A Detective Story Decalogue

Ronald Knox`s A Detective Story Decalogue (1928)
is as follows:

One
The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

Two
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

Three
Not more than one secret or passage is allowed.

Four
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

Five
No Chinaman* must figure in the story.
*or other mysterious alien

Six
No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

Seven
The detective must not commit the crime.

Eight
The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

Nine
The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

Ten
Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

consider particularly in relation to Christie as she brakes one rule every novel.

Crime fiction

An Overview of Crime Fiction

Crime Fiction is essentially about the solving of a crime, usually a mystery of murder. Crime Fiction texts question what it is to be human and raise questions about identity. The main feature of crime fiction is the plot and the story always reflects the culture and social values of when it was written. The texts are often part of a series featuring the same detective. The plot can also reflect the social changes of the time. Crime fiction is not static, nor is any genre, and there are many hybrid texts. Each sub-genre holds its own conventions that reflect their differing contexts.

The face remains that murder and law breaking are present in other genres aside from crime fiction. The features, therefor, do not categorize a genre; rather, genres are created through the rules for reading the members of a community share. However this doesn’t mean that crime fiction doesn’t have its own specific template. It is this template that has created the rules for reading and therefor the rules of crime fiction enable us to read into a text. This can also limit the way meaning is constructed for the writers and readers alike by confining to the conventions of the genre.

Crime fiction can be divided into six main stages or sub-genres. These sub-genres are categorized by their time periods and also their writing styles and conventions. As time and contexts changed crime fiction grew and developed as a genre. The six main sub-genres are Early Crime Fiction (sensation novels), The Golden Age, The Intuitionists, The Realists, Hard-boiled and Contemporary Crime Fiction. Edgar Allen Poe created the first notable detective of Crime Fiction in 1840.

http://heavymetaltime.webs.com/thecrimefictiongenre.htm

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