There are specialist detective fiction bookshops just as there are specialist fsf bookshops. Presumably Anderson's Trygve Yamamura novels are on sale in the former. Does anyone know Anderson only as a crime fiction author?
One way to diversify detective novels is to make the detective unusual:
the first consulting detective;
a British aristocrat;
a retired Belgian policeman;
an English spinster;
a Catholic priest;
a Japanese-Norwegian San Franciscan Buddhist ex-policeman;
a Sicilian Police Inspector.
Probably every interesting variation has been imagined by now. I like Yamamura and am closer to his wavelength than to Brown's.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I used to be a big mystery fan and recognized at once all but one of the detectives you listed (except the Sicilian police officer). I've also read many of John Dickson Carr's books and I think he modeled Dr. Gideon Fell on Chesterton himself.
Another detective "type" I hope you might have included in your list would have been Judge Dee (a real world early T'ang Dynasty official), used by Robert van Gulik in his Judge Dee novels. Which I highly recommend.
Sean
Sean,
The Sicilian is Montalbano whom I have mentioned.
I am unfamiliar with Judge Dee although there is a Judge John Deed on British TV and Judge Dredd in 2000 AD!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I recall you have sometimes mentioned Montalbano. And I was interested by how crimes were investigated and penalized in Imperial China. Criminal law in China remained basically constant till very late Ch'ing times.
Sean
Sean,
The historical angle is another variant. There is also a medieval Christian monk detective.
Paul.
And something set in Chesterton's own lifetime becomes more of a historical from our viewpoint now.
Van Gulik's "Judge Dee" stories are excellent, by the way -- Gulik was a great scholar of things Chinese and spoke the language fluently from childhood (his wife was Chinese, the daughter of an Imperial mandarin). He started by translating "The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee", a classic 18th-century Chinese detective novel based on the real Tang-era Judge Dee, and then went on to write original fiction using the same character. It's very good stuff.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: And I have read and enjoyed some of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael stories. Very much worth reading. With Brother Cadfael being a kind of twelfth century Fr. Brown.
Mr. Stirling, I agree wholly with what you said about van Gulik's Judge Dee stories. It was because of his works that I got interested in Chinese criminal, reading books like Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris' LAW IN IMPERIAL CHINA: EXEMPLIFIED BY 190 CH'ING DYNASTY CASES. Chinese law was very strange in some ways from Anglo/American law.
Sean
Similarly, Johanna Spry wrote HEIDI in some European language; Charles Tritten translated it into English, then write two sequels so the trilogy is two thirds his work as author and one third as translator.
Grammatical point: Tritten, of course, wrote sequels.
Historical note: Britain still has the death penalty in the Father Brown TV series.
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disapprove of how Charles Tritten behaved, writing sequels to another author's work, unless, of course, he first obtained permission to do so from that other writer.
Since the UK abolished the death penalty only in the 1960's, it's no surprised it still existed in the TV version of the Fr. Brown stories. Because I assume they were set in the 1920's and 1930's.
Sean
Sean,
But Tritten constructed a perfect trilogy: HEIDI; HEIDI GROWS UP; HEIDI'S CHILDREN.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I favor the stricter view of authorship which became the norm since at least Miguel Cervantes' time, that writers should not add prequels or sequels to another author's work. At least not without first obtaining that writer's consent.
I mentioned Cervantes because the first part of his DON QUIXOTE was so popular that spurious additions were made to his book. Cervantes was not in the least pleased and I think the second part he added to DON QUIXOTE was partly motivated as a protest to additions being made to his work without his consent. I THINK it was from this time onwards that the view spread that it was not right to add to another writer's works, unless his consent was obtained.
Sean
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