Detective Fiction - an Unresolved Case?

Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction is the fourth book in a series, edited by Koray Melikoğlu, entitled »Studies in English Literatures«. Edited by Melikoğlu and Paul Fox, Formal Investigations consists of eleven original essays on detective fiction between 1875 and 1912.

According to Fox’s introduction, it is the »seeing crime and its resolution as a stylistic imposition of structure on disorder that is under examination« in these essays, and, indeed, in these terms, the volume does deliver. This book often considers how detective fiction is a response to certain pressures generated by a frenetic period of activity. Aaron Parrett, for instance, considers the genre in relation to theories of degeneration in the fluently-argued essay »The Medical Detective and the Victorian Fear of Degeneration«, while Nick Freeman charts the impact of Oscar Wilde’s reputation on crime fiction in »Double Lives, Terrible Pleasures: Oscar Wilde and Crime Fiction in the Fin de Siècle«. As one would expect, Sherlock Holmes rears his deer-stalkered head on many occasions, but his presence does not monopolise the attention of the contributors any more than it needs to. Rudolph Glitz opens the collection with an essay entitled »Horrifying Ho(l)mes: Conan Doyle’s Bachelor Detective and the Aesthetics of Domestic Realism«, which acknowledges Holmes’s central position in detective fiction and then leaves the field open for less-well-known detectives to be considered.

Overall, it is easy to see that Formal Investigations belongs to a series. Fox’s introduction spends more time analysing a cartoon from Punch than it does outlining why these essays are necessary contributions to the critical canon. Nor does he use much space indicating what preoccupations or methodologies unite the wide-ranging viewpoints presented here. Furthermore, the book ends with an essay from Linda Schlossberg on »Trent’s Last Case: Murder, Modernism, Meaning«, which leaves the reader with a feeling that the collection’s investigation of detective fiction is itself an unresolved case. In other words, one feels that the usual framing devices of academic study (an introduction and conclusion) are wanting in Formal Investigations. Of course, this may have been the impression sought for by the editors. Rather than aiming to be ›definitive‹, Fox and Melikoğlu are possibly more comfortable with offering a number of snapshots of a point in the history of the genre. In many ways, this is a book about the impossibility of resolution, often raising the point that the detective deals with a chain of endless signification rather than a solvable narrative. Offering an »open and shut« account of Victorian and Edwardian fiction would thus conflict with one of the main themes explored in this book. Indeed, it does seem that the subject of detection lends itself well to the serial format of »Studies in English Literatures«: this is not a complete and definitive study of detective fiction, but an investigation of several strands of a web of textual history.

The main strength of this collection is that it often deals with materials that have received little or no critical attention. Alison Jacquet, for instance, contributes a fascinating essay on »Domesticating the Art of Detection: Ellen Wood’s Johnny Ludlow Series« and Lucy Sussex introduces us to the »aesthetic projects« of both Anna Katharine Green and her husband Charles Rohlfs in »The Art of Murder and Fine Furniture: The Aesthetic Projects of Anna Katharine Green and Charles Rohlfs«. (At first glance, the links between detective fiction and furniture making seem unclear and unlikely, but Sussex builds a convincing account of how Green and Rohlfs shared creative skills and aesthetic principles.)

Fox’s and Melikoğlu’s volume is more successful in introducing new materials than in presenting new approaches to detective fiction. Paul Fox’s suggestion that this book analyses the disturbance or reestablishment of order is indicative of just how often the volume returns to ideas that are well-known in literary research. Aiming to take advantage of current critical tastes for interdisciplinary study, the collection features several essays on the intersections between science and detective fiction. In linking the act of detection with scientific inquiry, such essays add little to the arguments forwarded by Lawrence Frank’s Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence (2003) and Ronald R. Thomas’s Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (1999). Those interested in detective fiction are also unlikely to be surprised by the revelation (communicated by more than one essay) that the fictional detective often challenged the boundaries surrounding domesticity.

Notwithstanding, this book does showcase some new and promising talents – not least those belonging to Paul Fox, whose acute critical awareness shines through his essay on Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan. Jacquet’s analysis of Ellen Wood is fresh, neatly-written, and convincing. Similarly, I was impressed by Therie Hendrey-Seabrook’s compelling study of female detectives in relation to fin-de-siècle culture and the New Woman question in »›The Accomplished Forms of Human Life‹: The Art and the Aesthetic of the Female Detective«. Schlossberg’s essay, despite what I noted above, provides a powerful and thought-provoking end to the collection. She charts the links between Edwardian detective fiction and emerging movements in Modernist thought, indicating how detective fiction had begun to evolve in ways that responded to the ›new‹ pressures of the twentieth century.

In all, Formal Investigations is a welcome and stimulating addition to the field of detective fiction studies. While it would be inaccurate to suggest that the book is groundbreaking, it is possible to say that this volume will prove very useful to students of late-Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction.