Comparing Wilkie Collins 'The Moonstone And' A Taste For Hard

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was and still is one of the most prominent figures in world literature, especially in the mystery genre. While many works of literature belong in the mystery genre, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series stands out the most. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous literary works, A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and A Scandal in Bohemia share a common theme: the importance of justice and the pursuit of righteousness.

Hard-boiled detective fiction sets the scene for a cold and harsh reality. Dashiell Hammett’s, “The Girl with The Silver Eyes” is no exception to this rule. In this short story Hammett paints a picture of a brutally realistic urban center filled with characters that not many people would want to call friends. The realistic qualities of Hammett’s story are drawn from his own life’s experience working as a Pinkerton detective. The detective in “The Girl With The Silver Eyes” works for the Continental Detective Agency and is, therefore, known simply as the Continental Op. In the beginning of the story the Op professes, “a detective, if he is wise, takes pains to make and keep as many friends as possible among transfer company, express

Her research concerns/is focused on, first, the character/person of the protagonist – his characteristics and skills, as well as his cooperation with the sidekick; second, on the category of crime, including different kinds/types of crime and characters of both criminals and victims. Although both characters are featured/appear in novels as well as in short stories, it is the latter ones that are in focus in this paper. One of the reasons for this choice/decision is the fact that literary critics and scholars have often emphasised how much more effective the Sherlock Holmes formula is in the short stories (Worsley 225). The second reason is that, in case of Agatha Christie, it seems to have become a tradition to comment on the same works, often novels. For example, a rare critic has not contributed to the discussion of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or The ABS

William W. Stowe continues to create an understanding of the genre where “Detective fiction tends to affirm rather than question, to take social structures, moral codes and ways of knowing the given, rather than subjecting them to thorough, principled criticism. In detective fiction, crime is usually seen as a personal evil rather than a social injustice and the detective is depicted as an ideal incarnation of competitive individualism… the truth although elusive, is ultimately

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is not the most well-known author, but his characters are perhaps some of the most iconic literary figures of the nineteenth century. Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Professor Moriarty, and even Mrs. Hudson are all familiar to readers and non-readers world-wide. Over the course of his career, Conan Doyle published more than 50 short stories and novels about the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Doctor John Watson. Holmes’s popularity was so great that, after killing him in a desire to move forward with other projects, Conan Doyle was forced by distraught fans, including his own mother, to resurrect the character. Holmes’s fame has continued to grow, particularly due to the variety of adaptions to the stage, film, and other mediums. Organizations such as the Baker Street Irregulars, the Conan Doyle Literary Estate, and numerous Sherlock Holmes Societies are comprised of book lovers who adore Conan Doyle’s particular brand of detective fiction, from casual readers to devoted scholars. Together, these readers have worked to to analyze his works, share ideas, and apply Holmes to the real world.

In the genre of detective fiction one of the first names that pops into ones head is that of Sherlock Holmes. His stories, in the “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," more or less embody classic detective fiction in the 1800s. There are victims early on in the story and a bad guy whom you only find out about at the end. The story is fast paced and you are lead down different paths and end up thinking you have figured out the twisted mystery, to only then find out you were no where close to the actual solution. Almost all of the stories we have read in class have had these things in common.

Humans naturally love to be perplexed, thus leading to the appeal of the entertainment apex of confusion, the detective fiction genre. However, we also crave a firm conclusion in any event of our lives, novels not excluded. While any imaginative tale may be written without any true formula, almost all of the detective fiction stories have a defined form. A crime is committed and followed by an investigation, then something almost tragic happens to the inspector, but he or she prevails and solves the case. This form has existed since the mid-1800s, yet works prior to Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes failed to attract prolonged attention. Detective fiction’s rise to fame can be directly linked to the appeal

Professionals divide literature into many different categories, or genres, which seem not to relate to each other. Some crossover hybrids exist, but very few works of literature can actually be compared to others that are not in the same genre. One such comparison would be that of a poem and the detective genre in general. For example, Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”, a dramatic monologue, would very rarely be compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter.” The writers of Detective Fiction Crime and Compromise, however, have placed Browning’s poem in the manifestation section of their book. A manifestation of detective fiction is something, other than detective fiction, that outwardly or perceptibly indicates a

Despite the mystery genre having some certain rules by it, Christie broke some of these rules when writing some of her books. I want to investigate specifically the ways in which Christie wrote this book differently and to explore how and why she broke the rules of the detective genre.

Detective fictions aren’t like any other genre that one can read. They allow the readers to be engaged throughout the book in many ways as well as letting their own experiences and feelings form relationships with the detectives. They offer a problem in need of a solution which allows the reader to be involved by using their imagination and problem solving skills. Detective fictions also makes the reader find themselves not wanting to put the book down because of the excitement and the erg to know what is going to happen next. The readers may see themselves connecting with the heroes and also they will notice the unique skills that the detectives have. Detective Fictions are appealing to readers because they allow the reader to be involved throughout the story by using their imagination to solve the problem, they read about situations that keeps them on their toes throughout the book and the reader builds a relationship with the “hero.”

Both science and detective fiction possess inherent conventions that allow them to contextually address society’s fear of foreignness contrarily. Science fiction, as a genre, asks ‘what if?’, providing alternative possibilities of reality, a concept emphatically prevalent in time travel. The “fantastic elements” of time travel are considered “in direct contrast to known reality” (Burton 106) in order to address contextual fears by asking, rather than answering, the question of ‘what if?’. This ability to view and change the past and future thus encourages the genre to address contextual fears by providing alternatives to reality (Ní Fhlainn 180). Detective fiction takes the opposite approach however, as its inherent desire to solve consequently requires answering society’s fears. This genre provides a “process of question and answer” in regards to addressing fears and ultimately engages “in a

The police procedural is a recent addition to detective fiction. This is because “[b]efore the 1980s the police novel was a minor, and somewhat maligned, stepchild in the field of crime fiction.”[5] As one of the early police procedural novels, Ed McBain’s Cop Hater was a factor in how detective fiction came to embrace the police procedural. In doing so, it had to deal with the attitudes that caused cop characters to be considered unsuitable protagonists. This process was facilitated by efforts to make the police characters relatable, and the procedural methods they use accessible. In doing so, McBain wrote a novel that paved the way for acceptance of the police detective.

This type of fiction highlighted the importance of psychological analysis of the culprits and other characters. This kind of detective stories is much more violent and suspenseful than other types of detective fictions. One pattern of this detective fiction of suspense is that: the hero or heroine must pit his or her wit against the criminals or vicious power in a limited time, or the hero or heroine is certain to die. The first work of this school is Eden Phillpotts’s A Voice From the Dark, unlike most of the detective novels before, Phillpotts abandoned the “whodunit” format, the identity of the culprit is described at the beginning. The detective suffers from lacking enough evidence to bring the criminal to justice. By tactfully using the criminal’s psychological status, Phillpotts provided the reader a wonderful psychological contest between the detective and the criminal. William Irish’s Phantom Lady and Cornell Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black also belongs to this

He states that clues are not facts but rather rhetorical figures, and that they “are more often metonymies: associations by contiguity, for which the detective must furnish the missing term. The clue is, therefore, that particular element of the story in which the link between signifier and signified is altered” (146). By analysing how the nature of the clue changes when detective fiction is adapted to the screen, we could gain a better understanding of detective series and the techniques used in new adaptations of old detective classics. It is crucial that the adaptors find a way to visualize the clues that are hidden in the narrative, without giving them away. Clues connect the story of the investigation, “the present”, with the story of the crime, “the past”. Not only do clues have the structural function of providing a link between past and present, subject and fable or crime and investigation, they also have a narrative function since they contain an encrypted reference to the identity of the murderer. Clues should appear in many shapes and forms in detective fiction, especially in Christie’s work: footprints, a fragment of overheard dialogue or certain behaviour by one of the

But in the late 1920s, in the aim of reflecting the social upheavals background, the detective writers at that time created a new type of detective: hard-boiled detective. The founders of this type of detective are Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. Their detectives are not those eccentric gentlemen with superb intelligence. Most of them are common people. Most of those hard-boiled detectives got fiery tempers. Just like the detective in The Dain Curse who remarked that, “..spring the puzzle. Don’t be literary with me, building up to climaxes and the like. I’m too crude for that—it’d only give me a bellyache. Just spread it out for me”( Hammett 15). For most of those detectives, their brain is a supplement for their muscular body. Although they can deduce the truth beneath those clues, they usually interrogate the culprits by using violent force. In those hard-boiled detective works, there will be volumes written about the hardship endured by their body, or the adventures experienced by them, rather than their reasoning process. Those hard-boiled detective no longer crouched in the arm-chair, but faced the ugly-side of social reality bravely, and remained humanistic in the sordid society. Chandler became the spoke-man and gave a definition for those hard-boiled detective in his essay “The