What the Heck Did I Just Read?

 What the Heck Did I Just Read?

 

I got the idea for this blog post based on a conversation I just had with friends on the Golden Age Detection discussion forum on Facebook.  The topic of conversation was sub-genres of the mystery story.  An old issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine divided stories into “Detective Stories” and “Crime Stories.”  In my way of thinking, all detective stories are crime stories, but not all crime stories are detective stories.  A detective story centers on a character trying to solve a crime, whereas a crime story might be told from the perspective of the criminal, or the victim, or innocent bystanders, or one of many other possibilities.  I suppose that there are other subgenres, including “Heist Stories” and “Mysterious Goings-On that Don’t Turn Out to be Actual Crimes” as well. 

 

Many crime stories I’ve read recently seem to include a crime as an afterthought.  Not even an afterthought.  A veiled, hinted possibility.  I recently wrote:

 

Some of the stories I read didn't really fit a genre. Some were "A guy rambles on about his crummy life for three pages and then hints he might commit a violent act but it's ambiguous" stories, and there were also, "Two guys have a conversation that might or might not lead to a crime but the end scene featuring one of the guys freaking out is too vague to be clear on what's happening." Sometimes I think there should be a genre called "What the heck did I just read?"

 

Indeed, this seems to be very popular in the short story field, not just in the mystery field.  A tale rambles on for a while, and then concludes with a final scene that is deliberately unclear.  Now, this can be very effective if done well– not knowing for sure how the narrative plays out can make a story more memorable or more haunting.  I don’t demand that everything be tied up with a nice little bow– even Agatha Christie ended a Miss Marple novel by making it ambiguous whether a death was suicide or homicide.  But a lot of these stories seem as if they can’t be bothered to come of with a proper ending.  When I have to read the last two paragraphs ten times and still can’t tell what’s going on, well… it leaves me unsatisfied.

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

 

Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27^th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).  It is also available in a Kindle edition.