"Tu order that the novelist should kill people, it is first necessary that he should make them live," Mr. G. K. Chesterton writes in an article on Detective Stories in the "Tustrated London News."
There are (he observes) certain fallacies about the nature of the true mystery story which I perceive to be common among the writers as well as the readers of it. But I should like it to be understood that it is in the compatatively proud and honourable character of a reader of such stories, and not in the lower and more servile capacity of a writer of them, that I venture to indicate such errors.
First of all, there is evidently a very general Idea that the object of the detective novelist is to baffle the reader. Now nothing is easier than baffling the reader, in the sense of disappointing the reader. There are many successful and widely-advertised stories of which the principle simply consists in thwarting information by means of in cident. The Bulgarian governess is just about to mention her real reason for concealing herself with a loaded rifle inside the grand piano, when a yellow! Chinaman leaps through the window and cuts off her head with a yataghan; and this trivial interruption is allowed to defer the elucidation of the whole story.
Now, it is quite a simple matter to fill several volumes with adventures of this thrilling kind, without permitting the reader to advance a step in the direction of discovery. This is illegitimate, on the fundamental principles of this form of fiction. It is not merely that it is not artistic, or that it is not logical. It is that it is not really exciting. People cannot be excited except about soniething; and at this stage of ignorance the reader has nothing to be excited about. People are thrilled by knowing something, and on principle they know nothing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.