The Technique of the Mystery Story | Page 3

trite quotations are questions. "What is truth?" or "Is life worth
living?" arrest our attention because they are debatable queries. Who is
not more interested in the Questions of the Day than in the known
facts?
According to Mr. George Manville Fenn, the man who invented a
wondrous and mysterious plot for a story deserves a palm.
"He must have been a deep thinker, one well versed in the
philosophy of goose quill, knowing that his story would thrill the reader,
and that he had achieved the great point of seizing upon that reader's
imagination, and holding it, so that he would follow the mystery of the
fiction to the very end. It may have been the result of some haphazard
lucky thought, but still he must have been a careful student of
every-day life, and must have duly noted how largely curiosity or the
desire to fathom the unknown is developed in the human brain."
As with other human traits, inquiry is inherent to a greater extent and
also more largely developed in some minds than in others. Some people
say "How do you do?" and wait interestedly for your answer. Others
say "How are you? " and without pausing for reply, go on to remark
about the weather. But it is the people who are interested in answers
who care for detective stories. It is the people who care for the solution
of a problem who write and read mystery tales.
One who has studied these questions from many points of view, and,
above all, noted how a story will "catch on," and almost electrically
seize the imagination of the reading world, will constantly see that in
the majority of cases the most popular fiction of the day is that in which
mystery plays a prominent part -- a mystery which is well concealed.
This is no secret. It is the natural desire for the weird and wonderful --
that hunger for the knowledge of the unknown which began with the
forbidden apple; and the practiser of the art in question merely grows
for those who hunger, a fruit that is goodly to the eye, agreeable to the
taste, and one that should, if he -- or she -- be worthy of the honored

name of author, contain in its seeds only a sufficiency of hydrocyanic
poison to make it piquant in savor. It is no forbidden fruit that he
should offer, merely an apple that is hard to pick -- a fruit whose first
bite excites fresh desire, whose taste brings forth an intense longing for
more, and of which the choicest and most enticing morsel is cleverly
held back to the very end.
As Mr. Dudeney observes:
"It is extraordinary what fascination a good puzzle has for a great
many people. We know the thing to be of trivial importance, yet we are
impelled to master it, and when we have succeeded there is a pleasure
and a sense of satisfaction that are a quite sufficient reward for our
trouble, even when there is no prize to be won. What is this mysterious
charm that many find irresistible? Why do we like to be puzzled? The
curious thing is that directly the enigma is solved the interest generally
vanishes. We have done it, and that is enough. But why did we ever
attempt to do it? The answer is simply that it gave us pleasure to seek
the solution -- that the pleasure was all in the seeking and finding for
their own sakes. A good puzzle, like virtue, is its own reward. Man
loves to be confronted by a mystery -- and he is not entirely happy until
he has solved it. We never like to feel our mental inferiority to those
around us. The spirit of rivalry is innate in man; it stimulates the
smallest child, in play or education, to keep level with his fellows, and
in later life it turns men into great discoverers, inventors, orators,
heroes, artists and (if they have more material aims) perhaps
millionaires."
But the kernel of their interest is re-solution.
A mystery and its solution designedly set forth in narration, implies a
previous sequence unknown to the reader.
It is this re-solution that attracts the alert brain, and stimulates the
reader to solve for himself a problem whose answer he will shortly
learn. But he wants to learn that answer as corroborative proof of his
own solution, and not as a revelation.

It is this instinct, great in some, small or perhaps even entirely
lacking in others, that makes a mind interested in