpowers cannot be used to kill people, and non-scientific methods cannot be used to commit crimes and solve crimes. In fact, it is a game of wits that emphasizes rationality and fairness (a competition and confrontation between a detective and a murderer, or between a reader and an author), and even formulates the so-called "Ten Commandments of Reasoning", "Twenty Rules of Reasoning" and other writings. principles to maintain its core values.

But slowly, when the writer's focus is no longer limited to impossible crimes such as murder in a secret room and the disappearance of the murderer, but begins to look for crimes that are happening and being concerned about in the current society (criminals in the real world may never Wouldn’t it be more convenient and easy to think about the troublesome things of escaping from the secret room, arranging elaborate alibi, and designing delicate and cumbersome murder methods? He has also gradually moved from the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, an aristocrat who used to be regarded as a criminal consultant rather than an investigator, to a private detective who is a civilian, labor-intensive, piecework-paid and risky of death.If we want to "return the murder to the person who has a reason to commit the crime, not just provide a corpse", then we can reasonably think and demand that private investigators must dig out the truth and reasons for the crime, not just It's just about finding a killer (or more), isn't it?

Since the American writer Dashiell Hammett (Dashiell Hammett) set off the American revolution of mystery novels and opened a new era of hard-line detective novels, countless writers have continued their spiritual cultivation in the past 70 to 80 years, resulting in the birth of countless novels in this genre. Characters of private detectives with different images and charming demeanor.Hard-boiled private agents must roam the dark streets, deal with evil criminals, and risk their lives being beaten, beaten, and drugged, just to complete the task entrusted by the client, "In order to earn a living, I sell what I have to sell ".They have their own set of moral norms and standards of conduct, have experienced the world, are used to all kinds of dirty realities and selfish human nature, so they have a strong will and a ruthless personality that loves to ridicule.

As Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-line novels in the United States, described the character of the private eye in the novel "The Art of Murder": He is the hero and everything.He must be a whole man, an ordinary man and yet an extraordinary man.He had to be—to use a corny phrase—a man of honor.His sense of honor comes from intuition, from necessity, without thinking, without words.在他著名的《再见，吾爱》一书中，更透过其中一位迷人女性问硬汉私探：“人人都敲你的头，掐你脖子，揍你的下巴，灌你吗啡，但Why are you so cool when you're still relentless until they give in?" When such a cold and hard-boiled private detective whose image is well-known by readers leaves reality and comes to the fantasy world, what kind of temperament, ability and appearance will he show?

What this book presents at the beginning is the atmosphere of traditional hard-boiled detective novels—the client with a tall blonde beauty, sharp-tongued and down-and-out alcoholic private detective, a dilapidated office in a cheap location, a standard first-person Narrative If the story does not take place in the weird and charming different world "Night Side", it will really make people think that what they are reading is a hard-boiled detective novel.Even the protagonist John Taylor's description of himself can also find the spirit of this type of role inherited from the hard-line private detective:

I'm not one to follow the crowd.I walk my own path, take care of my own life, and have my own set of standards for honor. It is not all my fault that this situation has turned into this.I consider myself a wandering knight, but the princesses I save always stab me in the back, the swords that accompany me always shatter before the dragon's skin, and the Holy Grail I've been chasing all my life ends up being a whiskey bottle. Feeling self-sufficient is very important to me because I don't want to depend on anyone.I've never had much luck with women, but I must admit it's mostly my fault.In spite of life, I'm still romantically inclined, with all the troubles romantics have to deal with.

A certain degree of poverty (always sleeping in the office, unable to pay various bills), using alcohol to numb myself (because there are too many things I don’t want to remember), life is full of all kinds of bad memories, but even so, However, he still maintains an upright and noble heart, and dedicates his loyalty and bravery to his client with a romantic chivalry spirit that is incompatible with reality and helps the weak.Such a complex of contradictions gives the detectives depth of personality and a unique charisma. However, if it is simply a transplantation of similar detectives, it would be too boring, so the author made some special settings for the protagonist of this book, John Taylor.In the real world of London, he is a private investigator who does not provide credit services, does not handle divorce cases, does not investigate criminal crimes, and only specializes in finding things.The former two are roughly the same business scope as the hard-line private detectives, but they are only responsible for the relatively unpopular business scope of finding things (no wonder he was threatened by creditors to pay the bill at the beginning of the story), which is very different from the hard-line detective novels, where murder cases It is the setting at the core of their investigation.

Here we see the first difference, he does not touch criminal offenses. In addition, the ability to detect individuals is also a special feature.In traditional hard-boiled detective novels, detectives mostly rely on their own intelligence, physical strength and reasoning ability to detect and solve cases, which are probably not separated from the abilities that mortals can have in the real world.However, in fantasy novels, because of the imaginative and unrealistic fantasy background settings, detectives may be wizards, magicians or even vampires, with various peculiar talents that are often needed and useful in investigations.For example, the protagonist John Taylor has a unique "finding" talent, which is used repeatedly during the story, whether it is looking for girls, finding escape points, detecting monsters, and so on.

In the novel, the commission he accepted was to help a mother find her daughter who had been away from home for a long time. To find this wayward girl who ran away from home, he had to go back to the place where Taylor was born and grew up, which made him love and hate. Another world - night side.During the story, through the mouths of the protagonist and other characters, readers can discover the past experience in the night side and the mystery of life experience, which has always haunted the protagonist. The detective himself also has a mystery, and we can foresee the future of this series. Several books will definitely deal with this problem.

Compared with the complexity of Taylor's life experience, the hard-line private detective is often a clear individual. The story focuses on the present, and the author will hardly explain his past, and it can be clearly known in the first book of the series What kind of person he is, even with his haunting past, the reader has a good idea of ​​how and why he became what he is today. Because of these three differences, on the one hand, the reader finds his familiar part of the hard-line detective, and on the other hand, he also has the excitement brought by the newly added novel setting. It seems extremely like a hard-line detective novel, but Different again.Readers who like fantasy can be satisfied with imaginative fantasy elements - the eternal night city where time stays at three o'clock in the middle of the night, the ghost tavern with the style of the 1960s, composed of people who have been abducted by aliens The "fortress" of the book, the collector who can travel through time and space, the immortal razor killer with superb martial arts, the bounty hunter who is violent and bloodthirsty and loves to use shotguns; readers who like reasoning elements can also learn from the protagonist John in this book. ·Taylor's detective character who "desires everything for the truth", has his own set of principles of justice, and has a noble and soft heart (he doesn't want to see the suffering of the old, weak, women and children), gets familiar comfort.

When fantasy meets reasoning, what kind of sparks will be sparked when the two writing types seem to be quite opposite at first glance?Through the night side adventure journey of the lonely knight John Taylor, it may be able to bring Taiwan readers a new reading vision and fun.