Mystery

Overview
“’Mystery’ is a term of self-conscious restraint, acknowledging that we don’t know." Over the past 200 years, the mystery genre has been developing into a specific well known form of literature. Mystery is considered a subgenre of narrative fiction and it is often referred to as a detective story. Mysteries are generally created to serve the purpose of engaging its audience in solving puzzles and consider human condition and how to solve or avoid human problems. Before the Industrial Revolution, the genre of mystery was not very known due to the lack of population and the lack of a distinct police force. Before the big metropolitan areas were formed, the small towns had only watch guards and constables, who were limited to the amount of policing authority they could have. Because of this, many crimes were either quickly solved or left undiscovered. As these areas grew, the need for a qualified police force increased, creating the role of a detective to get to the bottom of the unsolved crimes. As various crimes were happening in the world, solved or unsolved, they inspired novelist writers to base their upcoming books off of these events.

Origins and History
The mystery genre did not really emerge until the mid-nineteenth century when Edgar Allen Poe created the 1841 story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” which introduced the first fictional detective, Auguste C. Dupin, for the mystery genre. Poe was the first mystery novelist that broke away from the traditional mystery styles of aesthetics of the situation to a more intellectual reality such as the study of the criminal mind. Following Poe’s famous mystery novel came another popular mystery book called ‘The Woman In White’ by Wilkie Collins in 1860. It was a story primarily based upon an eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment. This novel is part of Wilkie Collin’s three most famously known detective novels, Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone  (1868).  These three novels collaborate together to trace the evolution of a detective from nonprofessional to professional and include the long-lasting phases that define the mystery genre. Many older novels encompass the ideas of previous novels published to determine the plot summaries of the book. Between the real-life crimes and the various mystery novels written, newer writers gather different concepts of each and incorporate the ideas to formulate their own mystery novel. These newer novels have what is called a crossover; this is due to the increase of stories that have been released that provide the reader to cross boundaries from one genre to another. When this occurs in the same book, the true initial representation of the genre becomes remixed by personal interpretation allowing the readers to enjoy the exclusive process of puzzle and solution presented in each. As any genre evolves, the general concepts and composition of such changes in order to fit the audience present, the genre of mystery is no exception. The transition from the eighteenth century to what we know the mystery genre now, has grown and been manipulated extensively. Over the years, the mystery genre has created its own personal characteristics that have been planted to be the base of mystery fiction in books, films, games, and reality events.

Conventions and Characteristics
The basis of mystery fiction has changed over time from the start of it in the nineteenth century. Today, to be able to write a mystery novel you need to be spontaneous, it must contain a puzzle, and a problem to be solved. Before writing the novel, you need to know how it will end before you start the beginning. For a mystery novel to be really effective to its audience it must contain clues that allow the reader to solve the puzzle. It is usually very successful when it contains these certain characteristics:


 * Hidden evidence that are essential details that are offered throughout the novel that often seem unimportant but return as being key elements in finding answers.


 * Suspense—holding various possible conclusions that leave the reader wondering what the actual outcome is.


 * Red herring; which is a type of foreshadowing that leads the reader to false accusations and conclusions.


 * Inference gaps that leave bits and pieces of the story for the reader to fill in.

Mystery novels build a bigger audience when the characters are related to society, its manners, and its problems. This provides a chance for the reader to connect with the fictional characters. All mystery novels are known for having the same predictable elements throughout the story no matter the order they appear in. You can find a closed setting such as an abandoned house, a small circle of people who become the primary suspects to the crime, the victim of the crime, and the detective who provides critical thinking and reasoning skills to the reader throughout the story plot line. The suspicion of each character creates the suspense and accusation that each one is capable of the opportunity and all of the motives to commit the crime. At this point, the reader is the most involved because he or she is following the clues to decipher the mystery. However, more clues accumulate that narrow down the suspects to only one and eventually solve the mystery to the crime. This plot line is not just the base to a mystery novel, but the characteristics and elements are also found in multiple movies, TV shows, and games.

Mystery Examples

 * 1) "The Nancy Drew Series" by Carolyn Keene
 * 2) "Sherlock Holmes" created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 * 3) The mystery genre can be broken down into various subgenress such as:
 * The Detective Story
 * The Private Eye Story
 * The Hard-boiled Detective Story
 * The Police Procedural
 * The Crime Story
 * The Thriller
 * Psychological Suspense
 * Hard-boiled and Cozy