Detection Club

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The Detection Club is a group of mystery , science fiction and crime writers .

Detection Club

The club was founded in London in 1928. The 26 founding members included Anthony Berkeley , Agatha Christie , Dorothy L. Sayers , Henry Wade, and Freeman Wills Crofts . The club's solemn oath was the “Ten Rules for a Fair Detective Novel ”.

The members of the club meet regularly for "dinner meetings" at which they discuss their claims when writing crime fiction. Admission is only possible through selection by the club, admission requirements are personal recommendation by two members and acceptance by the other members. This is why the club has always had relatively few members in its history.

Some books have been co-authored by several members of the club, known as the Detection Club Collection.

In 1936, John Dickson Carr became the first American to join the club.

The ten rules

The Ten Rules for a Fair Detective Novel (Father Knox's Decalogue) were formulated by Ronald Knox in 1929 .

Knox regularly exchanged views with the other club members about the requirements for writing crime fiction. When AA Milne criticized the writing of crime fiction by contemporary authors in a foreword to his book The Secret of the Red House , Knox formulated his "Ten Rules for a Fair Detective Novel " in the foreword to the book he edited, Best Detective Stories of Published 1928–1929 . These rules were not followed exactly by all members of the Detection Club, for example, even Agatha Christie and GK Chesterton violated them in their novels. Sometimes they were even thought to be a joke.

text

The ten rules are:

  1. The criminal must be mentioned at the beginning of the story, but it cannot be anyone whose thoughts the reader can follow.
  2. Of course, supernatural forces or powers are prohibited.
  3. Only one secret chamber or no more than one secret passage may be used, and only if the described environment is suitable.
  4. As yet unknown poisons are not permitted, nor any mode of administration that ultimately requires a long scientific explanation.
  5. The Chinese have no place in history.
  6. Chance must not rush to the detective's aid, nor must he have inexplicable inspirations that turn out to be correct.
  7. The detective is not allowed to commit the crime himself.
  8. All clues that the detective comes across must be brought to the reader's attention immediately.
  9. The detective's limited friend, his Watson, must not withhold any of his thoughts; his IQ must be slightly, but only slightly, below that of the average reader.
  10. Twins and doppelgangers are only allowed to perform after we have been properly prepared for them.

President

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Michael Gilbert: Dorothy L. Sayers, A personal Memoir (English)
  2. ↑ Penelope Fitzgerald: The Knox Brothers (English)
  3. ↑ John Scaggs: Crime fiction (English)
  4. ↑ The secret of the red house on krimi-couch.de
  5. ↑ In Knox's time, the introduction of a Chinese or some other exotic or otherwise unusual character as a villain was an inflationary stereotype.
  6. ↑ Martin Edwards named the next President of The Detection Club! on watsonlittle.com