The Great Sherlock Holmes

I know someone who writes novels. Suspense and romance. Series, even. They are set in this area, and you can walk into the library here, or Walmart, and get a copy. We were driving in Texas a year ago and found one on a used book shelf there. Her next one is Emergency Reunion. This is Sandra Orchard, and we’re related!!! Sadly, I don’t write novels. Sigh. I just read them.

Everywhere we drive, Robert stops at garage sales, pawn shops, and thrift stores. I always keep a book in my purse so I can wait patiently in the car if I need to, but occasionally I go in and find treasures. First I look for clothing with certain perfect colors and am always puzzled when I can’t find any. I think I should start a clothing line with those perfect colors no one carries. Surely everyone would buy them. I would. Then I move on to art puzzles (just as rare as perfect clothing) and, of course, great books. I found a copy of Little Bee to send home with my friend Sandy on my last treasure hunt, so I’m motivated to keep looking. Orphanmaster’s Son  is still top of the list. I’d buy every two buck copy I could find just to give it away.

I’m not going to make fashion statements here, so let’s move on to puzzles...and books. Puzzles that are books. Detective novels. If you are keeping a list here are some ideas.

If you are interested in early stuff, here goes. It was an American who invented the genre in English: Edgar Allen Poe with his Murders in the Rue Morgue, his influence sailing across the pond to inspire a Sherlock Holmes.  But English speakers weren’t the first to use detection. In“Susanna and the Elders” from the Apocrypha Daniel cross examines two witnesses accusing a beautiful young woman of sexual misconduct. He uses detection to prove them false, saving her life. The Greek, Oedipus Rex, uses detection when he uncovers his wretched past (he has killed his father and married his own mother, bringing fate down on his head) by examining witnesses. In the Arab One Thousand and One Nights, a fisherman finds a locked chest with the body of a woman cut up inside, and someone has to solve the mystery in three days. The Chinese preferred the inverted mystery story, introducing the criminal first and then having a wise local magistrate explain the crime with help from ghosts, a great deal of philosophy, and hundreds of extra characters. Chinese mystery stories were long. I’ll be honest. I’ve only read knock-offs.

Back in England, Dickens tried his hand with a mystery in Bleak House, where an Inspector has to figure out which of the many suspects who visited a conniving lawyer’s office one evening murdered him there (you can watch the BBC series, if you prefer). Dickens influenced Wilkie Collins, who wrote The Moonstone, the first detective novel, and a masterpiece. Next, the queens of crime Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers (powerful Christian apologetic making a living on superb crime fiction) ushered in a Golden Age of detective fiction. Today I’d add P.D. James, who invented a poet detective, Adam Dagliesh, and has just added a Jane Austin mystery, Death Comes to Pemberly, recently made into a movie. And please try her Children of Men, an apocalyptic view of what happens when we aren’t kept alive by having children around. I think part of the trouble with our aging churches in North America is that they don’t have baby churches around to keep them young, so I use this book as an illustration of why starting baby churches is so important. Sorry, nothing to do with detectives, but well worth adding to the list.

I like detectives that rely on their knowledge of local culture to solve crime:

Precious Ramotse, the Botswanan in charge of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

V.I Warshawski,who delves into the subcultures of Chicago

Jim Chee, a Navajo cop

John Rebus, a Scottish detective investigating the underside of Edinburgh.

And how could I forget G. K. Chesterton, the Father of Paradox who created Father Brown, the mild, quirky priest who paradoxically uses reason and his intuition about human nature to catch his man? He explains his method: “You see, I had murdered them all myself.” This, too, is an author worth reading, so if you find him on a two buck sale shelf, pick him up, read him, and pass him on.

God made us to love solving puzzles. The greatest puzzle, the greatest mystery of them all, of course, is the conundrum of a thousand years: how to save the world. And the greatest mystery writer of them all is still writing. He’s hit the climax and is deep into the denouement, ready to head into that final grand conclusion, the end of the world. And we are the characters and the witnesses of his glorious resolution. I love how he does this, my favorite mystery writer.