Mignon Eberhart, "American's Agatha Christie," was one of the major figures involved in the middle twentieth century in shifting the focus in crime fiction from strict detection to atmospherics and emotions. In a 1944 interview she defended herself against charges from members of the orthodox school of mystery puzzling, who deemed love interest in crime fiction an unpardonable distraction from detection:
Mrs. Eberhart disagrees with those critics who say romance has no place in mystery. "A mystery is about people. Your characters are like a still pool until the murder happens. The murder is a stone hurled into the pool, disturbing its smooth surface and revealing its depths. Out of ten or twelve characters thus disturbed, isn't it reasonable to suppose that some two of them will have a romantic attraction for each other? The exclusion of romance in a mystery seems to me more artificial than letting it takes\ its course."
Romance or "love interest" was a much debated element in mystery fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. While traditionalists proscribed it as anything more than a minor feature of a mystery, confined to bland secondary characters, in the 1930s it became something that was seen more and more in mysteries. The British Crime Queens Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh all had their detectives fall in love and marry over the course of their series and in Mignon Eberhart's books the murders that take place are most significant as obstacles to the happy resolution of the heroine's love life.
How much love interests you in a mystery?
The Passing Tramp: Wandering through the mystery genre, book by book.
A little love, I don't want to be reading a romance. If I did I wouldn't be reading mystery!
ReplyDeleteYes, Peggy Ann,I think Eberhart can veer too much to love, though she's right of course that it's artificial to exclude it.
DeleteI am not a reader of 'romance fiction' but I always enjoy a decent love story - so if it's well-handled, bring it on say I!
ReplyDeleteBring on the love, baby!!
DeleteI would like it far more (I'm a sucker for a good romance) if I could find an example that was actually good. Mystery authors seem incapable of it, unless it's spread over a series. I do find her overall point there interesting though.
ReplyDeleteI think that "if you can't do it well, don't do it," would be a good rule for mystery writers contemplating putting copious love interest in their books. I think some can do it. I liked Patricia Wentworth's handling of it in Miss Silver Comes to Stay, for example, a book I reviewed here this year.
DeleteFor some reason that I cannot explain, a romance in a mystery often affects my enjoyment in a negation way. There are always exceptions, and it really depends on how it is handled. I think too often the romance is used to pad the story and I don't need that.
ReplyDeleteI just read Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod, which definitely includes a romance, and I loved that one. And in another series that MacLeod wrote, about Sarah Kelling, there is a romance in the first few books and it did not bother me years ago when I read it. Every now in then in a Rex Stout book or novella there will be a romance on the side, and I like those fine.
And if a series does have an ongoing romance, I want it to eventually go somewhere. I feel like the author is just jerking me around if they don't resolve the romance.
"Romance on the side"--I like that. Generally speaking, if it stays on the side I'm fine with it! If it's going to be really prominent it's got to be done well--and so often it isn't!
DeleteI like a good love story but I don't think it has any place in a mystery novel. It shifts the focus from solving the crime to the question of will they or won't they.
ReplyDeleteTrue. I keep coming back to Eberhart, where is a lot of her books it just becomes too much the emphasis for me. But when it doesn't take over I am fine with it.
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