SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN

M. Zizzari’s fiction debut, “Rage and Ruin,” appears in the Department of First Stories in EQMM’s current issue (September/October 2021). The author is currently a student at Simon Fraser University, majoring in criminology with a minor in English. It’s evident from this post—which discusses a way of looking at the genre that was articulated by EQMM in its early years!— that a love of mysteries is in this writer’s blood.—Janet Hutchings 

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is currently celebrating its anniversary; it has been in publication for 80 years now, and deservedly so. And for a magazine with such a long and varied history, which welcomes and has published just about every type of mystery fiction there is, what better way to commemorate the occasion than by taking a look at what are considered to be the main forms of mystery fiction? Fittingly, I stumbled across an old article from American Speech that contained the line: “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, XVI (October, 1950), 53, groups mystery fiction into three classes, ‘whodunit,’ ‘howdunit,’ ‘whydunit,’” and in light of this, I thought I would start with those three classes before going on to discuss a fourth class.

The first form, I trust, requires no introduction: the whodunnit. The whodunnit is often considered the quintessential mystery story, and even those who do not consider themselves to be fans of the genre would have no difficulty in recognizing the form and those who have mastered it, such as Agatha Christie or, aptly, Ellery Queen. In a whodunnit, the protagonist, who is often a private detective or some layperson imbued with admirable powers of deduction, comes into contact with a crime that has, usually, only recently taken place. Generally, this protagonist, through witness accounts or via their own investigation, gains all the facts of the case save one—the identity of the culprit—and must use this information to fill in that final piece of the puzzle. They must determine who done it. In theory, any mystery story that concerns itself primarily with uncovering the identity of a criminal would fall under the classification of a whodunnit, from the grizzled, hard-boiled stylings of Raymond Chandler, to the cozier, more youth-oriented works of Carolyn Keene.

On a personal level, what I have always enjoyed most about whodunnits is trying to put the puzzle pieces together before the protagonist’s big reveal at the end. While not all whodunnits are necessarily fair play mysteries—those which give the reader the information necessary to solve the case themselves—I always tried to keep the clues in mind and attempted to follow the detective’s logic as closely as possible. For the fair play stories, I felt a sense of pride if I had managed to accurately predict the perpetrator, and in those that were not, I still took satisfaction in seeing how all the pieces slotted together. The best whodunnits manage to capture intellect within art. The objectively logical, encased within the subjectively beautiful.

When compared to the whodunnit, the whydunit is a term far less commonly encountered. Unlike a whodunnit, the whydunit does not hide the identity of the criminal from the reader. Indeed, the opposite is true, as the criminal is often the protagonist of these stories. Rather than following a detective, we follow a criminal or would-be criminal in an almost introspective way, as they contemplate the crime they have or will commit. Whydunit concerns itself with the motivations of the culprit, emphasizing the psychological aspect of criminality.

The howdunnit can, perhaps, be considered the counterpart to the whydunit. Where the latter looks at the deeper, internal questions behind the crime, but the former takes a more external approach, and questions the mechanism of the crime. The narrative of a howdunnit focuses on revealing the method the culprit used, and the answer to that question is the ultimate goal for the reader.

Interestingly, when I went to write an example of a howdunnit, the story that came to my mind was one of Nabokov’s works. What makes that point interesting, for those who aren’t aware, is that the famous writer Vladimir Nabokov was well-known to dislike mystery fiction. Nabokov once said, “there are some varieties of fiction that I never touch—mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor,” and he referred to the genre as “a kind of collage combining more or less original riddles with conventional and mediocre artwork.” And yet, despite his vocal denouncement of the genre, I believe that some of his works fall under the category of mystery fiction. Particularly “Revenge,” which was originally published in Russian in 1924, and which I would argue is a rather good example of a short story howdunnit.

“Revenge” follows an aging biology professor who has decided to murder his wife. Here we already have the main element of mystery fiction, the crime, but we are not barred from the knowledge of the killer’s identity. While Nabokov avoids the riddle of who, he does not avoid the riddle of how. Quite the contrary, as though the professor comments on the fact that he has settled upon a method, he does not state what it is. The reader spends the entire story wondering as to what the professor’s plans actually are—wondering how it will be done, something which is not revealed until the very end of the story. I will refrain from giving more details, as I don’t want to give away too much, and I think anyone who has not read this story should give it a read. The point remains that though this story does not fit the definition of a whodunnit, it does seem to fit our working definition of a howdunnit.

Having looked at all three classes of mystery fiction as recognized by EQMM in 1950, and some examples of them, we now arrive at what I consider to be the final class of mystery fiction: the howcatchem. Compared to the other terms, howcatchem is quite new, having come into popularity in the 1970s. In stories of these sort, the author crafts a mystery in which the identity, method, and even motivation, are known to the reader. The beginning typically follows the criminal as they perpetrate their crime, before switching perspectives to follow the detective tasked with solving it. The howcatchem is sometimes also referred to as the inverted detective story. I personally favour the term howcatchem, not only because its style is in keeping with other terms of the mystery genre, but because it is the one my father used fondly when he first introduced me to the show, Columbo.

Columbo is the show that popularized not only the term, but the form itself. Every episode begins with the culprit, introducing the audience to them briefly before the murder occurs, allowing the viewer some insight into the character and their motives, and continuing to follow them to the moment of the act and past it, to how the killer attempts to cover it up. By the time the titular homicide lieutenant, Columbo—played by the incomparable Peter Falk—arrives on the scene to investigate, the viewer has seen everything, and thus, is already in possession of all the pertinent information. If nothing else, the viewer has the answers to all the questions that most mystery fiction centres on; they know whodunnit, whydunit, and howdunnit, but they’re left asking themselves, “how does he catch ‘em?” The aspect that is left until the ending’s big reveal is exactly where the killer went wrong. The viewer scours that opening looking not for clues, but for mistakes. I can easily recall asking my father to rewind the episode so I could watch it again and try to determine where the murderer slipped up, often pausing to discuss my theories.

Mystery has the power to compel its audience more powerfully than perhaps any other genre, and even those who later feel it has lost its power over them have been irrevocably impacted by it—traces of its influence still there to be found, as evidenced with Nabokov. The engagement a person has with the genre may be intellectual, emotional, or a combination of the two. But nonetheless, all mystery fiction seems to have a special ability to draw in its audience, regardless of which classification it falls under.

Dear readers, we will now be posting updates to our blog on Thursdays rather than Wednesdays. Thanks for sticking with us and happy reading!

A writer who grew up in Mumbai, India and currently lives in suburban Virginia, Smita Harish Jain has had a number of crime short stories published, including one in the recent MWA anthology, When a Stranger Comes to Town. Her first story for EQMM, “The Fraud of Dionysus,” appears in our current issue (July/August 2021), and if that whets your appetite for more of her work, don’t miss her stories in Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Diabolical or the next volumes from the Chesapeake and Central Virginia chapters of Sisters in Crime. In this post, she talks about the process of finding her voice in fiction. —Janet Hutchings

“Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this it presents its material in unexpected, even outlandish ways: the shock of the new.”

The first time I heard this Viktor Shklovsky quote, I was sitting, not in an art class, but in a sociology class in college. The professor was telling us about Margaret Mead’s landmark work, Coming of Age in Samoa, to show us both the application of this quote and its evolution into its more commonly known variation, “Make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.”

For her research, Mead traveled to Samoa to study adolescent girls and their attitudes about sexuality. She compared their experiences with those of their counterparts in the United States and found that the female adolescent experience in Samoa was a far cry from the anxious and confusing time girls in the United States faced. Teenage girls on the island nation engaged in socially sanctioned casual sex, which both reduced the incidences of rape and increased the ease with which they faced sexual encounters as adults. In making the familiar strange, Mead changed the way people thought about female sexuality and urged a reconsideration of the American female’s sexual upbringing, as well as of how sex education was taught in schools. Her seminal work on the subject made Mead one of the most respected anthropologists in the country.

Years later, Shklovsky’s words came up again, this time in a graduate school management class, in which the professor used Henry Ford’s much-lauded assembly-line method for car manufacturing, to demonstrate the other facet of this quote, make the strange familiar.

During a tour of a meat-packing facility, Ford was struck by the idea that workers did not have to move around the warehouse to do their jobs. Instead, large slabs of beef and pork were brought to them on overhead conveyor belts, and each worker cut a part of the animal for processing and packaging. Ford saw the possibilities for auto manufacturing and adopted a similar system in his own plants. His workers no longer dragged bins filled with tools and car parts from car to car, adding their part to the work in progress. Instead, Ford brought each car under construction to them, on an assembly line, forever revolutionizing the way cars are made – adding specialization, increasing efficiency, and lowering costs – as manufacturers the world over copied his process.

The third time I came across this quote was when I was working on my first novel, a suburban mystery set in Rockville, Maryland. When it was done, I was convinced that I had written a winner. After all, it had everything a cozy mystery required: an amateur sleuth, a small community, and no violence on stage. It had twists, humor, and content everyone would be familiar with. So pleased was I with the finished product that, for the first time ever, I shared my writing with someone else—an avid reader, who knew a good story when she ­read it.

I sent her the manuscript, and we arranged to meet the following week to discuss it. While I waited, I thought often about one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, the one where the man hands his wife his manuscript and says, “Here it is—my novel. I’ll be interested to hear your compliments.”

Suffice it to say, I heard few compliments. Of course, she was kind, knowing it was my first time showing my writing to anyone, and said all the encouraging things a friend says. It was clear, though, that she was building up to a big “but.”

“Where are you in this story?” she finally asked.

I knew she didn’t mean for me to write a story starring me. What she meant was, “Whose voice is this?” I had decided that in order to keep readers interested, I would have to write about the things they knew, not the things that were part of my experience, even though this was where my voice was strongest. As a result, the story was flat and dull.

The next thing of mine that she read was a short story – my first published work – about superstition and cosmic justice, set in Mumbai, India, where I grew up.

“There it is,” she said. “There’s your voice! Why don’t you write more stories like this one?”

I thought, but didn’t say, that I didn’t think most readers would understand my references, since they didn’t live them, and that I couldn’t possibly make them relatable.

She persisted, and I relented, and the writing became easier. The next several short stories I wrote were based on my childhood in India, my life as an academic, my experience as an immigrant, my hobbies, my interests, my passions. Not all of them, but enough of them to see a difference in my ability to tell a story and to enjoy telling it. With each new work, I tried to make my familiar my readers’ familiar; to find an element of truth, maybe even universality, in my uncommon events, set in unusual places, about unknown people, and make them about anyone.

I’ve written about dowry deaths and ritual castrations, honor killings and snake charmers. I’ve also written about astrology and wine and the small Virginia city in which I live. So, what is familiar about castration to the “any reader”—a sense of community and belonging; dowry deaths—greed and climbing the social ladder; snake charmers—a need to believe in magic. It’s not about writing what you know or writing what the market demands. It’s about finding the common threads that connect all of us and weaving a story out of them.

I am a relative newcomer to mystery writing, so my view is still a bit from the outside looking in. The biggest lesson I’ve learned, however, is my stories can be many people’s stories, if I look beyond the surface happenings to the core elements. Readers want to see themselves in what they read, and if they can see a similarity in people completely new and different from them, so much the better. For me and my writing, the quote had morphed yet again, this time to “make the familiar [to me] familiar [to them].”

That Rockville suburban mystery is permanently relegated to the bottom of a deep drawer, likely never to see the light of day again. As for my story in the current Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (July/August), a story involving a lot of wine drinking, my friend never asked me, “Where are you in this?”

EQMM’s July/August issue, on sale now, is dedicated to the traditional mystery. Leading it off, with “The Locked Room Library,”  is Gigi Pandian, the author of ten traditional mystery novels (the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mysteries and Accidental Alchemist mysteries) and more than a dozen impossible-crime short stories. Her short fiction has won Agatha and Derringer awards, and if you enjoy “The Locked Room Library” (as we’re sure you will!) and want to visit that setting again, it’s featured in Gigi’s forthcoming locked-room mystery novel, Under Lock and Skeleton Key (St. Martin’s Minotaur/March 2022). Meanwhile, here are some helpful clarifications, from an expert, of what an impossible-crime story, a closed-circle mystery, and a locked-room mystery are. —Janet Hutchings

I’m thrilled to see traditional puzzle plot mysteries regaining popularity in recent years. They’ve always been my favorite type of mystery, because in addition to whatever other wonderful literary elements are present in a book or short story, the reader knows they also have a deviously clued mystery to solve.

With so many new readers warming to the genre, I’ve noticed a bit of confusion regarding terms used to discuss these mysteries. Most mystery readers have heard the term locked room mystery, but what exactly does it mean?

Closed circle mystery. A small number of people are isolated when a crime occurs in their midst. There’s no way for them to leave or be rescued, so there’s an oppressive feeling because the characters know that someone in their midst is a killer.

An example is an island with no boats or a country house during a snowstorm. An image of many Agatha Christie novels no doubt comes to mind. This plot set-up is often conflated with being a locked room mystery. It’s true many mysteries feature both a closed circle and a locked room puzzle, but the two aren’t the same thing. So what is a locked room mystery then?

Locked room mystery. A crime has been committed in a room or other impenetrable location where it appears impossible for the crime to have been committed. The key is that the situation appears truly impossible, not simply that a small group of characters are cut off from the world.

An example is a dead man found inside a windowless room that’s been sealed from the inside, dead from a gunshot wound that people outside the room heard fired, yet inside the room there’s no gun and no way for the culprit to have escaped; there’s no rational way for the crime to have been committed, so the character might wonder if it was the family ghost seen roaming the mansion’s hallways. Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr are two authors who excelled at coming up with ingenious solutions to these seemingly impossible puzzles.

Impossible crime. The umbrella term under which locked room mysteries fall. It covers any seemingly impossible situation, such as a priceless jewel vanishing in front of everyone’s eyes. In practice, an impossible crime mystery serves as a synonym for a locked room mystery. It’s a more accurate description of what readers think of as a locked room mystery, though the term never caught on as widely.

Miracle problem. The term for impossible crime stories preferred by mystery fiction historian Douglas G. Greene. The idea of a miracle problem captures the spirit of why impossible crimes are so tantalizing—because it appears the crime could only have been committed through a miracle, because there’s no logical, earthly way for it to have occurred.

No matter what you call it, these are the elements included

Fair play detective story. Readers should have all the clues they need to solve the crime—all the pieces of the puzzle—given the same information as the detective. Authors like Ellery Queen took this to an extreme, pausing from the narrative to directly address the reader, challenging us to solve the crime before the detective. After all, we’ve already been given all the clues we need.

Supernatural explanations are not allowed. Even though it appears that nobody could have committed the crime, the solution has to be logically viable. No miracles allowed.  

No secret passageways. Yes, secret passageways are wonderful in literature! I love them so much they’re a central element in my new Secret Staircase mystery series. But they have no place as the solution to a true locked room mystery. Their presence means a room wasn’t truly sealed, so the same logical puzzle isn’t there to be solved.

Also frequently included, but not required:

Stage magicians. Because of the seemingly impossible nature of the illusions created by stage magicians through misdirection, magicians are often used as detectives in locked room mystery stories. Their skills at creating seemingly impossible tricks are called upon by the police to use their skills in the opposite direction, seeing through what’s essentially a trick created by a criminal to deceive, rather than illusion thought up by a performer to entertain.

During the Golden Age of detective fiction, Clayton Rawson created one of my favorite sleuths, stage magician The Great Merlini. In the present day, Andrew Mayne’s character Jessica Blackwood is a former magician who brilliantly sees through impossible situations. I created Sanjay Rai, who performs magic as The Hindi Houdini, as a side character in my debut novel. I quickly realized he was the perfect character to solve seemingly impossible crimes, so he accidentally became the character featured in the vast majority of my locked room mystery stories.

Gothic atmosphere. In style, many locked room mysteries are similar to Gothic novels, because with no logical explanation, a supernatural explanation appears to be the only possible solution. Supposed hauntings are common, with ghost stories abounding. A ghost, after all, can be a helpful cover for a living murderer. John Dickson Carr excelled at creating misdirection through a ghostly atmosphere.

Whatever terms you use to describe these mysteries, I hope you’re having a marvelous time reading them.