"The detective story is a kind of intellectual game's more, it becomes a sports event. And to write detective stories there are very definite laws, perhaps unwritten, but binding; and any schemer literary mystery that boasts work on this basis. What follows here is a kind of belief, based partly on the practice of all the great writers of detective stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest awareness author. To wit:
1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective to solve the mystery. All clues must be shown and described.
2. You should not make the reader fall in any trap or deceptions than those lawfully made by the criminal on the detective himself.
3. There must be no love. The issue is to bring the criminal to justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the altar of Hymen.
4. Neither the detective nor any of the official investigators, should never turn out as the culprit. Truculence is a tasteless, like offering someone a bright penny for a gold coin of five dollars. It is a false pretension.
5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions, not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. Resolve a criminal problem in this fashion is like hunting the reader and, after an arduous march, saying that you had the whole time I was looking on your sleeve. An author is no better than a joker.
6. The detective novel must have a detective and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. Its function is to gather clues that lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter, and if the detective does not reach its conclusion through an analysis of these tracks, no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the arithmetic.
7. In a detective story must have a corpse and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred is too high for any other crime other than murder. After all, the reader's time and energy expenditure should be rewarded.
8. The crime problem must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Methods to know the truth as slate, thought-reading, seances, crystal balls and the like are prohibited. The reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension metaphysical, is defeated ab initio.
9. There should be no more than a detective, that is, a protagonist of deduction, a deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to solve a problem "is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If more than one detective the reader does not know who your driver. It's like making the reader run a race with a relay team.
10. The culprit must be a person who has played more or less important part of history, that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and which is interest.
11. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. It's a too easy solution. The culprit must be definitely a person of importance, someone who would not ordinarily come under suspicion.
12. There should be one culprit, no matter the number of crimes committed. The culprit may, of course, have an accomplice or assistant secondary, but the onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the indignation of the reader should be concentrated on a single black nature.
13. The secret societies, gangs, etc. have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled for any culpability. In a thriller, the murderer should be treated graciously, but it is going too far to a secret society in which they can shelter. No criminal class that respect would accept such advantages.
14. The method of murder, and means for detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is, the pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative instruments should not be tolerated in the roman policier. At the time a perpetrator is liable to the land of fantasy in the manner of Jules Verne, departs from the ways of the police action, stepping into the vast realms of adventure.
15. The truth You must keep in sight, for the cunning of the reader can detect. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation of crime, re-read the book, you will see that the solution was, in a sense, before their eyes, that all the clues really pointed to the culprit, and that if it had been as smart as the detective could have solved the mystery by itself without having to reach the last chapter. It goes without saying that the intelligent reader often solves the problem.
16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary profusion of ornaments, and worked on character analysis, no worries "Weather." These things have no place in a tale of crime and deduction. Hinder the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to present a problem, analyze and successfully levarlo a conclusion. To be sure, must have descriptions and drawings of characters just to give the novel verisimilitude.
17. A professional criminal must never be blamed on a detective novel. The crimes committed by robbers and bandits are a matter for police departments, not the authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime is committed by a priest or a knight famous for their acts of charity.
18. In a thriller, the crime must never be an accident or suicide. End the ordeal of an investigation with such anti-climax is mocking the reader's trust.
19. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International conspiracies and war policies belong to a different category of fiction, the stories of espionage, for example. But a criminal history should be kept in the field of everyday life, should reflect the common experiences of the reader, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions.
20. And (to give final remarks about my belief) lists some tricks in which no writer of detective stories that boasts it will fall. Have been employed and are familiar to all true lovers of literature criminal. Using them is a confession of ineptitude and lack of originality by the author:
- a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect.
- b) False séance to frighten the culprit and force his confession.
- c) Forged fingerprints.
- d) The simulated figure alibi.
- e) The dog that did not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the murderer's family.
- f) The final charge against a sister or relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent.
- g) The hypodermic syringe with sleep-inducing drug.
- h) The crime in a locked room inside.
- i) The word association test to find the culprit.
- j) The key letter is unraveled by the detective.
SS Van Dyne - September 1928
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