Crime Fiction Conmvention #1 - The intellectual game (1 Viewer)

[Wintermute]

Rightio. I got my hands on a copy of SS Van Dine's "Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories" (cheers to jellymosta) and its all about crime fiction as an intellectual game - the reader has to have opportunity to solve the crime on their own. Now looking at the texts we have to study, none of them give the responder enough information to solve the crime, except Snow Falling on Cedars where it is blantantly obvious.

The first question is: should i refer to this concept of the 'intellectual game' in my essays? From my point of view it is the most important convention of crime fiction, but is it really more important than the commonly used conventions like the detective, the setting, the danger, etc?

The second question is: Why do nowadays crime fiction writers not write an intelectual puzzle as did Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe? Is it because they really are too bored with that old convention or is it just because they are too shit to write a proper intellectual crime fiction story the way the old writers did?

Cheers.

 

[Jellymonsta]

i reckon thats a good convention to talk about. but not to the exclusion of the others. just enough to demonstrate sophisticated knowledge of the genre also how that isnt always a convention anymore - genre has changed.
that convention is subverted 2 ways in RIH (birdboot and moon doing the intellectual-ising, and the absurdism/existentialism) - you could discuss that too.

the new Cf writers all try to copy the good authors (which normally turns out as second/third rate) or try to do new things (which is hard to do well)
i think it would be really hard to match up to the quality of Poe or Doyle... they were brilliant writers, so the average CF writer now just looks really bad in comparison
having said that, there are some good ones around still.... if i can just remember them