Kinsey and Me
A MYSTERY SHORT STORY is a marvel of ingenuity. The writer works on a small canvas, word-painting with the equivalent of a brush with three hairs. In the space of twenty or so manuscript pages, the writer must establish the credentials and personality of the detective (Kinsey Millhone in this case), as well as the time period and the physical setting. Usually, there’s a murder or a missing person, whose disappearance is a matter of concern. Lesser crimes, such as burglary, theft, embezzlement, or fraud, may provide the spark for the story line, but as a rule, murder is the glue that holds the pieces in place.
In short order, the writer has to lay out the nature of the crime and introduce two or three viable suspects (or persons of interest as they’re referred to these days). With a few deft strokes, the writer must further create suspense and generate a modicum of action while demonstrating how the detective organizes the subsequent inquiry and arrives at a working theory, which is then tested for accuracy. A touch of humor is a nice addition to the mix, lightening the mood and allowing the reader momentary relief from the tensions implicit in the process. In the end, the resolution must satisfy the conditions set forth at the beginning.
While the mystery novelist has room to develop subplots and peripheral characters, as well as the leisure to flesh out the private life of the protagonist, in the short story such indulgences are stripped away. The subtleties of the artfully disguised clue and the placing of road signs pointing the reader in the wrong direction may be present in the short story, but pared to a minimum.
The crime story, the mystery story, and the detective story are related forms that differ in the following ways. A crime story dramatizes the planning, commission, or aftermath of a crime without introducing any element of mystery. The reader is invited along for the ride, a witness to events and fully apprised of what’s going on. Here, the reader functions as a voyeur, caught up in the action and subject to its rewards or consequences. The mystery story, on the other hand, proposes a puzzle with a crime at its center, but doesn’t rely on the ratiocinations of a sleuth to drive the plot toward its conclusions. Instead, the reader serves in that role, observing, analyzing, and drawing inferences from the tantalizing questions the writer has proposed.
The detective story is governed by a special set of laws, many of which were laid out by S. S. Van Dine in an essay on the subject written in 1928. Not all of the strictures still apply, but many of the rules of the game are as critical today as they were back then. For starters, a detective story has to have a detective and, by definition, the detective must detect. The reader must be made privy to all of the information the detective uncovers in the course of an investigation. Of primary importance is the necessity for fair play. The clues have to be plainly stated though the detective’s intellectual leaps needn’t be entirely spelled out. The culprit has to be a visible entity in the body of the tale. In other words, the killer can’t be someone who pops out of nowhere in the last paragraph.
Generally speaking, the killer can’t be a maniac or a stone-cold crazoid operating without a rational plan. The point of a mystery is to figure out whodunit and the “who” has to be a visible player, though the means and methods might not be obvious. The killer can’t be a professional hit man whose sole motivation is financial and who therefore has no relationship with the victim at all. The crime must have its roots in the past or present reality of the victim.
In a first-person narrative, the detective cannot also be cast as the killer because this would undermine the fundamental trust between the writer and the reader. The “I” who tells the story is presumed to be revealing all, not reporting objective events while neatly sidestepping his own complicity. The solution to the puzzle and the explanation for the crime have to be natural and logical. No ghosts, no Ouija boards, and no Divine Intervention. There are other, lesser axioms and if you’re curious, you can look them up on the Internet the same way I did. The principles in play are what make the detective story challenging. The best practitioners are masters of their craft and experts at sleight of hand, performing their literary magic tricks with a grace and delicacy that make the illusions seem real.