 |
 |
1.4 "Dead" Serious?
Here is an
excerpt from an excellent 1990 novel by Gaylord Larsen, Dorothy and
Agatha, (1990) 
in which he imagines what would happen if Dorothy
Sayers and Agatha
Christie had teamed up to solve a real murder. (Sayers and Christie
were, in real life, coeval acquaintances, although not, as far as we can
tell, friends.) Sayers and Christie, along with several other notable
names from classic British mystery fiction, both belonged to an organization
of mystery authors called the Detection
Club. (1936) 
Below, Larsen fictionalizes the initiation of a new member into the Detection Club, relying heavily on the actual text of the ritual that was written by Dorothy L. Sayers and others. The excerpt should give you a sense for the ironic tone with which the generic principles of detective fiction were regarded, somewhere between "dead" serious and tongue-in-cheek.
Anthony Berkeley called out from the back of the room in a deep trembling voice, "What means this untimely darkness, these secret ceremonies and this illumined reminder of our mortality?" [This is a reference to Eric the Skull, a human skull kept at Detection Club headquarters, whose eyes were illuminated by electric bulbs.]
Dorothy answered in kind, introducing the applicant to the world of the mystery spirits and to all live spirits assembled. She asked him if he still sought admission to their midst. Mr. Breen thought he did. He was told to close his eyes and cross his arms before his chest in a dead man's pose as the oath was administered.
"Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance upon nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery, Coincidence, or any hitherto unknown Act of God?"
"I do," Breen pledged.
"And do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from your reader?"
"I do."
"And do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, death rays, ghosts, hypnotism, trapdoors, Chinamen, super-criminals, and lunatics, and do you utterly and forevermore forswear poisons unknown to the world of science?"
At this, Breen hesitated. "You are asking a great deal. But for the sake of the Club and the good of the genre, I do so swear."
Dorothy upbraided him. "There is no need for flippant responses, sir. We intend to hold you to each and every promise."
It was not always easy to tell when Dorothy was joking and when she was totally serious. Breen decided not to take any more chances with her, and the rest of the oath was administered in a sober fashion. Finally, Breen became a full member with all rights and privileges, whatever they might be. He was allowed to open his eyes and rest more comfortably as Dorothy administered the Final Warning, a severe hex to be placed upon him, just in case he was thinking of backsliding.
"If you fail to keep each and every promise you have made here this evening, may other writers anticipate your plots, may your publishers do you down in your contracts, may total strangers sue you for libel, may your manuscripts swarm with misprints and your book sales continually diminish. Amen."
(Gaylord Larsen, Dorothy and Agatha, 1990)
Sayers' attitude
toward mystery fiction was by no means easy to pin down. Her career was
marked by ambivalence toward the genre; when she had made enough money
to support herself, she quit writing mysteries and pursued religious and
scholarly work, which she considered much more worthy of her efforts.
Many of her fellow Detection Club members were accomplished writers in
other, more respectable genres (G. K. Chesterton, for example, a noted
Christian apologist) and regarded mysteries as a fun sort of hobby --
a profitable hobby, however, as the Final Warning makes clear. We'll come
back to Sayers in a little while and use her ambivalence about mystery
fiction as an example of the contradictions that occur when considering
mystery fiction as a game.
 |
 |
 |
