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Detective Novels Quotes

Browse 6 quotes about Detective Novels.

Detective Novels Quotes

“He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.”

MysteryCrimeDetectivesCrime FictionNoirDetectiveCrime ThrillerMystery SuspenseMystery ThrillerNoir FictionDetective StoriesErnest HemingwayDetective FictionDetective NovelF Scott FitzgeraldSartreCornell WoolrichJean Paul SartreDetective NovelsHart CraneRaymond ChandlerDashiel HammettDetective NoirMystery And Crime DramaFrancois TruffautFrançois TruffautTruffaut
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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“Look here,' said Nigel suddenly, 'let's pretend it's a detective novel. Where would we be by this time? About halfway through, I should think. Well, who's your pick' 'I am invariably gulled by detective novels. No herring so red but I raise my voice and give chase.' 'Don't be ridiculous.' said Nigel. 'Fact. You see in real detection herrings are so often out of season.' 'Well, never mind, who's your pick?' 'It depends on the author. If it's Agatha Christie, Miss Wade's occulted guilt drips from every page. Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter would plump for Pringle, I fancy. Inspector French would go for Ogden. Of course, Ogden, on the face of it, is the first suspect.”

SuspectsDetective Novels
Book:Death in Ecstasy
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