Whodunnit? Grief, gamification and the history of the murder mystery

While the history of detecting and puzzle solving in fiction goes back hundreds of years, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1841, is widely accepted to be the first modern detective story. Published two years after the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 and nine years before the beginning of what George Orwell would refer to as ‘our great period in murder’, the story introduced readers to the concept of a sleuth – C. Auguste Dupin – who uses logic and keen observation to solve a seemingly unsolvable crime. In 1868, Wilkie Collins would publish The Moonstone which is often cited as the first English detective novel and Sherlock Holmes started appearing in print from 1887, further establishing the conventions of the genre. 

The popularity of detective fiction first peaked between the World Wars – a time in crime writing now known as The Golden Age of Detective Fiction – fueled by the post-war game culture of the 1920s, and the increasing demand for new forms of escapism. 

‘One of the defining principles of Golden Age detective fiction was the fair play doctrine – the concept that the reader should have a fair chance to solve the mystery before the grand reveal. The trick was to provide the reader with enough clues so that they could have, as TS Eliot put it “a sporting chance to solve the mystery".’

The public’s interest in games – bridge, mahjong and crossword puzzles – quickly transferred to detective novels and murder mystery writers took advantage of this 'play fever' in their books. One of the defining principles of Golden Age detective fiction was the fair play doctrine – the concept that the reader should have a fair chance to solve the mystery before the grand reveal. The trick was to provide the reader with enough clues so that they could have, as TS Eliot put it, 'a sporting chance to solve the mystery'. It was so central to mystery writing at the time that The Detection Club – a dining club and discussion forum for writers of detective fiction founded in 1930 – began its own constitution with the line: 'it is a demerit in a detective novel if the author does not play fair by the reader.' Over the years, many writers have put together their own version of the fair play rules: TS Eliot, Ronald Knox and SS Van Dine. Some writers, like JJ Connington and Ellery Queen, in radical displays of fair play, even included cluefinders at the back of their books. These were appendices that listed out all the clues with their corresponding page numbers to show the reader that they had in fact been given a fighting chance to solve the mystery. 

During the Golden Age, there was also an increase in interest in murder mystery-style party games like Wink Murder and Murder in the Dark. This gamification of death took the power, the sting, out of a terrible tragedy and emphasised that of course none of this was actually real – it was in fact just a game. The perfect antidote, or coping mechanism, for a public dealing with the aftermath of World War One. 

‘This gamification of death took the power, the sting, out of a terrible tragedy and emphasised that of course none of this was actually real – it was in fact just a game. The perfect antidote, or coping mechanism, for a public dealing with the aftermath of World War One.’

Detective novels from the Golden Age, and their authors, were concerned with a fairness that doesn’t exist in the real world. In a whodunnit, everyone is either good or bad, rich or poor. Nobody dies of old age or illness. It’s always a poisoning or a blow to the head. There are no medical mishaps, no accidents, no unexplainable twists of fate. And the motives involved tend to be simple: jealousy, hatred, greed. There are no deaths without explanation because of course there has to be a solution, a reveal, a simple narrative that helps everything make sense. This sense of order provides readers with a comforting escape from the uncertainties of real life.

In 1944, the American literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote a piece in The New Yorker entitled Why do People Read Detective Stories? His conclusion was that the popularity of detective fiction in the years between the World Wars was down to an 'all-pervasive feeling of guilt and by a fear of impending disaster which it seemed hopeless to try to avert because it never seemed conclusively possible to pin down the responsibility. . . Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe; and then, suddenly, the murderer is spotted, and – relief! – he is not, after all, a person like you or me. He is a villain – known to the trade as George Gruesome – and he has been caught by an infallible Power, the supercilious and omniscient detective, who knows exactly how to fix the guilt.'

In my novel Fair Play, I use the fair play rules together with the familiar structure of a Golden Age detective novel – with its murder, its suspects, its Watson and its reveal – to explore the emotions around grief. In the aftermath of her brother’s sudden death, the main character Abigail dips between real life and the imaginary world of the detective novel. In both worlds she is looking for answers – for clues – to understand her circumstances. The murder mystery provides her with a familiar pathway amidst the unpredictability of real life and also much-needed comfort in her time of grief. In a detective novel, we know that as each chapter goes by, we are getting closer and closer to a conclusion – to the answer we have been searching for. Or at least that is what Abigail is hoping. As Dorothy L Sayers writes in her book Begin Here, published during the Second World War: 'We are lost and unhappy in a universe that seems to make no sense, and cling to science and machines and detective fiction, just because, within their limited fields, the problems do work out, and the end corresponds to the intention.'

Two competing stories – and genres – combine to peel back the nature of grief in this startlingly original novel. When Benjamin dies at his own birthday party, Abigail's world is quite literally split in two. On one side, she attempts to grasp the reality of her brother's death, while on the other everything is not quite what it seems: an eminent detective has arrived to track down the murderer, and there's suddenly a butler, a gardener and a locked-room mystery where everyone is a suspect.