Why do people read detective stories? Edmund Wilson posed this question in a 1944 New Yorker essay. He went on to say that since Sherlock Holmes there hadn’t really been anything worthwhile published in that genre. He had nothing nice to say about Agatha Christie and his comment on Dashiell Hammett was this: “‘The Maltese Falcon’ … seems not much above those newspaper picture strips in which you follow from day to day the ups and downs of a strong-jawed hero and a hardboiled but beautiful adventuress.”
Wilson dismisses contemporary detective fiction as being a reaction to guilt and fear of the years between WWI and WWII. “Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe; and then, suddenly, the murderer is spotted, and—relief!—he is not, after all, a person like you or me. He is a villain—known to the trade as George Gruesome—and he has been caught by an infallible Power, the supercilious and omniscient detective, who knows exactly how to fix the guilt.” Of course, detective fiction and mystery fiction in general has thrived since Wilson dismissed it as not worthy his time. Today, there are more sub-genres than ever.
