Molly - Detective Novels
I have been reading detective novels lately. Despite enjoying a reputation among my family and friends as "literary" I mostly read mysteries and thrillers. They, like legal thriller films, are great when you want the experience of "wanting to know what will happen." Isn't that all books? No!! Some you just kind of lounge in and come away satisfied but not necessarily thrillingly ferried from one place to another. Anyway. I read quite a lot of thrillers, which are chiefly about what's going to happen. Detective novels are a different breed. I would argue they are more "boring" than thrillers only in that they rely far less on twists. Many of them still adhere to some of S.S. Van Dine's rules of mystery writing. Rules 1, 2, 8, and 14 especially are very sound, to me. However I take issue with a few of them: no love interest, no accidental deaths, but especially
A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations.
In the past few months, I have read all of John Banville's Quirke and Stafford series, Tana French's The Hunter (followup to The Searcher), and a few of P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh books. Part of what I've loved about all of them is that they are vehicles for great character writing. French's Cal Hooper series, of which The Hunter is the second, are much more subdued than her Dublin Murder novels and those are also great character studies, just with darker twists. Hooper, Quirke, Stafford, and Dalgliesh are all sad middle aged men. Far from the excitement of the terrorized victim narrating a domestic thriller, the pleasure is in their intelligent and wry taking in of the world. Quirke and Stafford both are fascinatingly unpleasant characters. The murders themselves are mostly human and sad, not sensational. In the hands of a great writer, a great detective novel gives you wonderful observations on almost every page. Here are some of my highlights from my recent reading.
But if Stephen wanted to indulge in remorse there was little to be gained by stopping him. He usually felt better afterwards, even if other people felt worse. - P.D. James, Cover Her Face
He was unnerved by telephones, by the humid sense of intimacy they offered. - John Banville, Snow
She wasn’t beautiful, Strafford thought, but all the same something in her frail, melancholy looks pressed a bell deep within him that made a soundless, sad little ping. - John Banville, Snow
She had a way now and then of looking at him with what seemed like surprise and muted delight, as if she hadn’t known him before but had chanced on him just at that moment and was already discovering him to be an object of the profoundest and most pleasing interest. - John Banville, April in Spain
There’s a nice piece of moral sleight of hand, he thought, to seek to cancel a heartless falsehood with a kindlier one. - John Banville, The Drowned
Lack of clarity is this place’s go-to, a kind of all-purpose multi-tool comprising both offensive and defensive weapons as well as broad-spectrum precautionary measures. - Tana French, The Hunter