Mystery fiction is a genre of fiction usually
involving a mysterious death or a crime to be solved. Often with a closed
circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and
a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character
oftentimes will be a detective who eventually solves the mystery by logical
deduction from facts presented to the reader. Sometimes mystery books are
nonfictional.
"Mystery fiction" can be detective stories in which the
emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as
a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective
stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Mystery fiction may involve a supernatural mystery
where the solution does not have to be logical, and even no crime involved.
This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, where
titles such as Dime Mystery, Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Mystery offered what
at the time were described as "weird menace" stories—supernatural
horror in the vein of Grand Guignol. This contrasted with parallel titles of
the same names which contained conventional hardboiled crime fiction. The first
use of "mystery" in this sense was by Dime Mystery, which started out
as an ordinary crime fiction magazine but switched to "weird menace"
during the later part of 1933.
No comments:
Post a Comment