We Must Have Certainty surveys 160 years of the development of the genre (1841-2001) and then suggests some ways in which the genre and its development reflect some of the issues that have concerned writers and readers in America and Europe during that period. In particular, it examines the special nature of the world in which the fictional detective operates: a world constructed always to yield certain truth to the person who can read its signs correctly. The nature of these signs evolves with the genre, but while the surfaces of the world may change (from, for example, the Arcadian rhythms of a country house to the cacophony of the mean streets), what really happens in the world is always detectable.

The four essays of We Must Have Certainty thus offer provocative arguments about the significance of a genre of popular literature. The first essay identifies four principal phases in the development of the genre: Methodical (1841-1920), Golden Age (1920-50), Hard-boiled (1920-60), and Engaged (1970-present). The second essay looks at the special world that the detective story writer must create for his detective: a world of dramatic events - theft, blackmail, extortion, above all, murder-but a world that must always begin in confusion and end in certainty.

The third essay suggests that the appeal of the mystery story has a ritualistic basis that in some small way echoes the appeal of the original "mysteries"-the cults of the ancient world. The fourth essay speculates on the metaphysical implications of a genre of literature that has been consistently popular for more than a hundred years and that define itself as a fable of two worlds: a world of disorder and misapprehensions and a world of order and true cause and effect. The man (or woman) who can reveal the second world to the baffled citizens of the first world is the detective.

The essays are written in a style that avoids obscurity. They should be of interest to fans of the detective story as well as to students of the genre.

LC 200428954

ISBN 1-57591-091-8

Printed in the U.S.A.