(Holmes, when he is not chasing a criminal, lies on his couch, felled by boredom and cocaine, shooting bullets into the wall of his study.) A second rule was the absolutely central role of ratiocination. By Christie’s time, at least two conventions had been established. Other writers picked up where he left off, but the first “career” practitioner of the genre who is still important to us today is Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes series appeared from 1887 to 1927. The detective story was invented by Edgar Allan Poe, though he wrote only four of them before he lost interest. Anyone who has ever seen a Charlie Chan movie, or played Clue, or, indeed, read a detective story of the past half century will recognize this scenario, created by Agatha Christie, the so-called Queen of Crime, in the nineteen-twenties. Occasionally, he goes off and commits suicide, but as a rule he confesses (“God rot his soul in Hell! I’m glad I did it!”) and exits quietly, under police escort. In the end, he collects all the interested parties and delivers the “revelation”: he names the murderer and the motive and the method. He then begins questioning the people concerned, one by one. Who did this? And why, and how? Among those gathered, or soon summoned, is a detective, who says that no one should leave, please. They are assembled-maybe eight or nine people-in a small place: a snowbound train, a girls’ school, an English country house. Photograph by Lord Snowdon / Camera Press / Retna
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