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Originally Posted by Hitch
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
But some mysteries I read aren't "Whodunits". An example is later work by the late Nicholas Freeling (who wrote the Inspector Van Der Valk and the Henri Castang series.) Who the killer was is clear early on. Freeling is more interested in exploring the motivations, and why the killer committed murder. They are character portraits using mystery as a framing device.
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To me, those are not really "whodunits," as you note. They are explorations of human behavior, etc. Somewhat like Columbo, in a weird way. Or other authors, where the enjoyment is in the "how" of how the protagonist traps the badguy, or even those that explore the depths of the kinky psyche. I enjoy those, but I don't perceive those as mysteries in any real sense. To me, deciding the whodunit is the joy of it. |
The "how" the protagonist traps the bad guy is a separate sub-genre called police procedurals.
The key there is verisimilitude, and authors of stuff like that take pains to get the procedures right, consulting with police to make sure they have.
My preference is off-beat procedurals set on exotic locations. One series was the Tromp Kramer and Mickey Zondi series, set in South Africa. Lt. Tromp Kramer and Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi are in the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad. They are both police procedurals and ironic commentary on the setup in SA, because the
motivations for the crimes tend to be things that would not occur here. In one, a major character appears fully Caucasian, but has a negro ancestor several generations back. If this ever becomes public knowledge, the character will be reclassified from "White" to "Coloured", and life as that character knows it will be over.
Another fun series is William Marshall's Yellowthread Street books, set in the fictitious Hong Bay District of Hong Kong, featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harry Fieffer and his crew. In Sci-Fi, promoters are holding a SciFi comics and film convention in the area, and Fieffer and his crew must cope with costumed loonies in addition to the normal Hong Kong variety. The promoters have inflated a giant Godzilla balloon as a promotional device. It has broken free from its moorings, and is drifting toward mainland Chinese airspace. Everyone is
very paranoid about how the mainland government will react to the incursion.
Marshall is capable of going from falling off your chair laughing to flat out terror in the space of a page.
Straddling genres, we have Liz william's "Inspector Chen" books. They are set in a near term future where the city of Singapore has franchised and spawned clones. Chen lives in Singapore3. The gods and demons of Chinese mythology are very real in Chen's world. He is his department's Snake Agent - the one responsible for crimes involving the supernatural. His fellow officers stay as far away from him as possible. He has a patron goddess who is displeased with him because he married a female demon he rescued from dire circumstances before the series takes place. And he finds himself with a demon partner - Zhu Urdz, a Senescal in the Ministry of Vice in Hell. Hell has laws, too, and demons whose job it is to enforce them, and Chen finds himself partnered with Urdz on cases that overlap their respective jurisdiction. Great fun throughout.
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Dennis