POPULAR CHARACTER.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 20 September 1923, Page 8

POPULAR CHARACTER.

THE DETECTIVE IN FICTION.

(By

Arthur R. Amory.)

A famous publisher has just declared that whatever may be the state of* the stock market, the labor market or the book market, the detective story is always in demand. Mystery holds a perennial charm for every reader, and its skilful unravelinent at the hands of a master of the art of weaving ingenious plots lias given innocent delight to generations of fiction lovers. Even some of our most eminent judges have confessed to a fondness for Gaboriau, and a Lord Chief Justice of England has, admitted that his favorite character in fiction is the detective Ixxioq. The real rise of the detective story, however, dates to the Sherlock Holmes period, though Holmes was by no means the first of the detectives by deduction type. That distinction belongs to the Augusto Dupin of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of eighty years ago. “The Murders in, the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget.” and “The Purloined Letter,” and. in fact, when Sherlock Holmes first began to lx 1 famous, American critics were not slow to accuse him of plagiarising from that source. The imputation was unfounded, for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a living model in the person of Dr Joseph, Bell, of Edinburgh, under whom he studied medicine. Dr Bell, who had been engaged in the practice of medical jurisprudenee on behalf of the Crown, hud brought the art of minute observation and logical deduction to such, a piitch that one rapid glance at a man would often give him the salient facts in his history. It is not improbable that both Dr Bell and Edgar Allan Poe derived their inspiration in this deductive method from a common source. Both were students and admirers of Voltaire, and in 1718 Voltaire wrote a talc called “Zadig, or Destiny,” in which he recounted the surprising adventures of a young man who lived in Babylon in the days of King Boabdar. One day the queen’s favorite dog and the king’s favorite horse were missing, and among others interrogated by the royal officers and servants was Zacßg. Now Zadig had applied so skilfuily the methods employed a century or more later by Dr Joseph Bell that he was able to describe the king’s lost horse and the queen’s lost dog so accurately, though he had never seen either, that he was thrown into prison for stealing them. Before he suffered the penalty decreed by his judges, both horse and dbg were found, and Zadig had an opportunity of explaining that he had deduced all his facts from an examination of the ground in the outskirts of the city. Of modern writers of mystery stories one of the mast famous is Mr J. 8. Fletcher, whose “Lost Mr Lhithwaite” created such a sensation when it was published serially in the Daily Express a few years ago. He is pre-»minent in the art of constructing baffling plots, full of exciting situations arid dramatic episodes, and his new story, “Rippling Rttby,” exhibits him at his best.