Re Kerry's and Miker's comments below:
> > A friend of mine recently pointed out that
cozies
> are mannered novels that
> > question the rights to authority of
"superior",
> titled classes. In their
> > private lives, in their drawing rooms and on
their
> estates Lord & Lady
> > Whatsis, Colonel Mustard etc. were as corrupt
and
> capable of murder as the
> > "criminal" classes.
> >
> > Like hardboil, the cozy became popular between
the
> wars.
>
> *********
> Did you agree with your friend? Another theory
is
> that they wrote about the
> upper classes because they thought the lower
classes
> beneath their interest.
> And I'm surprised that cozies didn't come on
until
> after WWI. It was my
> understanding that hardboiled was in part
a
> rebellion against the upper
> class
> airs of the cozies. Mary Roberts Rinehart has
stuff
> out that's turn of the
> century, doesn't she? Maybe that's not cozy.
I
> know darn little about
> hardboiled and almost nothing about
cozies.
The term "cozy" actually didn't get coined until the
'70s or '80s. Dilys Winn, the founder of NYC's Murder Ink
bookstore, once called the authors of this type of mystery
"English teacake ladies," regardless of their actual
nationality or gender. Since both of those terms sound
somewhat dismissive, I personally prefer
"traditional."
That said, I think I'm with Miker on this one. The
traditional mystery wasn't an outgrowth of WW1. It may have
become especially popular after the War, but it had certainly
existed before then. What was Conan Doyle writing if not
traditional mysteries? Arguably, he was the founder of the
tradition (though he, himself, always acknowledged his debt
to Poe's Dupin stories). Other pre-war writers include Mary
Roberts Rinehart (as Miker pointed out), R. Austin Freeman,
Jacques Futrelle, G.K. Chesterton, and Anna Katherine Greene.
Tellingly, given the notion that the traditional mystery is
largely the province of British writers, Futrelle, Ms.
Rinehart, and Ms. Greene were all Americans.
So were many traditional mystery writers of the so-called
"Golden Age" (i.e. the "between-the-wars" years). One of the
most popular was S.S. Van Dine. Ellery Queen, obviously
influenced by Van Dine, was another American
"traditionalist," who would, IMHO, easily surpass Van Dine in
matters such as characterization, style, and plot.
If the popularity of the traditional mystery between the
wars, in both Britain and America, is in any way attributable
to the war, I think it was that the artificial world created
for those stories provided an escape from the consequences of
that conflict on society. By contrast, and, I have argued, by
DELIBERATE (and that's for emphasis, not loudness) contrast,
hard-boiled mysteries tended NOT to shy away from the
consequences that the war wrought on society.
To paraphrase Chandler, traditionalists had characters
commit murders to provide a body; hard-boiled writers had
murderers commit murders because it was in their nature to
kill people.
Which brings me to another facet of the hard-boiled mystery
I've often suggested. Hard-boiled is largely
(though not exclusively) the province of the professional,
both on the detecting and on the criminal side. In the
"traditional," both the detective and the criminal are both
more likely to be amateurs. Though, now that I've written it,
I'm damned if I know what the hell it has to do with this
discussion.
JIM DOHERTY
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