Or, why so many fictional detectives annoy me
I think I’ve written on this subject before, but it’s been a while, so it’s worth another crack at it. I was recently reading a couple of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels, and I remembered why it’s so difficult to write a good detective story. I admit, Poirot is somewhat less irksome on paper than on film. Film adaptations tend to play up his condescending jerk side, possibly because readers and watchers of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe stories are used to jerkish detectives who pull informational rabbits out of the hat and call the reader stupid for not knowing that the rabbit was there all along.
It takes a delicate hand to write a mystery that hinges on information no one could possibly know, without annoying the reader, and some readers have a higher or lower tolerance for that kind of thing. In my experience as a reader, The Big Reveal is a hundred times more annoying if the protagonist is smug about it, and merely ten times more annoying if he brushes it off like it’s no big deal. Surprising developments in a mystery should provoke a reaction of, well, surprise, in the characters. Writers can also get away with having a jaded protagonist say, ‘I knew it! I knew this case was just like [previous case that may or may not have the exact same twist],’ because at least there’s a reason for the protagonist to be unsurprised, one that’s not simply, the protagonist knows everything about the universe and is waiting for all you peons to catch up.
Heyer is pretty good at this- not perfect, but her characters usually display reasonable reactions to The Big Reveal, and when they’re unsurprised it comes across as British stiff upper lip, rather than insider knowledge that they just now chose to share with their underlings. Patricia Wentworth is also pretty good at revealing information in a way that doesn’t annoy the reader. It’s telling, and may say more about me than about the stories themselves, that the less annoying detectives tend to be female- Miss Marple, Miss Silver, et cetera, are usually more tolerable. My best guess is that, because they go out in the community and listen to the gossip about their cases, it’s more realistic for them to have insider information. They also tend to be more forgiving of people, like readers, who don’t know everything, and even when someone like Miss Marple says, ‘oh, you didn’t know that?’ it comes across as dottiness rather than arrogance.
The male detectives- Wolfe, Holmes, Poirot- are more likely to sit back and let an underling do all the running around, then magically pull all the information together without ever having talked to anybody, then call the everyman underling- and by extension, the reader- stupid for not coming to the correct conclusion. This isn’t always true, but it’s enough to paint a general trend.
It’s also worth noting that the culture has changed somewhat since these stories were written. Back in the day, there was rather a reverence for genius that excused a lot of faults, especially when the genius was safely fictional and the reader would never have to meet that genius in real life. Nowadays, the downsides of genius are a little more obvious, and I think a lot of people have gone sour on anyone who says, ‘trust me, I’m an expert; I know better than you do,’ whether the person is technically a genius or not. Perhaps that’s why more abrasive characters provoke the reaction they often do. Competence is attractive; being a jerk about it is less so.
But this is all my opinion, and it’s worth approximately what you paid for it, so, tell me- have you noticed the same phenomenon? Have you ever written a protagonist like these fictional detectives?- and did you take any steps to avoid annoying the reader?
11 responses to “How Condescending”
I’ve written a series – the Lone Star Sons – which is a kind of historical reworking of the Lone Ranger, in which the main character and his blood-brother sidekick solve mysteries and find things (missing people or lost treasures, usually) and I think I have managed to avoid the main character/detective being annoying by making him slightly bumbling. He has a flash of insight regarding the mystery, but doesn’t say exactly what he has realized or discovered until a little later, at the conclusion of the story.
I don’t know. Wolfe is often condescending to other people, but not to Goodwin; and unlike Watson to Holmes, or Hastings to Poirot, Goodwin isn’t Wolfe’s devoted worshipper, he gives as good as he gets. Or if you prefer, when Wolfe annoys the reader Rex Stout gives you permission to be annoyed, because the other characters (and Goodwin as the narrator) are just as annoyed and make no bones about saying so. I find that makes him more tolerable.
I’ve done mysteries, but my cops aren’t, mostly, the snotty types. Gather evidence, possibly a minor red herring, but the only surprises are usually an unusually violent arrest.
I’m not a writer, but from the reader perspective – all of the information to put it together has to be there for me to see. If it is, and the detective’s (even very arrogant) explanation is something I can follow and go “oh yeah, that makes perfect sense”, I don’t get annoyed. It’s when the big reveal is “I knew this thing that there is no way a non-SME reader would know and that’s how I solved it” were I am tempted to wall the book.
Unless it’s been established that the detective is a SME, like Holmes with his tobacco ash monograph. When you see a cigarette butt, you know that Holmes just might get something from it beyond the obvious.
See, I find naturalistic little old lady detectives much more smug and patronizing than rather absurd and cartoony men like Holmes and Poirot.
I noticed about the Sherlock Holmes stories is they are almost as much adventure and thriller novels as they are detective stories.
But that said, their arrogance never really bothered me that much, because they come across to me a superior people. Rather, they’re mostly deeply flawed or damaged individuals who this is the only thing they can really do, and it is something they are absolutely obsessed with. Sherlock is the failure of his family. If he doesn’t have a case to focus his mind on he starts spiraling into drugs, and Watson has to keep him from accidently killing himself.
Poirot is another one. He can’t function in environments that aren’t precisely perfect. That’s part of why he’s an effective detective: he is hyper attuned to *anything* out of place. He can’t sustain personal relationships, and when he retires, it just feels like he has nothing.
In a way even Miss Marple feels a bit broken that way as well. Not that she cannot function in society, but she seems like the sort of person who should have a passel of grandkids by now, and doesn’t. She’s not sad or unhappy, but it does feel like a missing piece.
Honestly, a Miss Marple type detective who did marry and have children would be an interesting, if complicated take on the genre.
“Mom, why does this man have a knife pulled on you?”
“Ah, well, I seem to have gotten mixed up in another little kerfufle, and I think he may have been the one who did it.”
“Ah. I see. Sir, I don’t know you, and really don’t know the details of what’s going on, but if you do not Lindy put that knife away, I am going to pull your arms out at the roots and beat you to death with them, ok? Mom, please tells us about these things.”
“It was such a little thing…”
“Yes mom, we know.”
So start writing!
The thing is, smug turns on knowing your audience. A socially inept genius is more likely to be surprised that it wasn’t so obvious to everyone else as it was to him.
And even once he got used to the idea, he would probably find laying it all out tedious.
Funny, I didn’t have any negative reactions to Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, or Hercules Poirot. I did marvel at the devotion that Watson had for taking care of his genius friend, but what annoyed me most was the inevitable inept cop foil who was frequently just as arrogant. I did wonder how Hamilton Burger kept his job while never winning a single case against Perry Mason.
Of course I’ve only ever written two mystery stories, and one was a satire. The one figure I couldn’t tolerate was House, MD. He was a selfish, arrogant, asshole by design, and, I think even admitted as much. Not sure because I didn’t last through two episodes.