Quote:
Originally Posted by booksq12
The first mystery book to use the "detective gathers the suspects and lays out what happened and who did it" plot device was Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The book, published in 1926,
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I don't think it was the first.
Also see 1878 Anna Green's The Leavenworth Case. About 25 of her books are on Gutenberg.
also significant are A.E.W. Mason (Belgian Piorot is slightly based on Hanaud), Hulbert Footner (Mme Storey & Mappin), S.S. Van Dine (Philo Vance), Elizabeth Daly, Patricia Wentworth (Miss Silver copied as Miss Marple & other series), Mary Rinehart, Maurice Leblanc (The conman/thief turned detective, Copied by Leslie Charteris The Saint),
Dorothy Sayers (Wimsey 1 & 2 are 1923 & 1926), Baroness Orczy, L.T. Meade (more famous for school stories), J. Jefferson Farjeon and Freeman Wills Crofts (Railway engineer turned writer in 1919 and started a Writers Association with Agatha Christie, his 1st in 1920 & 6th novel was in 1926).
I think gathering everyone at the end to accuse and explain is a storytelling device rather than a plot element. Christie is famous for it but plenty did a form of it before 1926. Later Hardy Boys stories (house name, various authors) reverse it by having the criminals boast how they did it, often just before someone escapes.
Agatha Christie stories are certainly good, but though sold well she's not particularly original nor maybe the best.