1.3 The Rules of the Game

We will begin by focusing on a period of the murder mystery tradition when the rules of mystery fiction were discussed with great zeal. In the 1920s and '30s, the so-called Golden Age of mystery fiction, almost anyone who was someone published a set of rules for murder mysteries. Curiously, these mystery authors and readers -- including prominent detractors of murder mysteries -- spoke about mystery fiction using one common metaphor: mysteries were games played between the author and reader, governed by rules. Although there may have been passionate disagreement over the value of the game of mystery fiction (trivial nonsense versus a new kind of novel of manners) and its rules (no love interest versus the need for three-dimensional characterization), there was implicit agreement about the nature of the fiction. The development of the classic murder mystery story in the 1920s and '30s invited -- apparently required -- the enumeration of laws and in some cases, even punishments (facetious though they were).