Yesterday the March/April issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine hit the newsstand, assuming such institutions still exist. I am delighted to be making my 33rd appearance in those distinguished pages. "Shanks' Locked Room" is the eleventh showing there by my grumpy crime writer, so he stars in one-third of my tales in that market.
You may notice the "locked room" in the title. It is a subgenre of the mystery story, of course, going all the way back to the very first: Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." I thought it might be fun to play around with the old gimmick and I wound up turning it inside out. The puzzle Shanks has to solve is not "how did the villain get into a room without a key?" but "why did the villain steal the key and not enter the room?"
I
enjoy turning a cliche around. I had written what I thought would be a
follow-up called "Shanks' Last Words," involving the famous
dying-message clue, but it turned out that technology had gotten ahead
of me and made my story outdated. Such is life.
One master of the upturned cliche was Jack Ritchie, a genius of the comic short story whom John Floyd and I have praised to the sky on this page. He wrote a book about Henry Turnbuckle, a Milwaukee police detective. Henry loved mystery fiction and was constantly being disappointed that reality cruelly ignored the cliches and motifs of the field.
For example, in one story two of the suspects are identical twins. Alas, in violation of every rule of mystery fiction that turns out to have nothing to do with the solution. In another tale Henry gathers all the suspects and dramatically reveals the killer - only to have the suspects point out a fatal flaw in his logic, which involved a fact no one had bothered to mention to him. Why is it in crime fiction the detective always gets all the necessary information? Doesn't happen in real life.
By coincidence I was reading a story today and gave up on it because it stuck to a very tired cliche: The villain was about to kill the hero but first gave him a detailed explanation of his plan, and damned near a blueprint of the house where he was being held.
This peculiar generosity on the part of some bad guys was brilliantly skewered in the movie Austin Powers.
So, which cliches of the field bug you the most?
Congratulations on your story! Shanks has had a good long run.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind cliches too much, unless the story is nothing but cliches. Then it bugs me.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the new story!
Congratulations on Shanks appearing again! My least favorite cliche is the villain is about to kill the hero but has to brag about all he's done first. No, not gonna happen. I also hate it when everyone lines up to take the on the martial arts expert one by one. Give me Harrison Ford just shooting the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on Shanks in Alfred, Rob. I'm with Eve on the villain spilling everything while the calvary gallops frantically to the rescue, too, especially if the trapped protagonist is the feisty young maiden who will be rescued by the hunky cop/landlord/boyfriend/not-really-prime suspect.
ReplyDeleteAnother cliche that bugs me, but not quite as much, is the character who is so unpleasant and nasty from the first appearance that we already dislike him. I don't know if I'm more irritated when he's a red herrirng or when he really DOES turn out to be the culprit.
Another interesting blog. Hope people are paying attention. Good job.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it a cliche when all red herrings are explained away when the solution to the puzzle is revealed? Life isn't like that. I'm not a detective but years ago I dated a guy who adamantly stated that he never, ever lied. Turned out he lied like a rug. 😥
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Rob!!! Will be looking for it soon.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations!
ReplyDeleteThe trope is a milder form that usually recycles better. More fun to twist, too. I really enjoy when writers surprise me in just that way. I think about SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE and what it did with English manor stuff and amateur sleuths.
The TSTL heroine still shows up and drives me nuts, but she has a certain aggravating charm in Golden Age mysteries (I've been reading some of Moray Dalton's on Kindle), written back when the authors didn't know it was a cliché. In movies, it's where a spray of bullets from an automatic (or a gang of bad guys) misses, but a single shot from the hero hits the bad guy smack in the heart (or in the head, unless they're aiming for the bad guy's shootin' hand or hat).
ReplyDeleteEve, great point about the one-at-a-time attack on the hero. Drives me crazy. A related one: We have been watching the Mandalorian, which is pretty good, but I asked Terri: "Why does the Empire even bother to give the stormtroopers guns? They never hit anybody?" Then the stormtroopers had to shoot at OTHER bad guys and suddenly they were all Annie Oakley.
ReplyDeleteSteve, a related one that irritates me is the book/show with a slow opening and by the time we get to the inevitable murder one character has so many enemies that he might as well be dragging his coffin around with him. "Look a me! I'm the Future Victim!" Be cool if he turned out to be the detective instead.
ReplyDeleteLiz, took me a moment to figure out TSTL, which may make me... no, never mind. As for the shooting, as you can see in a comment above, I agree with you. Thanks for the kind words, all.
ReplyDeleteI remember a poem that was in one of those "Mammoth Books of somethingorother Fantasy" called something like "Ten Things I'd Do if I Was an Evil Overlord" that ripped into the cliches! (Can't wait to rad your story! I love locked-rooms!)
ReplyDeleteOh, Rob, I hate it when the bad guy(s) can't manage to hit the good guy(s) even with a machine gun, but the hero / detective can pick them off with one shot from his glock...
ReplyDelete