Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-03-26

Templeton Jones, laying down the
book he was reading. looked up. He
had an explanatory something in his
eyes.
Perhaps ought to say he be
gan. that there are good detective
tales. and bad ones. After my out
burst the other day in favor of this
form of fiction, the thought occurred
to me that perhaps some Of my hear
ers might take up this form of read
ing.
ITO an old hand. such as myself,
the power to discriminate between the
good and Indifferent. to say nothing
of the absolutely bad, comes almost
instinctively, but perhaps the more
recent reader needs a word of advice.
II would be sorry if anything
have said upon this subject would in
duce any reader to dip into this class
of story without first finding out some
thing about it.
There has, within the past year
or two, arisen striving after novelty
in this field. with the result that some
of the detective fiction given the un-
suspecting public is scarcely fit to
print; really ought not to be so dig
nitied, in my opinion.
"To me there is something almost
sacred about print, especially fiction.
The theory, not so modern as some
would hold, that anything that the
mind of man can think up. in the
story line, has right to be printed,
scarcely holds water with moral peo-
pie.
There are, despite the counter
claim, moral beings. The world is
full of them. They constitute, as far
as | can see, the really best people.
They have the right to set the
standards.
""rhe detective story to beware of is
the tale that attempts to set forth a
too realistic. portrayal of sex crimes.
To the credit of the men and women
writing detective fiction today, there
is practically little of this sort of thing
attempted.
1.-THE very fact of it's attempt shows
that the writer is an amateur, no mat
ter how prettily his story is printed.
In this art really think it may be
called that-certain necessary rules
have grown up.
stories of this type, either by the
acknowledged masters. such as Conan
Doyle, Wells, Fletcher. or lesser good
writer's, you will see that certain basic
restrictions have been placed upon
what shall and what shall not be re-
counted.
This is done for artistic effect, in
the first place. but in the second place
1s a protection to the writer. The
shock which a normally constituted
reader receives when he reads an elab-
orately told tale involving IL crime
which sends shudder down the
spine is a real thing, and it's final re-
suit is to turn the reader against the
writer And when this happens too
often, it turns the editor against the
writer.
THE element of love, and especially
its perversion, is left out almost en-
tirely from the good detective story:
at least. it enters only in such slight
form as may be necessary to the tell
ing. The perverted love senses, in
Guiding abuse, are handled not at all
in the real detective tales.
eff you read detective story that
shocks your normal sense Of what
should be told in print, know for d
certainty that it is not of the best
type, but only the striving of some
publication to be realistic Realism
is one thing, in life, but quite another
thing on the printed page.
X j; X
"The best detective stories are not
so much stories, in one sense, as