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Mystery fiction

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Mystery fiction is a literary genre in which a story's protagonist investigates a puzzling event requiring an explanation or solution. The great majority of examples of mystery fiction focus on criminal activity and are thus classifiable as crime fiction; in contemporary usage, the terms are often employed interchangeably, with "mystery" often being used to describe crime fiction even in which there is no mystery to be solved. The great majority of examples of mystery fiction also feature a professional or dedicated amateur investigator and are thus classifiable as detective fiction. Most contemporary detective stories fall into one of two main categories: the whodunit, which emphasizes the puzzle aspect, and the hardboiled detective story, which focuses more on action and the expression of a tough attitude.


Early beginnings

The genre has its beginning in the riddles told in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Similar stories were told in the Middle Ages, but the genre didn't really begin to develop until the detective stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

The first true mystery novel is considered to be THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE by Edgar Allan Poe (1841) then there follows The Woman in White (1860) by Wilkie Collins. Collins wrote several more in this genre, including The Moonstone (1868) which is thought to be his masterpiece. The genre began to expand near the turn of century with the development of dime novels and pulp magazines. Books were especially helpful to the genre with many authors writing in the genre in the 1920s. An important contribution to mystery fiction in the 1920s was the development of the juvenile mystery by Edward Stratemeyer. Stratemeyer originally developed and wrote the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries written under the Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene pseudonyms, respectively (and later written by his daughter, Harriet S. Adams, and other authors). The 1920s also gave rise to the most popular mystery author of all time, Agatha Christie. Christie's books are numerous, though her literary reputation has suffered.

The massive popularity of pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s only increased the interest in mystery fiction. Pulp magazines decreased in popularity in the 1950s with the rise of television so much that the numerous titles available then are reduced to two today (and those are Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine). The Detective fiction author Ellery Queen (pseudonym of authors Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee) is also credited with the continued interest in mystery fiction thanks to the namesake magazine which began in 1941.

Interest in mystery fiction continues to this day thanks to various television shows which have used mystery themes over the years and the many juvenile and adult novels which continue to be published and frequent the best seller lists. Also, there is some overlap with "thriller" or "suspense" novels and authors in those genres may consider themselves mystery novelists.

An organization for the authors of mystery, detective, and crime fiction was begun in 1945, called the Mystery Writers of America. This popular genre has naturally made the leap into the online world, spawning countless websites devoted to every aspect of the genre, with even a few supposedly written by real detectives.

See also

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