Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-03-26
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES f. TRACEWELL.

they are three-handed games worked
out with words on white paper.
THE first part Of the game involves
| the pursuit of the criminal by the
detective. The second has to do with
| the counterplay of the mind of the
, reader against the mind of the writer.
| Here we have as pretty a case OF
| game-within-game as one will ma
anywhere. While the movement OF
the story plot is going on, the reader
| is pitting himself against the writer,
and the author of the tale is trying
his best to keep the suspense at It's
height.
Through long usage. since the
days of Poe. the game is played with
certain rules. The writer is not al
| lowed to deliberately set down some
| thing that is false, just III order to
| fool his reader, unless he can do so
| legitimately through the use or his
| characters.
| IF he can keep a character in
| character, as the saying is, and stu
make him do or say something that
| is normal to the character. but which
| tends to give the reader the wrong
idea, this is legitimate.
| "He cannot however, purpoSeiy
write an untruth. of himself. just for
the purpose of throwing his reader
off the scent. This double game
must be played according to the
rules.
| This play of crook against detec-
| tive, and writer against reader. con-
| stitutes the charm of the best told
| detective stories.
1.-THE infinite detail which the
no In
| his plot so as to be fair TO all con-
| cerned involves a special sense, which
| is not given to every one nor to every
| writer. Just because one knows OF "a
| crime. and can write, is no particular
reason why he can tell detective
| story as it ought to be told.
THE truth, as every one knows who
| has ever tried to write, often appears
| untrue, whereas a properly handled
untruth may be made to take on the
appearance of truth. This is why
there arose the popular saving,
| Truth is stranger than fiction
Only recently / was reading a
well told detective story in which a
| bank cashier carried on detective
story writing as an avocatiOn. He
| kept the two sides of his nature en-
| tirely separate, and no one in the
| city knew that the cashier and the
popular story teller were one and the
| same man.
| There arose the opportunity for
| him to practically duplicate the crime
| in one of his tales-and he fell. Yet
SO the author told it-with all his
| opportunity to avoid mistakes in the
| commission of his crime, he allowed
| himself for the first time in his life
| to carry a letter addressed to him
| self as the author, in his personality
as bank cashier. An astute detective
| simply put two and two together when
| he discovered that letter,
Now my kick is that the author
of this tale did not account in the
/ least for this bad mistake. which the
man simply would not have made. If
he did make it, 1t was up to the
author of the story to give some ex-
PLANTATION of how his dual character
came to make such a blunder. If
excitement, why. then, he should have
said so.
1T was a mighty good story,
though, and this incident merely
shows how supercareful the writer of
such tales must be to fulfill his
readers ideas of trueness.
'"rrueness does not mean nastiness.
The best and better class of detective
stories are clean. Do not forget
that"