THE BIRTH OF THE DETECTIVE STORY

THE BIRTH OF THE DETECTIVE STORY
By Matteo Baggiani & Francesco Poggi

A detective story has as protagonist a detective or a police officer that investigates on a crime or on a murder. There are different narrative techniques: the reader knows the development of the investigation step by step, but only at the end he discovers the identity of the assassin or he is acquainted with the criminal’s identity from the beginning and during the narration he fallows the detective’s investigation. Wystan Hugh Auden summarized the typical detective story’s plot in this way:” There is a murder, suspected people are many; one by one they are discarded except the assassin and he is arrested or he dies”.
This literary genre was born in the XIX century and it developed in the XX. From literature it extended to radio, cinema, television and comics. Even if the Norwegian writer Maurits Hansen wrote a novel ("The Murder of Engine Maker Rolfsen") in 1839 with some features of the detective novel, the exact year of the birth of this genre is 1841. In this year Edgar Allan Poe published “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, in which appeared the character of Auguste Dupin, the progenitor of all the detectives present in the following novels. Dupin is not a professional detective, he solved his cases using what Poe termed "ratiocination". Poe created the Dupin character before the word detective had been coined. It is unclear what inspired him but the character's name seems to imply "duping", or deception.
Edgar Allan Poe created this new genre because he was interested in describing the life of the lower classes where the criminality was extremely diffused: the birth of the detective story was a consequence of this attitude. Another cause of the origin of this genre was the fact that during the Victorian Age was established by Robert Peel the first organised police-force of the England: the Metropolitan Police.
Also in “Bleak House”(1853) by Charles Dickens there is an investigator Mr. Bucket. He is the key player in the murder investigation of Mr. Tulkinghorn and does solve the case. Dickens published his novels in split episodes in order to earn more money. But the author that took more inspiration from the character of Dupin was Arthur Conan Doyle for the detective Sherlock Holmes. He appeared for the first time in the novel “A Study in Scarlett”(1887). Sherlock Holmes was the first that applied the scientific method to solve his investigations, making criminology famous. The detective of Baker Street was supported by Sir John Watson, a sort of Conan Doyle alter ego and the narrator of all Holmes’ adventures.
In 1920 Agatha Christie published her first novel “The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot a Styles Court)” in which appeared for the first time the figure of Hercule Poirot, a Belgian investigator. The author wanted her character not to be too similar to Sherlock Holmes both in the investigation method and especially in the physical aspect, in fact Poirot was short, fat, ugly, with mustache (his main characteristic).

Georges Simenon was the inventor of the Commissioner Maigret, another important protagonist of detective stories: he appeared in seventy five novels. This genre had a huge success and it arrived also in Italy where was called “Yellow Novel”. The reason why it was called in this way was because of the colour of the book covers of the first collection of detective story published in Italy by Arnoldo Mondadori in 1928. From this moment a lot of Italian authors started writing Yellow Novels and one of the most famous is Andrea Camilleri that set the adventures of the police commissioner Salvo Montalbano in his birth place, Sicily.