A dimly-lit lamp, cobblestones, street urchins emerging out of dark corners, foggy lanes with people trudging up and down with top hats. A perfect detective story almost always leans onto the reign of Queen Victoria. Honestly, I love the feel of London more than the elements of mystery in a Sherlock Holmes story. How wonderfully those stories reflect the little eccentricities of that era!
Since then, Scotland Yard has become the perfect abode for Lestrades of this world. It does not allow for the hook-nosed genius of Conan Doyle’s imagination. They just don’t make them like him anymore.
If we take a short break from the smoggy streets of London for some fresh country air, Victorian England provides us with a black-robed priest. Don’t get fooled by his innocent looks and constantly blinking eyes. He knows the darkest secrets of criminal minds, almost like daily sermons. Father Brown can smell crimes in an otherwise serene hamlet; religion has its macabre instinct quite on the good length spot!
These two sleuths not only solved crimes with their amazing process of detection, they also showed us the peculiar charm of Victorian values, and enhanced the dimension of historicity for the goggle-eyed pedants. Regardless of the mystery stories they are known for, we stay glued to the characters as they reflect the socio-cultural peculiarity of a period that looks so distant and yet is so familiar to us, the charmed ones!
What about modern detective stories then? Do they have any place in the history of literature, or, say, in the history of a population’s reading habit? With a wry smile, a tall gentleman of 221 B Baker Street curls his lips in mock amazement, and a faint sound –“elementary” hisses through his mouth.
Modesty, they say, has never been the hallmark of the true genius!
Since then, Scotland Yard has become the perfect abode for Lestrades of this world. It does not allow for the hook-nosed genius of Conan Doyle’s imagination. They just don’t make them like him anymore.
If we take a short break from the smoggy streets of London for some fresh country air, Victorian England provides us with a black-robed priest. Don’t get fooled by his innocent looks and constantly blinking eyes. He knows the darkest secrets of criminal minds, almost like daily sermons. Father Brown can smell crimes in an otherwise serene hamlet; religion has its macabre instinct quite on the good length spot!
These two sleuths not only solved crimes with their amazing process of detection, they also showed us the peculiar charm of Victorian values, and enhanced the dimension of historicity for the goggle-eyed pedants. Regardless of the mystery stories they are known for, we stay glued to the characters as they reflect the socio-cultural peculiarity of a period that looks so distant and yet is so familiar to us, the charmed ones!
What about modern detective stories then? Do they have any place in the history of literature, or, say, in the history of a population’s reading habit? With a wry smile, a tall gentleman of 221 B Baker Street curls his lips in mock amazement, and a faint sound –“elementary” hisses through his mouth.
Modesty, they say, has never been the hallmark of the true genius!
1 comment:
very well written minko da...awesome!!
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