Pleasant paradox

Talking about detective fiction
By P.D. James,
Bodleian Library, £12.99

Detective fiction is one of the most popular genres of writing from the point of view of the reader. And P.D. James is one of its best practitioners. She can take her seat without any controversy next to Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. In this small gem of a book, written specially in aid of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, one of the greatest libraries in the world, she reflects on the genre that she has made her own, and also on her own craft.

James describes “the classical detective story’’ as “the most paradoxical of the popular literary forms”. The paradox lies in the fact that at the very heart of most detective stories lies a murder, often violent and horrible; yet the detective story is read essentially for entertainment. James also points out while the plot of any detective story aims to unravel the truth, the genre “glories in deceit: the murderer attempts to deceive the detective; the writer sets out to deceive the reader, to make him believe that the guilty are innocent, the innocent guilty; and the better the deception the more effective the book.”

She pushes the paradox further. She writes, “The detective story deals with the most dramatic and tragic manifestations of man’s nature and the ultimate disruption of murder, yet the form itself is orderly, controlled formulaic, providing a secure structure within which the imaginations of writer and reader alike can confront the unthinkable.” This book, however, does not seek to resolve the paradox. Rather the author seems to suggest that the paradox is part of the detective story’s inherent attraction.

James admits that she does not see herself as only a writer of a detective story. Her aim, she says, “is to write a good novel with the virtues those words imply, a novel which is at the same time a credible and satisfying mystery.” She explicates, that this means that the story contains a convincing correlation between plot, characterization, setting and theme. For the novel to be successful, the plot should not dominate but should arise almost naturally from the characters and the place.

“The place’’, for James is a vital component and she devotes a couple of very revealing pages on the genesis of her novel, Devices and Desires. This novel grew out of a visit to East Anglia while James was standing on a deserted shingle beach. She feels that for her the moment of “initial inspiration” is always one of great excitement and she knows from this excitement that a novel is in the offing, no matter how long the writing takes. Not to disappoint her readers, James tells them a bit about her detective, Adam Dalgliesh, named after her English teacher at Cambridge high school. To Dalgliesh she gave the qualities that she most admires in human beings — intelligence, courage (but not foolhardiness), sensitivity (but not sentimentality) and reticence. She could not have done better as most of her readers will admit.

The book contains a very penetrating analysis of the detective story between the two great wars — the golden age of the genre. And also a study of the four great women writers who have left their indelible stamp on detective fiction — Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham.

No lover of detective fiction can afford to miss this book. It is a wonderful guide to the field and to the narrative strategies that writers of the detective novel use to charm the readers and to make them into addicts.