with Steven Donkin
We are thrilled to welcome novelist Steven Donkin to Omnimystery News.
Steven's new mystery is the 1950s whodunit The Skeleton Speaks (CreateSpace; May 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats).
Steven tells us in his guest post today why he chose this time period for his books, in "An Appreciation of Golden Age Mysteries".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Steven Donkin
I believe it was W. Somerset Maugham who said the wide appeal of mystery fiction is its guarantee to the reader that here is a novel that, at the very least, tells an actual story. By definition, a mystery novel, particularly one in the vintage cozy tradition, requires a narrative that begins with a crime, follows with an investigation of clues, and ends with a solution that, hopefully, surprises and delights the reader with its unpredictability and cleverness. It's been a reliable formula for quality entertainment for nearly two hundred years.
But what is it, I wonder, about the vintage cozy mysteries of the Golden Age (and by this term, I mean generally the period from 1920 to 1950) that continues to appeal to readers in our overly modern, technologically saturated era? I can only speak for myself, but I will suggest that one answer may be mere nostalgia for a simpler age — an age that predates my own lifetime, and probably that of most modern readers with whom I share may this passion for old mysteries. To be sure, it is our lack of direct experience with earlier times that enhances our romanticized (and perhaps not entirely accurate) visions of them. In my own case, I am admittedly a bit of a luddite — I don't have a cell phone, a tablet or an e-reader, I prefer biking or walking to driving a car, and prefer train travel to travel by air. The old days just seemed to me much less complicated and cluttered by mindless distractions.
Nostalgic yearning perhaps explains part of the appeal of all historical fiction in general. But within the sub-genre of vintage cozy mysteries, there is another attraction to me, not only as a mystery reader but also as a writer of mysteries. It has to do with the practical methods employed in the art of crime solving, in particular, how the changes that have occurred in this field over the past decades have influenced the mystery novel's role as an intellectually stimulating puzzle challenge for readers. The vintage detectives really had to use their wits and skills regarding what Poe called "ratiocination" to solve the crime, and the reader was likewise invited to do the same. But the fact is that most of the crimes that were committed in the old novels would be easily solved today using standard technology, with little exercise of Hercule Poirot's beloved "little grey cells" being necessary.
Fortunately for real crime solvers, but unfortunately for fans of detective fiction, modern CSI technology has taken much of the sparkle out of detective work. For instance, gone are the days when a little post-murder treatment upon the body could render a victim unidentifiable and thereby baffle the authorities. The unidentified or misidentified corpse was a common device in Golden Age mysteries, examples being Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors, wherein the victim's hands were cut off and the face mutilated beyond recognition, or in Ellery Queen's The Egyptian Cross Mystery, wherein the victims were decapitated to prevent identification (although I could never figure out why fingerprint identification did not arise in this latter example). Now, however, there are numerous methods available to ID corpses, made possible by DNA technology, easily searchable nationwide databases, and protocols for employing reconstructive techniques that can create a reasonable image of the victim in life, followed by wide dissemination of the image across the country or the world via the internet. The classic case of mistaken identity, or its equally revered cousin, the old "switcheroo" of one character's identity for that of another, will never be the same.
Likewise, pinning the crime on a particular suspect seems much more straightforward now. Certainly, the deceit and conniving of the suspects can still be played to good use in well-written modern narratives, but I've always found the characters and their intrigues much more interesting in the novels of the Golden Age masters. And the process of nabbing the perpetrator has been rendered much more run-of-the-mill in our modern era. Nowadays, all that is often necessary is to obtain a small biological sample from the scene of the crime — blood, skin, or even a single hair — isolate a trace amount of DNA, run it through a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) machine to amplify the sample, then analyze and compare the results with DNA samples taken from each of the suspects. How dull! In such standardized investigative protocol, what is left for the tasks involved in piecing together seemingly disconnected events, dissecting the characters' individual testimonies and discerning the truth from lies, or chasing down red herrings and separating the evidential wheat from the chaff in order to arrive at the correct solution?
I've set my two mystery novels, The Beast from the Sky and The Skeleton Speaks, in the early 1950s primarily for these reasons. No cell phones, DNA analysis, searchable databases or hyper-resolved digital imaging; just good old wearing down of shoe leather, psychological cat-and-mouse play, and inspired deductive reasoning. My other novel, Honest Faces, is set in modern times, but it's a mystery of a much different sort — not so much a whodunit as a "why-did-they-do-it." But my love for the simple pleasures of the Golden Age mysteries will always remain. There are no writers today that I know of who rival the likes of S. S. Van Dine, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, Ellery Queen, Nicholas Blake, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and John Dickson Carr. It is thus under their giant shadows that I now cower at my keyboard, humbly trying to craft my little contributions which, if nothing else, might hopefully make them smile down at me in kindly appreciation, and hopefully please a few readers as well.
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Steven Donkin is a writer, musician, scientist, painter, activist, educator and a former Statehood Green Party candidate for Mayor of Washington, D.C. He and his wife Julia live in Silver Spring, Maryland.
For more information about the author and his books, visit his website at StevenDonkin.com.
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The Skeleton Speaks
Steven Donkin
Gert O'Connell and her amateur sleuthing friends, Judith and Henry Geeth, find themselves once again in the middle of a baffling murder case, this time at a sinister ancient Irish castle during the ghoulish season of Samhain. It is Hallowe'en night in 1953, and the eccentric owner of the Castle Bronmore, Colin Keeley, is throwing a costume party for some friends and relatives, but all is not fun and games. It soon becomes clear that Colin has plans to indulge a longstanding grudge against some of the party guests in a most macabre fashion — plans that include the skeleton of an old Irish patriot in the dungeon who has an unsettling tendency to spring to life and speak truths that some may not wish to be revealed.
As tempers flare and political ideologies clash, the party quickly disintegrates into chaos, culminating in a gruesome murder. Now Gert and her friends, themselves considered suspects by the police, set about disentangling the clues to find the killer and, in the process, discover the truth behind the mysterious talking skeleton of Castle Bronmore.
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