0:00:09 > 0:00:13When it comes to stories of crime and detection,
0:00:13 > 0:00:15we have long been a nation obsessed.
0:00:19 > 0:00:25But why do we British so enjoy reading about a spot of murder?
0:00:26 > 0:00:29Detective fiction isn't simply a story.
0:00:29 > 0:00:32It's a carefully crafted mechanism,
0:00:32 > 0:00:35made up of a particular set of parts.
0:00:37 > 0:00:40These familiar components give us that comforting feeling
0:00:40 > 0:00:42of the classic whodunnit,
0:00:42 > 0:00:46a reassurance that we know precisely what we're going to get.
0:00:46 > 0:00:50We know that we're being set an entertaining puzzle
0:00:50 > 0:00:53which revolves around a mystery,
0:00:53 > 0:00:58typically an ingeniously despicable murder in an exotic milieu,
0:00:58 > 0:01:02and we know that after sleuthing around,
0:01:02 > 0:01:06investigating some very dubious characters,
0:01:06 > 0:01:10and 250 pages of puzzling,
0:01:10 > 0:01:12there will be a solution.
0:01:12 > 0:01:15The paradox is, yes, it's a mystery,
0:01:15 > 0:01:19but there is nothing at all mysterious about the product.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23It's completely reliable and incredibly addictive.
0:01:23 > 0:01:27The great poet WH Auden said that these books were
0:01:27 > 0:01:30"as addictive as cigarettes or alcohol",
0:01:30 > 0:01:34two subjects on which Auden was a world-class expert.
0:01:37 > 0:01:41In this series, I'm looking at three genres of popular fiction -
0:01:41 > 0:01:43fantasy epics,
0:01:43 > 0:01:45spy novels and,
0:01:45 > 0:01:48for this episode, detective stories.
0:01:49 > 0:01:53I want to get inside these books and understand how they work.
0:01:55 > 0:01:56It's so simple. It's...
0:01:56 > 0:02:00It can be summed up, I think, by the equation A + B = C.
0:02:00 > 0:02:02I am A, you are B,
0:02:02 > 0:02:06and C is the reason why you want to murder me.
0:02:08 > 0:02:13I'm meeting crime writers to talk about pioneers like Agatha Christie,
0:02:13 > 0:02:19geniuses who figured out how to keep us compulsively turning the pages...
0:02:19 > 0:02:22She was almost like a sort of philosopher of the crime novel.
0:02:22 > 0:02:26You can see in many of her books, she has thought to herself,
0:02:26 > 0:02:30"How much further can I take it than I've taken it already?"
0:02:31 > 0:02:35..and to find out why we are drawn to stories of murder and crime,
0:02:35 > 0:02:39dispatches from the dark side of human experience.
0:02:39 > 0:02:43We get that buzz, I think, of excitement, of controlled fear.
0:02:43 > 0:02:45Same as when you go on a roller-coaster. You know,
0:02:45 > 0:02:47you go on the roller-coaster, scream your head off,
0:02:47 > 0:02:50and then you join the queue to do it all over again.
0:02:50 > 0:02:53It's so easy to develop a habit for these books,
0:02:53 > 0:02:57because they are underpinned by a specific set of rules,
0:02:57 > 0:03:01elements you will find throughout detective fiction,
0:03:01 > 0:03:05regardless of whether you're reading Conan Doyle or Ian Rankin.
0:03:05 > 0:03:08When these elements are skilfully assembled,
0:03:08 > 0:03:10manipulated and rearranged,
0:03:10 > 0:03:12they become a machine -
0:03:12 > 0:03:14a storytelling machine.
0:03:34 > 0:03:38Here's one way to begin a detective story.
0:03:38 > 0:03:42PHONE RINGS
0:03:43 > 0:03:45'Guv, there's a body.'
0:03:46 > 0:03:48Tell you what - how about this?
0:03:55 > 0:03:56More like it.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05There are, of course, many ways to begin a murder mystery,
0:04:05 > 0:04:10but the acknowledged genius was the Duchess of Death herself,
0:04:10 > 0:04:11Agatha Christie.
0:04:12 > 0:04:16It's very rare for Agatha Christie to start any of her stories
0:04:16 > 0:04:18with something as plodding and obvious
0:04:18 > 0:04:20as the discovery of a dead body.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24Instead, what she tends to do is to give the reader an incident
0:04:24 > 0:04:27which suggests that the rules of ordinary life
0:04:27 > 0:04:29have suddenly been suspended.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32So, for instance, there's a woman in a train,
0:04:32 > 0:04:33she's passing another train,
0:04:33 > 0:04:35a blind goes up on the other train window, and -
0:04:35 > 0:04:37is that a woman being strangled?
0:04:37 > 0:04:40Or there's a young girl having a conversation,
0:04:40 > 0:04:43and she swats aside a wasp, except it's not a wasp -
0:04:43 > 0:04:45it's a bullet.
0:04:45 > 0:04:47Or there's an advertisement in the local paper,
0:04:47 > 0:04:52in the classified ads, announcing that a murder will take place,
0:04:52 > 0:04:55and giving the time, the date and the place.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58In each case, Christie is saying to the reader, "Do you know what?
0:04:58 > 0:05:02"Life is as you thought it was, except that I, Agatha Christie,
0:05:02 > 0:05:07"have just altered it, tilted it, in a deeply unsettling way."
0:05:07 > 0:05:11This initial mystery introduces us to the setting,
0:05:11 > 0:05:13where the crime will take place.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Traditionally, this should be somewhere enclosed.
0:05:17 > 0:05:19A country village, perhaps.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25But the quintessential location is the country house,
0:05:25 > 0:05:30popular in the so-called Golden Age of detective fiction.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40Yes, the isolated country house is very useful
0:05:40 > 0:05:42if you're planning a murder.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48Here, the outside world is kept well away.
0:05:50 > 0:05:52I think there's no surprise at all
0:05:52 > 0:05:54that the Golden Age of detective fiction
0:05:54 > 0:05:57comes in the 1920s and '30s.
0:05:58 > 0:06:01Outside the gates of the grand country houses,
0:06:01 > 0:06:04Britain was in a state of suppressed trauma.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09The very same people who were building a new modern age
0:06:09 > 0:06:12had just a decade before experienced
0:06:12 > 0:06:15the sheer hell of the First World War.
0:06:15 > 0:06:18These are people who have been soaked in the horrors of death,
0:06:18 > 0:06:20who have seen it all in the trenches,
0:06:20 > 0:06:23and have limped back, maimed, afterwards.
0:06:25 > 0:06:28So, one way of dealing with this pervasive atmosphere of fear
0:06:28 > 0:06:32and the memory of slaughter is to domesticate it,
0:06:32 > 0:06:37to turn murder itself into an entertaining intellectual puzzle.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43We read them....
0:06:43 > 0:06:45I think, for entertainment,
0:06:45 > 0:06:49and very much for relief
0:06:49 > 0:06:51from some of the traumas of everyday life,
0:06:51 > 0:06:56which is why the detective story is so popular in ages of war
0:06:56 > 0:06:59or ages like the present, of great anxiety.
0:06:59 > 0:07:03It really flourishes then because of the comfort that it brings,
0:07:03 > 0:07:09and you enter into this world where the morality is so settled.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12There are no great problems of right or wrong,
0:07:12 > 0:07:13and when Poirot says,
0:07:13 > 0:07:17"My attitude to murder is simple - I disapprove of it."
0:07:20 > 0:07:23The stories of Golden Age writers like Christie,
0:07:23 > 0:07:27Dorothy L Sayers and Ngaio Marsh are peopled with characters
0:07:27 > 0:07:30who are moved around like pieces on a chessboard.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33Why don't you come and join me on my father's estate?
0:07:33 > 0:07:36To begin with, there's the dead man walking,
0:07:36 > 0:07:38the corpse in waiting.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40Often unlikeable, they've made enough enemies to...
0:07:40 > 0:07:43well, fill a stately home.
0:07:44 > 0:07:49And among the suspects the reader might encounter,
0:07:49 > 0:07:52the suspicious doctor with a comprehensive knowledge of
0:07:52 > 0:07:54poisons and pharmaceuticals.
0:07:55 > 0:07:57The charming but ruthless young man,
0:07:57 > 0:08:00mysteriously back from overseas.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03The glamorous young lady,
0:08:03 > 0:08:06not at all all she seems.
0:08:06 > 0:08:08The secretary, middle-class,
0:08:08 > 0:08:09but caught between worlds,
0:08:09 > 0:08:12an employee, not an equal.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15More disposable are those below stairs.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18They're likely to be falsely accused
0:08:18 > 0:08:21or end up as a second or third body.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24Not for nothing have these books been dismissed as
0:08:24 > 0:08:25"snobbery with violence".
0:08:25 > 0:08:2815 years? No, ever since I was four...
0:08:28 > 0:08:31Because of the emphasis on the puzzle,
0:08:31 > 0:08:35the murderer had to be capable of ingenious devising,
0:08:35 > 0:08:39which means that the butler didn't do it,
0:08:39 > 0:08:42because in the novels of the 1920s and '30s,
0:08:42 > 0:08:46murder was a genteel game, and the lower classes,
0:08:46 > 0:08:49according to the deeply unrealistic attitudes of the time,
0:08:49 > 0:08:51simply weren't clever enough to play it.
0:08:51 > 0:08:54This did not, however, affect the secretary.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57According to the fictional detective Gideon Fell,
0:08:57 > 0:09:01the secretary was the most dangerous person to have about the place.
0:09:04 > 0:09:07Now, there are rules for all kinds of imaginative writing,
0:09:07 > 0:09:10of course, from haikus and sonnets right through to sci-fi,
0:09:10 > 0:09:14but the rules for detective novels are the rules of a game.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17It is a game being played out between the writer and the reader,
0:09:17 > 0:09:19and it's a game in which the writer,
0:09:19 > 0:09:21having written the thing, holds all the cards.
0:09:21 > 0:09:26But that doesn't really matter, as long as the writer then plays fair.
0:09:31 > 0:09:34So what does playing fair actually mean?
0:09:34 > 0:09:36Well, in the very famous introduction to
0:09:36 > 0:09:39The Best Detective Stories Of The Year 1928,
0:09:39 > 0:09:43Father Ronald Knox sets out his rules for fair detective fiction.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46Aficionados call them the Decalogue.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49I won't give you all of them, but here's a flavour.
0:09:50 > 0:09:52"Rule number one.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55"The criminal must be someone mentioned
0:09:55 > 0:09:57"in the early part of the story.
0:09:57 > 0:09:58"Rule number two.
0:09:58 > 0:10:04"All supernatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
0:10:04 > 0:10:05"Rule number three.
0:10:05 > 0:10:10"Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable."
0:10:10 > 0:10:12I like, particularly, rule number five.
0:10:12 > 0:10:14"No Chinaman must figure in the story."
0:10:14 > 0:10:17And Knox says, "Why this should be so I do not know,
0:10:17 > 0:10:19"but it's a rule nevertheless."
0:10:19 > 0:10:21Very important, rule number seven.
0:10:21 > 0:10:25"The detective himself must not commit the crime."
0:10:25 > 0:10:26And on it goes.
0:10:26 > 0:10:28Finally, rule ten, it says,
0:10:28 > 0:10:30"Twin brothers and doubles generally
0:10:30 > 0:10:34"must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them."
0:10:34 > 0:10:36And you can see already, what he's basically saying is,
0:10:36 > 0:10:38"No unfair tricks."
0:10:38 > 0:10:40Again, the novelist must play fair
0:10:40 > 0:10:43and allow the reader the possibility, at least,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46of honestly and deductively solving the problem.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52Detective stories were the original interactive entertainment.
0:10:53 > 0:10:56Dennis Wheatley and JG Links
0:10:56 > 0:10:58took the form to its logical conclusion
0:10:58 > 0:11:02when they published Murder Off Miami in 1936.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08Instead of a novel, readers got a ready-to-solve case file,
0:11:08 > 0:11:11complete with crime-scene photos,
0:11:11 > 0:11:14transcripts of interrogations
0:11:14 > 0:11:16and bloodstained evidence.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22Detective fiction reduced to its most essential components.
0:11:24 > 0:11:26And the most essential of all -
0:11:26 > 0:11:28the crime itself.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31Of course, we don't really get to see this.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34MAN SCREAMS We get the aftermath.
0:11:38 > 0:11:41One of the great questions when writing about a murder is
0:11:41 > 0:11:43where to place the corpse.
0:11:45 > 0:11:49WH Auden noticed that an idyllic setting
0:11:49 > 0:11:51amplified the horror of the dead body.
0:11:53 > 0:11:56"It must be shockingly out of place," he wrote,
0:11:56 > 0:11:59"as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing-room carpet."
0:12:01 > 0:12:04But writers who want to set a ferocious puzzle
0:12:04 > 0:12:06can do something really devious.
0:12:06 > 0:12:08They can lock the door.
0:12:14 > 0:12:20The locked room is the most fiendish and tantalising of clue puzzles.
0:12:20 > 0:12:22The premise is very basic.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25The dead body, the room locked from the inside,
0:12:25 > 0:12:28so now it becomes not simply a whodunnit,
0:12:28 > 0:12:30but also a "howdunnit".
0:12:30 > 0:12:35Master of the locked-room mystery was John Dickson Carr,
0:12:35 > 0:12:38whose detective Dr Gideon Fell
0:12:38 > 0:12:41specialised in solving impossible crimes.
0:12:41 > 0:12:44In The Hollow Man, Fell gives a lecture
0:12:44 > 0:12:47in which he lays out all the possible ways
0:12:47 > 0:12:50that a body can end up in a locked room,
0:12:50 > 0:12:51and here's just a few of them.
0:12:53 > 0:12:57First, there's what Fell calls "low tricks" -
0:12:57 > 0:12:59secret passageways.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03A removable panel. Through something like that,
0:13:03 > 0:13:06somebody in the room above could drop a dagger,
0:13:06 > 0:13:08and then replace the panel.
0:13:08 > 0:13:11But this is not the locked room proper,
0:13:11 > 0:13:13and is regarded as cheating.
0:13:13 > 0:13:17And then, there's the murder in the locked room
0:13:17 > 0:13:19that isn't really a murder,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22just a set of coincidences with somebody dying accidentally,
0:13:22 > 0:13:26for instance, by bludgeoning themselves on a piece of furniture.
0:13:26 > 0:13:28MAN SCREAMS
0:13:28 > 0:13:32And then, there's murder by suggestion.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36The victim is alone and made to kill themselves.
0:13:36 > 0:13:39(Do it. Do it.)
0:13:39 > 0:13:43Thinking that the room is haunted, or being sent berserk,
0:13:43 > 0:13:46the victim hits himself on the chandelier
0:13:46 > 0:13:51or stumbles and strangles himself on a conveniently placed piece of rope.
0:13:53 > 0:13:57And then, there's murder by mechanical device.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00The gun concealed in the phone receiver.
0:14:00 > 0:14:01GUNSHOT
0:14:01 > 0:14:04The clock that fires bullets when it's wound,
0:14:04 > 0:14:09or the bed that exhales poisonous gases when it's warmed up.
0:14:13 > 0:14:14Ludicrous.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16But we're not finished yet,
0:14:16 > 0:14:19because there's also the long-distance murder.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22A gun fires an icicle through the window,
0:14:22 > 0:14:24kills the victim, and melts.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28Or maybe the victim hasn't been murdered at all.
0:14:28 > 0:14:30He's just out for the count.
0:14:30 > 0:14:32HE COUGHS
0:14:32 > 0:14:35The murderer is the first one into the room afterwards,
0:14:35 > 0:14:37and then stabs him.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43Fell's lecture is a tour de force,
0:14:43 > 0:14:48but in giving all the possible locked-room permutations,
0:14:48 > 0:14:52the writer John Dickson Carr can't avoid the ultimate absurdity
0:14:52 > 0:14:54of what he's doing.
0:14:54 > 0:14:56Flying icicles and poisoned beds -
0:14:56 > 0:15:00this is murder in Wonderland.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03So, how does the best detective fiction avoid simply becoming
0:15:03 > 0:15:09some kind of endlessly complicated and bizarre mechanical puzzle?
0:15:09 > 0:15:13The answer is in the multilayered and mercurial characters of
0:15:13 > 0:15:15the great detectives themselves.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22The first great sleuth in detective fiction is Sherlock Holmes -
0:15:22 > 0:15:25that much, at least, is elementary.
0:15:25 > 0:15:30Other fictional detectives had come before,
0:15:30 > 0:15:33but it was Holmes, with his prodigious intellect,
0:15:33 > 0:15:36his quirks and eccentricities,
0:15:36 > 0:15:41that captured the public imagination and spawned an army of imitators.
0:15:43 > 0:15:46So, what makes Sherlock Holmes so irresistible?
0:15:48 > 0:15:50TYPEWRITER CLICKS
0:15:52 > 0:15:56I think we read a Sherlock Holmes story because we want to stand
0:15:56 > 0:16:02with his friend Watson and watch the great man as he solves the mystery,
0:16:02 > 0:16:04and when we do this, we are actually recreating
0:16:04 > 0:16:09Dr Arthur Conan Doyle's own experience as a student,
0:16:09 > 0:16:12when he observed Joseph Bell,
0:16:12 > 0:16:16his mentor at Edinburgh University, display his powers of reason.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22Bell would amaze his students by looking at a patient
0:16:22 > 0:16:27and, simply using his acute powers of observation and deduction,
0:16:27 > 0:16:30revealing the underlying story of who they were.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33So, he'd turn to the patient and say...
0:16:33 > 0:16:36IN SCOTTISH ACCENT: "Well, my man, you've been serving in the Army."
0:16:36 > 0:16:37"Aye."
0:16:37 > 0:16:41Because the man was respectful, but hadn't removed his hat,
0:16:41 > 0:16:42an Army trait.
0:16:42 > 0:16:45"But not long discharged."
0:16:45 > 0:16:46"Aye."
0:16:46 > 0:16:48Because if he had been long discharged,
0:16:48 > 0:16:50he'd have picked up civilian ways.
0:16:50 > 0:16:52"And you served in a Highland regiment."
0:16:52 > 0:16:55He's picked that up from the accent, of course.
0:16:55 > 0:16:57"Aye."
0:16:57 > 0:17:00"And you served, I think, in Barbados."
0:17:00 > 0:17:01"Aye!"
0:17:01 > 0:17:03Because the man has elephantiasis,
0:17:03 > 0:17:06a disease prevalent in the West Indies.
0:17:06 > 0:17:10By picking up on these tiny details, Bell wasn't simply showing off -
0:17:10 > 0:17:12though he was certainly doing that.
0:17:12 > 0:17:17He was creating the method that would be used by Holmes himself -
0:17:17 > 0:17:19small, apparently insignificant details,
0:17:19 > 0:17:23which, when woven together, told the true story of a human life.
0:17:25 > 0:17:26Thanks to Bell's methods,
0:17:26 > 0:17:32Holmes had the superhuman ability to extract information from anyone,
0:17:32 > 0:17:35and there was something omniscient about him.
0:17:35 > 0:17:37In the modern Victorian city,
0:17:37 > 0:17:43the detective could go everywhere, speak to everybody,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46from the top of society down to street level.
0:17:47 > 0:17:49As Holmes says himself,
0:17:49 > 0:17:52being a professional voyeur is a lot of fun.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57"'My dear fellow,' said Sherlock Holmes.
0:17:57 > 0:18:00"'If we could fly out of that window, hand-in-hand,
0:18:00 > 0:18:03"'hover over this great city,
0:18:03 > 0:18:06"'gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things
0:18:06 > 0:18:10"'which are going on, it would make all fiction,
0:18:10 > 0:18:13"'with its conventionalities and forcing conclusions,
0:18:13 > 0:18:15"'most stale and unprofitable.'"
0:18:16 > 0:18:20And it's a telling image for Holmes to use, because that is,
0:18:20 > 0:18:22in a sense, exactly what he does -
0:18:22 > 0:18:24hanging over the throbbing metropolis,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26peering into people's lives,
0:18:26 > 0:18:28uncovering their innermost secrets,
0:18:28 > 0:18:32like some kind of cocaine-powered Edwardian drone.
0:18:33 > 0:18:36But here's the odd thing about Holmes -
0:18:36 > 0:18:39although he takes us into other people's lives,
0:18:39 > 0:18:42the privileged access doesn't extend to
0:18:42 > 0:18:45the drug-taking brainiac himself.
0:18:45 > 0:18:48In detective fiction, the sleuth can know everything about
0:18:48 > 0:18:52everybody else, but we are never allowed to know too much about him.
0:18:53 > 0:18:58Conan Doyle has Watson tease us with the titles of other Sherlock Holmes
0:18:58 > 0:19:02adventures the good doctor will never get round to writing up.
0:19:02 > 0:19:07So, there's the Paradol Chamber, the Camberwell Poisoning Mystery,
0:19:07 > 0:19:09the Amateur Mendicant Society,
0:19:09 > 0:19:13and best of all, the Giant Rat of Sumatra...
0:19:13 > 0:19:17IN SCOTTISH ACCENT: ..a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22Conan Doyle withholds in other ways.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25What we know is filtered through Dr Watson,
0:19:25 > 0:19:28the quintessential sidekick in detective fiction.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31The writer Anthony Horowitz had to master this,
0:19:31 > 0:19:35and many other conventions that Conan Doyle perfected,
0:19:35 > 0:19:38when he was chosen by the Doyle estate to revisit
0:19:38 > 0:19:41the world of Holmes and Watson.
0:19:41 > 0:19:44The sidekick is invaluable in detective fiction
0:19:44 > 0:19:46because, without him, we don't know what the detective is thinking.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49That's the first thing. And again, you know, in these stories,
0:19:49 > 0:19:52we only get inside Holmes's mind when Holmes tells Watson
0:19:52 > 0:19:53what he's doing.
0:19:53 > 0:19:57The voice of Watson is part of the genius of the whole construction.
0:19:57 > 0:20:00You get this very affable, warm, humane voice
0:20:00 > 0:20:03commenting on this character who is anything but,
0:20:03 > 0:20:06and it's the contrast between the two that works so perfectly well.
0:20:06 > 0:20:08When I came to write The House Of Silk,
0:20:08 > 0:20:12the first thing I had to do was to acquire the voice of Dr Watson.
0:20:12 > 0:20:14So, the detective is the kind of genius.
0:20:14 > 0:20:16As it were, he's the great...the great artist,
0:20:16 > 0:20:19and between us and the artist, we need an interpreter.
0:20:19 > 0:20:20We need the critic.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23We need somebody who gets us from ourselves to the genius.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25We can't do it in one lump ourselves.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29Yes, but the clever writer also uses these sidekicks to
0:20:29 > 0:20:30do the exact opposite of that.
0:20:30 > 0:20:32I mean, I write detective fiction,
0:20:32 > 0:20:34and I use my sidekick always to distract.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36So, for example,
0:20:36 > 0:20:40in this room we are sitting in now, the sidekick might ask you about
0:20:40 > 0:20:42why the logs are arranged in a certain way in a fireplace,
0:20:42 > 0:20:45but, as the author, I'm only doing that because I don't want you
0:20:45 > 0:20:47to be looking at the picture over there, which is the real clue.
0:20:47 > 0:20:50The sidekick always is the sleight of hand.
0:20:50 > 0:20:52He always takes you in the wrong direction.
0:20:52 > 0:20:55Now, it all starts, as we've said, with Holmes and Watson -
0:20:55 > 0:20:58just take us from those stories to, I guess,
0:20:58 > 0:21:01the Golden Age in the 1920s and '30s of Agatha Christie,
0:21:01 > 0:21:02and Dorothy Sayers and so forth.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06Is there a lineage you can trace through?
0:21:06 > 0:21:09I think what you have is a basic template.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13You have a person who is extremely clever and who is unworldly.
0:21:13 > 0:21:18He may be a Belgian refugee, or he may be this extraordinary
0:21:18 > 0:21:21unfathomable genius that is Sherlock Holmes, or he could be
0:21:21 > 0:21:24a member of the aristocracy, Lord Peter Wimsey, or whatever.
0:21:24 > 0:21:28He's somebody who is special and different and bigger than we are,
0:21:28 > 0:21:30and cleverer than we are.
0:21:30 > 0:21:31There is the sidekick.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35There are murders and there are solutions.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38I mean, at the end of the day, I think what I most like about
0:21:38 > 0:21:41detective fiction is how very, very simple it is.
0:21:41 > 0:21:44There are very, very few reasons to murder somebody.
0:21:44 > 0:21:46That's one of the fun things about this, as well,
0:21:46 > 0:21:50and as I sit here looking at you now, I do ask myself,
0:21:50 > 0:21:53"Well, why would I want to murder you?", for example.
0:21:53 > 0:21:55Yes, I'm wondering about that, too.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58I think it boils down to, basically, three emotions.
0:21:58 > 0:22:00One is fear,
0:22:00 > 0:22:03two is desire for something,
0:22:03 > 0:22:06and three is hatred.
0:22:06 > 0:22:08And so, what do I want that you have?
0:22:08 > 0:22:11Well, your success as a broadcaster, your programmes, your books...
0:22:11 > 0:22:14If there was a chance that I could get Anthony Horowitz On Sunday,
0:22:14 > 0:22:16for example, in the case of your demise,
0:22:16 > 0:22:17there's a motive for murder.
0:22:17 > 0:22:19I'll swap for your novel writing.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23Well, maybe, but then again, you know, a secret shared.
0:22:23 > 0:22:25You're a journalist. What do you know about me?
0:22:25 > 0:22:26In researching this programme,
0:22:26 > 0:22:29what did you find out that I might want to have concealed?
0:22:29 > 0:22:31A very good reason for a motive...for a murder.
0:22:31 > 0:22:36And the third one, well, passion and such.
0:22:36 > 0:22:38You're married, I think,
0:22:38 > 0:22:41and, you know, maybe your wife and I could be discussing this
0:22:41 > 0:22:43behind your back - that sort of thing.
0:22:43 > 0:22:44So, in fact, at the end of the day,
0:22:44 > 0:22:47there are very few reasons to murder somebody -
0:22:47 > 0:22:50for me to murder you - but they're very easy to find.
0:22:51 > 0:22:56The detective novel, by its nature, is a fantastical confection,
0:22:56 > 0:22:58but to suspend our disbelief,
0:22:58 > 0:23:03it helps if the plot is devised from the template of the real world.
0:23:05 > 0:23:09This holds true even for that least gritty of detective writers,
0:23:09 > 0:23:10Agatha Christie,
0:23:10 > 0:23:14as can be seen when you look at one of her ideas folders,
0:23:14 > 0:23:17which I have been lent by her personal archive.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21TYPEWRITER CLICKS
0:23:21 > 0:23:24Now, it's often said that Agatha Christie's novels are far-fetched,
0:23:24 > 0:23:27but she really liked to get her facts right,
0:23:27 > 0:23:30and what I've got in front of me is a kind of dossier
0:23:30 > 0:23:32that she would pore over and use.
0:23:32 > 0:23:33It's got newspaper cuttings.
0:23:33 > 0:23:36It's got journals and clippings.
0:23:36 > 0:23:39There's blueprints for potential characters.
0:23:39 > 0:23:41From the Daily Mirror in 1954,
0:23:41 > 0:23:45an article about a gambling cheat known as The Banker,
0:23:45 > 0:23:49caught after a spree through Europe's finest casinos.
0:23:49 > 0:23:53There's an article about the odds of a child having been born
0:23:53 > 0:23:55with brown eyes to blue-eyed parents -
0:23:55 > 0:23:59the return of the secret offspring being a Christie standby -
0:23:59 > 0:24:03and advice on arcane points of law that dictate
0:24:03 > 0:24:05who receives an inheritance.
0:24:05 > 0:24:08Everywhere around me, as I say, there are cuttings,
0:24:08 > 0:24:10there are journals, there are briefings,
0:24:10 > 0:24:12and a great deal about poisoning.
0:24:12 > 0:24:15Let me read you this from somebody who describes themselves
0:24:15 > 0:24:16simply as The Chemist.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20"A strychnine ointment with lard,
0:24:20 > 0:24:25"applied to the shaved scalp of a 12-pound dog, killed it in 20 minutes,
0:24:25 > 0:24:29"but a similar ointment made with Vaseline produced no effect."
0:24:29 > 0:24:32And on it goes about the different ways of killing people with
0:24:32 > 0:24:34strychnine, and concludes,
0:24:34 > 0:24:37"PS In the event of this document falling into the hands of
0:24:37 > 0:24:41"the police, be it hereby understood that the interest displayed in
0:24:41 > 0:24:45"the more deadly alkaloidal poisons is of a purely academic nature,
0:24:45 > 0:24:48"intended for literary use only.
0:24:48 > 0:24:52"PPS2 It was beastly to try it on the dog, anyway."
0:24:52 > 0:24:57Christie used poisons more often than any other crime writer,
0:24:57 > 0:25:03and in her hands, the stages of toxic poisoning were vital clues.
0:25:03 > 0:25:07"The patient has pupils dilated and reactionless,
0:25:07 > 0:25:10"dizziness and sounds in the ears,
0:25:10 > 0:25:14"and death in from four days to sometimes sooner."
0:25:14 > 0:25:18I think what this somewhat unsettling dossier demonstrates
0:25:18 > 0:25:22is that although Agatha Christie's imagination was macabre
0:25:22 > 0:25:24and tilted towards the unexpected -
0:25:24 > 0:25:28that's the whole point of the books, after all - it was grounded in fact.
0:25:28 > 0:25:30The details of English law.
0:25:30 > 0:25:34The medical effects of different kinds of poison, as demonstrated
0:25:34 > 0:25:37by the British Medical Journal and specialist correspondence.
0:25:37 > 0:25:41Details of what actually happened in the outside world as reported
0:25:41 > 0:25:42in the newspapers.
0:25:42 > 0:25:45This is a dark, dark world, true,
0:25:45 > 0:25:50but it's based on brute - and very often brutal - fact.
0:25:50 > 0:25:54Reality may provide inspiration, but the machinery of Christie's
0:25:54 > 0:25:57novels is assembled from repeated elements.
0:25:57 > 0:26:01Techniques like misdirection, where the reader's attention is
0:26:01 > 0:26:06deliberately diverted, crop up time and time again.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09The first authorised Poirot novels to have been published since
0:26:09 > 0:26:14Christie's death have been written by the crime writer Sophie Hannah.
0:26:14 > 0:26:18She has taken Dame Agatha's storytelling machine apart
0:26:18 > 0:26:20and examined it thoroughly.
0:26:20 > 0:26:24Agatha had certain tricks that she used regularly.
0:26:24 > 0:26:28One of them was the obvious suspect, who everyone...
0:26:28 > 0:26:31You know, five minutes after the murder, everyone's going,
0:26:31 > 0:26:33"Well, of course, it must have been him."
0:26:33 > 0:26:36And then it seems to be proved that it can't be that person,
0:26:36 > 0:26:37because of something.
0:26:37 > 0:26:40Either they were somewhere else, or someone alibis them,
0:26:40 > 0:26:44and so everybody rules out that character from suspicion.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48But then it turns out that whatever it was that ruled that person out
0:26:48 > 0:26:49is proved to be invalid,
0:26:49 > 0:26:52and therefore that person was the one who did it.
0:26:52 > 0:26:54There's also a thing in reverse.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57If there's a caddish, very handsome young man,
0:26:57 > 0:27:00who burns through all the family money...
0:27:00 > 0:27:03leaves a string of heartbroken women in his wake
0:27:03 > 0:27:05and everyone thinks he's a rotter,
0:27:05 > 0:27:07he will very rarely turn out to be the murderer,
0:27:07 > 0:27:10because Agatha had a slightly soft spot
0:27:10 > 0:27:12for caddish, handsome young men.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15So he will be a rotter, but fundamentally decent,
0:27:15 > 0:27:17because he is, at least, not a murderer.
0:27:17 > 0:27:19But I think, in a way, the boldest thing she does
0:27:19 > 0:27:21is not the misdirection -
0:27:21 > 0:27:23it's the active direction.
0:27:23 > 0:27:25She tells you what you ought to be thinking and when,
0:27:25 > 0:27:28and she gives you clues and help, and she says,
0:27:28 > 0:27:32"Think about that phrase that was overheard under the window,
0:27:32 > 0:27:35"and then think about the wax on the candlestick.
0:27:35 > 0:27:37"Surely, now, you can see everything."
0:27:37 > 0:27:39And we go, "No, no, no. Still can't see anything.
0:27:39 > 0:27:41"Still completely in the dark."
0:27:41 > 0:27:43So that is a sign of her confidence -
0:27:43 > 0:27:45she knows that she is one step ahead of you
0:27:45 > 0:27:48and will remain one step ahead of you.
0:27:48 > 0:27:49She is dancing in front of us.
0:27:49 > 0:27:51Yes, absolutely. I think I've only...
0:27:51 > 0:27:54I've read all of her books more than once,
0:27:54 > 0:27:58and there's only one where I guessed what was going on.
0:27:58 > 0:28:01Now, you're going to want to poison me after this confession,
0:28:01 > 0:28:04but I have to say, I don't terribly like Agatha Christie,
0:28:04 > 0:28:07because I find the characters, too often,
0:28:07 > 0:28:11too cardboard, too two-dimensional - I don't care about them very much.
0:28:11 > 0:28:13Tell me why I'm wrong.
0:28:13 > 0:28:16Agatha writes in a certain style and her style is
0:28:16 > 0:28:20to show the characters presenting as two-dimensional,
0:28:20 > 0:28:25because they're all about keeping up their respectable facades,
0:28:25 > 0:28:28and it's a mystery - you don't know who anyone is yet.
0:28:28 > 0:28:29You don't know who's done what.
0:28:29 > 0:28:33Everyone is portraying themselves as they want to be seen,
0:28:33 > 0:28:35so you see the two-dimensional version of everybody.
0:28:35 > 0:28:37So it's not that they're two-dimensional.
0:28:37 > 0:28:40It's that they want you to think they're two-dimensional.
0:28:40 > 0:28:42They are absolutely not two-dimensional,
0:28:42 > 0:28:46as is made clear by the constant examining
0:28:46 > 0:28:47of what they might be hiding
0:28:47 > 0:28:50and who they might really be under the surface.
0:28:50 > 0:28:54By the end of the book, that is when the facade falls
0:28:54 > 0:28:57and the three-dimensionalness of the characters
0:28:57 > 0:28:58is most powerfully felt.
0:28:58 > 0:29:01Behind the level of psychology - as it were, underneath it -
0:29:01 > 0:29:05there is a pervasive and strong sense of evil in Agatha Christie.
0:29:05 > 0:29:07Where do you think this comes from?
0:29:07 > 0:29:10You know, people wrongly describe her as a cosy crime writer,
0:29:10 > 0:29:13because there's not much blood and guts to be seen in her books,
0:29:13 > 0:29:17and the crimes have often happened offstage, as it were.
0:29:17 > 0:29:20But she's not at all cosy, because pervading all of her writing
0:29:20 > 0:29:23is a powerful awareness of evil,
0:29:23 > 0:29:25and not of evil as, you know,
0:29:25 > 0:29:28this monstrous thing that comes in from the outside, but...
0:29:30 > 0:29:33..the danger that any one of us might cross that line
0:29:33 > 0:29:35and do an evil thing.
0:29:35 > 0:29:37So, evil is like a little, bubbling, dark thing
0:29:37 > 0:29:39inside all of us which can be suppressed
0:29:39 > 0:29:41- or allowed to... - Yeah.- ..flare up.
0:29:41 > 0:29:43I do think Agatha saw evil as something
0:29:43 > 0:29:45that...that any of us, actually,
0:29:45 > 0:29:48could succumb to in a moment of great pain or weakness.
0:29:50 > 0:29:52If the classic murder mystery
0:29:52 > 0:29:55is about evil being unleashed into the world,
0:29:55 > 0:29:59then the ending is about it being vanquished.
0:29:59 > 0:30:00Have no fear, reader -
0:30:00 > 0:30:03everything will be made right.
0:30:08 > 0:30:10At the end of the first Poirot novel,
0:30:10 > 0:30:13the Belgian detective gathers the suspects together.
0:30:13 > 0:30:18Here, Christie established that classic whodunnit set piece -
0:30:18 > 0:30:20the drawing-room denouement.
0:30:21 > 0:30:24And this, she realised, presents the opportunity
0:30:24 > 0:30:26for a wonderful moment of theatre -
0:30:26 > 0:30:31a performance in which Poirot drops the masks on all the characters
0:30:31 > 0:30:34before revealing the identity of the killer.
0:30:34 > 0:30:39And it is a convention used time and time again in detective fiction -
0:30:39 > 0:30:43the sleuth eliminates all the suspects one by one,
0:30:43 > 0:30:45before coming to the real nub of the question...
0:30:45 > 0:30:46whodunnit?
0:30:46 > 0:30:51The detective is telling us what's really been going on.
0:30:51 > 0:30:55They're bringing order back from chaos
0:30:55 > 0:30:57and dispensing justice.
0:30:58 > 0:31:00What's even more remarkable about Poirot
0:31:00 > 0:31:05is that he is able to do all of this in a very silly voice.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09AS POIROT: And so, ve know zat ze killer vas left-'anded
0:31:09 > 0:31:14and had access to ze library and also zat the pauvre milord,
0:31:14 > 0:31:19he has changed his will one more time, which leaves...
0:31:19 > 0:31:20YOU, Miss Ross.
0:31:22 > 0:31:23Curse you, Andrew Marr!
0:31:24 > 0:31:28And so the killer is revealed, the mask slips,
0:31:28 > 0:31:31and we have an entirely satisfactory resolution.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36It's been said that these Golden Age detective stories
0:31:36 > 0:31:39offer readers something of a reassuring ritual -
0:31:39 > 0:31:44the established order is thrown into chaos by a horrendous crime,
0:31:44 > 0:31:48but we know that, in the end, everything will return to normal.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52There's no mention of those other little grey cells, the prison cells,
0:31:52 > 0:31:56next to the gallows where, undoubtedly, the killer is headed.
0:31:56 > 0:32:00The detective has arrived and dispensed justice
0:32:00 > 0:32:04and for almost everybody, life is again tickety-boo.
0:32:09 > 0:32:14The Golden Age detective stories had served as an escapist retreat,
0:32:14 > 0:32:19but with the violence and horror of the 1930s and '40s,
0:32:19 > 0:32:23this genteel fantasy began to feel more and more marooned.
0:32:25 > 0:32:28Different times called for different crimes -
0:32:28 > 0:32:31across the Atlantic, writers were making the case
0:32:31 > 0:32:35for a new kind of ultraviolent detective fiction,
0:32:35 > 0:32:37and it was an Anglo-American writer
0:32:37 > 0:32:40who was the new movement's minister of propaganda.
0:32:42 > 0:32:46"The English may not always be the best writers in the world,
0:32:46 > 0:32:49"but they are the best dull writers."
0:32:49 > 0:32:52So said Raymond Chandler, as he pulled out his Browning
0:32:52 > 0:32:54and took aim at the Golden Age,
0:32:54 > 0:32:56the creaking Golden Age detective stories.
0:32:56 > 0:32:59GUNSHOTS AND SCREAMING
0:32:59 > 0:33:00Raymond Chandler argued that
0:33:00 > 0:33:03the rules were showing their age, that they could be made to work
0:33:03 > 0:33:08with the addition of fast women, blazing guns and, in particular,
0:33:08 > 0:33:12the gumshoe sleuth in trench coat and hat.
0:33:12 > 0:33:15Chandler saw that the future of the detective novel
0:33:15 > 0:33:17lay with the detectives themselves,
0:33:17 > 0:33:21and not with ever more complex, elaborate puzzle plots.
0:33:21 > 0:33:24For him, Dashiell Hammett had pioneered the way forward
0:33:24 > 0:33:27with his hard-boiled detective stories.
0:33:27 > 0:33:31Hammett founded the hard-boiled genre -
0:33:31 > 0:33:33stories that felt real,
0:33:33 > 0:33:35where detection was a dirty business,
0:33:35 > 0:33:38born from vice and corruption.
0:33:43 > 0:33:46Detective writers aren't usually professional sleuths.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50Conan Doyle had been an ophthalmologist,
0:33:50 > 0:33:53Chandler an executive in the oil business.
0:33:53 > 0:33:56Agatha Christie certainly did her research,
0:33:56 > 0:33:59but she never had to catch a killer.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02Dashiell Hammett was rather different.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05He'd been a newsboy, a railway messenger,
0:34:05 > 0:34:06and worked in the docks
0:34:06 > 0:34:11before joining America's famous Pinkerton detective agency
0:34:11 > 0:34:13at the age of 21.
0:34:13 > 0:34:17It was tough, dirty and sometimes dangerous work.
0:34:17 > 0:34:20On one occasion, he became infested with lice
0:34:20 > 0:34:23after working undercover in a San Francisco jail.
0:34:23 > 0:34:26Another time, he followed a suspect into an alleyway
0:34:26 > 0:34:30and had his head smashed in with a brick.
0:34:30 > 0:34:32Alongside a prodigious drinking habit...
0:34:34 > 0:34:36..Hammett picked up TB,
0:34:36 > 0:34:40which meant that writing became the only career left open to him.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45He churned out detective stories for a pulp magazine called Black Mask,
0:34:45 > 0:34:48creating a laconic private investigator
0:34:48 > 0:34:51who led us into a world shaped and coloured
0:34:51 > 0:34:54by Hammett's own lived experiences.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03Hammett created The Continental Op -
0:35:03 > 0:35:08fat, 40-ish and the Continental Detective Agency's toughest
0:35:08 > 0:35:09and shrewdest officer.
0:35:13 > 0:35:17The Op became the protagonist of Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest,
0:35:17 > 0:35:20a story originally written for Black Mask,
0:35:20 > 0:35:25that was inspired by the writer's time as a union buster in Montana.
0:35:26 > 0:35:30Called into a town run by crooks, dubbed Poisonville,
0:35:30 > 0:35:34the Op discovers that his client has just been murdered.
0:35:36 > 0:35:41"I'm opening up Poisonville from Adam's apple to ankles",
0:35:41 > 0:35:43declares the Op.
0:35:43 > 0:35:47The law is corrupt and he decides the only way to clear up the town
0:35:47 > 0:35:50is to set the gangs against each other.
0:35:50 > 0:35:55"It's easier to have them killed", he says coldly. "Easier and surer."
0:35:59 > 0:36:02The Op doesn't work for the law.
0:36:02 > 0:36:06The hard-boiled private eye works for cash.
0:36:06 > 0:36:09On the side of the angels, but only just.
0:36:10 > 0:36:14Hammett made detective fiction less about solving a puzzle
0:36:14 > 0:36:19and more about the detective's - often bloody - quest for justice.
0:36:19 > 0:36:22His private investigator has to get involved,
0:36:22 > 0:36:24not simply solve the murder.
0:36:24 > 0:36:27In this case, it means more than getting your hands dirty,
0:36:27 > 0:36:29it means getting them covered in blood.
0:36:33 > 0:36:37As Chandler wrote, "Down these mean streets a man must go
0:36:37 > 0:36:42"who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."
0:36:45 > 0:36:49The detective in such stories must be such a man.
0:36:49 > 0:36:52He is the hero, he is everything.
0:36:54 > 0:36:58Of course, the mean streets are as much a prefabricated convention
0:36:58 > 0:37:00as the body in the country house library.
0:37:02 > 0:37:07But the visceral language and imagery of Hammett and Chandler
0:37:07 > 0:37:10made their urban noir feel authentic.
0:37:10 > 0:37:14They have a reality. They described it extremely well.
0:37:14 > 0:37:18There's a kind of vigour and originality in the metaphors,
0:37:18 > 0:37:20in the similes used.
0:37:20 > 0:37:24It's creative in a way that the detective story here is not.
0:37:24 > 0:37:27It's really like strong liquor compared with milk
0:37:27 > 0:37:29that's slightly gone sour...
0:37:29 > 0:37:31this side of the Atlantic.
0:37:31 > 0:37:33It's got that punch about it.
0:37:36 > 0:37:39Audiences wanted their detectives to move around
0:37:39 > 0:37:40in a world that was real.
0:37:43 > 0:37:46On this side of the Atlantic, that created a problem.
0:37:47 > 0:37:50With no real-world tradition of the private eye here,
0:37:50 > 0:37:54how could British detective fiction achieve the authenticity
0:37:54 > 0:37:55that readers now expected?
0:38:00 > 0:38:03This is Fabian of Scotland Yard.
0:38:03 > 0:38:05The answer lay in what people had started watching
0:38:05 > 0:38:07on the small screen.
0:38:09 > 0:38:14In the '50s and '60s, audiences grew conversant in police procedure
0:38:14 > 0:38:16by watching shows like Z Cars.
0:38:18 > 0:38:20Hey, you!
0:38:20 > 0:38:24Inevitably, this altered the way that detective novels were written.
0:38:30 > 0:38:34The action moved into a police station.
0:38:34 > 0:38:40The sidekick became a detective sergeant, his boss, a DI.
0:38:40 > 0:38:41Even without the uniform,
0:38:41 > 0:38:45the detective inspector was now the ultimate insider.
0:38:47 > 0:38:50The way the story develops is now shaped
0:38:50 > 0:38:54by established police procedure so that normally, for instance,
0:38:54 > 0:38:57the detective arrives after the murder has been committed,
0:38:57 > 0:39:00instead of hanging around in some louche country house or bouncing
0:39:00 > 0:39:03about on the Orient Express.
0:39:03 > 0:39:07Then there's the different texture to the narrative itself.
0:39:07 > 0:39:10When the investigators are part of an organisation, the police,
0:39:10 > 0:39:14known for its stifling bureaucracy and the terrible toll
0:39:14 > 0:39:16this work can place on families,
0:39:16 > 0:39:19these things have to become part of the story.
0:39:19 > 0:39:22So too does the nature of the investigation.
0:39:22 > 0:39:26This is incremental work - sometimes tedious, sometimes slow.
0:39:26 > 0:39:28Progress through process.
0:39:29 > 0:39:351964 saw the publication of the debut novel from Ruth Rendell,
0:39:35 > 0:39:37who, more than anyone, brought British crime fiction
0:39:37 > 0:39:39into the modern age.
0:39:39 > 0:39:43From Doon With Death began the Inspector Wexford series of novels
0:39:43 > 0:39:47that were later filmed for television.
0:39:47 > 0:39:49We follow Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford
0:39:49 > 0:39:53around the fictional market town of Kingsmarkham,
0:39:53 > 0:39:56a place where violence lurks amid the everyday,
0:39:56 > 0:40:00and bodies are found under suburban hedges.
0:40:00 > 0:40:05Wexford faces down the macabre by being reassuringly ordinary.
0:40:05 > 0:40:07He solves his cases with patient persistence
0:40:07 > 0:40:10and careful examination of witnesses.
0:40:10 > 0:40:12Good morning.
0:40:12 > 0:40:14As time is of the essence, let's be as succinct as possible.
0:40:14 > 0:40:19And the series follows Wexford and his team as they slowly develop
0:40:19 > 0:40:21from book to book.
0:40:21 > 0:40:25There's the brusque but surprisingly liberal Wexford himself,
0:40:25 > 0:40:29the archetypal tough-but-fair copper with hidden depths.
0:40:29 > 0:40:34He's forever given to quoting Proust and Jane Austen, never a bad sign,
0:40:34 > 0:40:37and he worries a lot about his daughters, Sheila and Sylvia.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41Sylvia gets married and divorced and becomes a militant feminist
0:40:41 > 0:40:45in the 1970s before going on to run a women's refuge.
0:40:45 > 0:40:49Then there's Mike Burden, Wexford's sidekick.
0:40:49 > 0:40:52More conservative than Wexford, Burden starts the series
0:40:52 > 0:40:56being judgmental about anyone who doesn't conform to his own
0:40:56 > 0:40:59white-sliced version of normal.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02But then we see him fall apart when his wife dies,
0:41:02 > 0:41:04and Burden begins to mellow,
0:41:04 > 0:41:08becoming less judgmental of other people and their weaknesses.
0:41:08 > 0:41:11To that extent, he's rather like Britain itself.
0:41:13 > 0:41:15But if society was changing,
0:41:15 > 0:41:20it was also becoming more fragmented and less innocent.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23Over 24 novels, Wexford's team have to confront crimes
0:41:23 > 0:41:27that have now come to seem depressingly routine.
0:41:29 > 0:41:33Child abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence.
0:41:35 > 0:41:38Ruth Rendell used detective fiction to hold
0:41:38 > 0:41:42a mirror up to contemporary Britain and reflect back
0:41:42 > 0:41:46the sinister stuff lying just beneath the surface.
0:41:46 > 0:41:48So that's a bit weird, isn't it?
0:41:48 > 0:41:51The very same way of writing we used to turn to
0:41:51 > 0:41:55to escape the problems of the world has now made itself the expert
0:41:55 > 0:41:59at anatomising the rotten heart of how things are.
0:42:10 > 0:42:12At its most basic, if you strip away all the puzzles,
0:42:12 > 0:42:17crime is really about individual motivation and choice.
0:42:17 > 0:42:20One person does something nasty to another person.
0:42:20 > 0:42:23But behind all of that, there are the wider social pressures.
0:42:23 > 0:42:28What was the criminal's upbringing? What about class and money?
0:42:28 > 0:42:30What about the corrupt elites who allowed all of this to happen
0:42:30 > 0:42:32in the first place?
0:42:32 > 0:42:35Thorny questions all that were taken up by
0:42:35 > 0:42:40a radical generation who came of age in the 1980s.
0:42:42 > 0:42:43One of them was Mike Phillips.
0:42:45 > 0:42:50To tell the stories he wanted, he created Sam Dean.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53With few black policemen in the force,
0:42:53 > 0:42:55Phillips had no choice but to make Sam a private eye.
0:42:58 > 0:43:00I couldn't imagine...
0:43:00 > 0:43:06I really could not imagine a policeman being someone
0:43:06 > 0:43:08that you could go and talk to.
0:43:08 > 0:43:13I couldn't imagine a police station being
0:43:13 > 0:43:19a building that I would go to if I was in trouble, you know?
0:43:19 > 0:43:27So it was absolutely natural that Sam became a private detective.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36Sam Dean is a freelance journalist come private investigator.
0:43:36 > 0:43:40He's smart, urbane and sophisticated.
0:43:40 > 0:43:43He's also streetwise and black.
0:43:43 > 0:43:45Phillips uses him to show us a different London
0:43:45 > 0:43:48to the one we normally see in '80s fiction.
0:43:49 > 0:43:53Sam Dean was part of the landscape I was writing about.
0:43:55 > 0:44:00He was so much part of that life.
0:44:00 > 0:44:06He lived in caffs and pubs and rented rooms.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13When I saw pictures of London in magazines or brochures,
0:44:13 > 0:44:17I recognised the familiar landmarks, like Big Ben,
0:44:17 > 0:44:21but they had little to do with the city I lived in.
0:44:21 > 0:44:26To me, London was an endless succession of streets like this.
0:44:26 > 0:44:30Their features continually altering and reforming.
0:44:30 > 0:44:33Grimaces on the face of a toothless old man.
0:44:40 > 0:44:46The figure of Sam Dean allowed me to talk about racism.
0:44:48 > 0:44:51It allowed me to talk about identity.
0:44:53 > 0:44:58He knew what it felt like to be racially abused, for instance.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01He knew what it was like to...
0:45:04 > 0:45:11..to look for a job for a long time and not find one.
0:45:11 > 0:45:12He knew all those things.
0:45:14 > 0:45:16The Sam Dean books were published
0:45:16 > 0:45:18during a particularly traumatic moment
0:45:18 > 0:45:21in the story of multicultural Britain,
0:45:21 > 0:45:25around the time of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28There's an underlying threat of violence around Sam,
0:45:28 > 0:45:31barely acknowledged by his white friends.
0:45:33 > 0:45:34What happened to you?
0:45:36 > 0:45:37Long story.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41That was a very strong motivation in writing the thing,
0:45:41 > 0:45:45that actually there was this experience,
0:45:45 > 0:45:49there was this huge thing happening
0:45:49 > 0:45:53and I could write about it,
0:45:53 > 0:45:56and nobody else was doing it.
0:45:56 > 0:45:59It was amazing.
0:45:59 > 0:46:01He was an animal.
0:46:06 > 0:46:07An animal.
0:46:11 > 0:46:12Go on.
0:46:12 > 0:46:16Say it, just like the rest of us.
0:46:16 > 0:46:20Crime fiction does more than simply comment on contemporary society,
0:46:20 > 0:46:23sometimes it goes further and becomes
0:46:23 > 0:46:25the proverbial canary in the coal mine,
0:46:25 > 0:46:27giving us the very first information
0:46:27 > 0:46:30about something going seriously wrong.
0:46:30 > 0:46:32In her 1997 novel,
0:46:32 > 0:46:37The Wire In The Blood, Val McDermid features Jacko Vance,
0:46:37 > 0:46:39a charismatic television presenter
0:46:39 > 0:46:43who is also a serial rapist and sadistic killer.
0:46:43 > 0:46:47No, he's not quite Jimmy Savile, but the echoes are uncanny.
0:46:47 > 0:46:49He's adored by young women,
0:46:49 > 0:46:53he runs marathons for charity and he volunteers in a hospital.
0:46:53 > 0:46:55Sounds a tad familiar.
0:47:03 > 0:47:05"He had learned not to show the currents that moved
0:47:05 > 0:47:08"under the surface,
0:47:08 > 0:47:11"to present a bland and acceptable face.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14"Other men might have revealed some traces of the seething
0:47:14 > 0:47:18"excitement that swirled inside,
0:47:18 > 0:47:21"but not him.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24"He was too practised at dissemblement."
0:47:26 > 0:47:32McDermid invites us inside Vance's mind, and it's a spectacularly ugly
0:47:32 > 0:47:34place, but she also shows how
0:47:34 > 0:47:38he gets away with it by hiding behind his public persona.
0:47:38 > 0:47:42He's just so very, very famous on television that
0:47:42 > 0:47:44he can't have done anything that nasty.
0:47:45 > 0:47:47Now what I find disturbing about this book,
0:47:47 > 0:47:50apart from the story itself obviously, is that it was written
0:47:50 > 0:47:55and published years and years before Jimmy Savile was exposed.
0:47:55 > 0:47:58I work for an organisation, the BBC, which is meant to be filled with
0:47:58 > 0:48:02hundreds and hundreds of trained observers, looking and listening.
0:48:02 > 0:48:05Now we'd heard vague rumours about Jimmy Savile,
0:48:05 > 0:48:08but it took a crime novelist, Val McDermid,
0:48:08 > 0:48:11to look and look for long enough and then frankly,
0:48:11 > 0:48:15to have the balls to publish it way before Savile himself died.
0:48:25 > 0:48:27Val, can I ask about Jacko Vance, a psychopathic,
0:48:27 > 0:48:29self-loving television celebrity.
0:48:29 > 0:48:31I don't know where you come across these people!
0:48:31 > 0:48:35Where did the idea for this monstrous, monstrous figure come from?
0:48:35 > 0:48:39I remembered the stories that I had heard over the years,
0:48:39 > 0:48:44working in newspapers, about Jimmy Savile and I thought that
0:48:44 > 0:48:46is somebody that I can base a character on.
0:48:46 > 0:48:49I'd interviewed Savile back in the late 1970s and I thought
0:48:49 > 0:48:53he was a deeply unpleasant man, but his public face was very
0:48:53 > 0:48:56different from the face that he showed when it was just the two of us together.
0:48:56 > 0:49:00I thought celebrity now is the new shield,
0:49:00 > 0:49:03you can do whatever you like if you're famous enough, if you like.
0:49:03 > 0:49:05We could never tell the story at the time because we couldn't
0:49:05 > 0:49:08get enough weight of credible evidence against him.
0:49:08 > 0:49:13I thought, this is a story I can tell in fiction. And so I think...
0:49:13 > 0:49:17- I thought I sailed very close to the wind.- So did I.
0:49:17 > 0:49:18But nobody got it!
0:49:18 > 0:49:21Nobody said to me, "That's Jimmy Savile, isn't it?"
0:49:21 > 0:49:25Because I made the character charming and handsome and
0:49:25 > 0:49:29on that superficial level, people didn't see beyond that.
0:49:29 > 0:49:33So the handsome and charming bit probably saved me from being sued.
0:49:33 > 0:49:37Are you conscious of trying to write novels which tell us about
0:49:37 > 0:49:40society right now in the 21st century?
0:49:40 > 0:49:45The crime novel lets us shine a light on those things that maybe
0:49:45 > 0:49:48could be done better or could be done differently.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51I've sometimes said I've spent most of my adult life in a state
0:49:51 > 0:49:53of rage.
0:49:53 > 0:49:55I think the desire for change,
0:49:55 > 0:49:59the desire for things to be better, is something that fuels
0:49:59 > 0:50:04a lot of fiction and is what underpins a lot of what we write.
0:50:04 > 0:50:06It's about saying, "These things are wrong,
0:50:06 > 0:50:07"these are not good things."
0:50:07 > 0:50:11Val, in the novels of say Agatha Christie, there is almost no
0:50:11 > 0:50:14violence, there might be a gentle tap on the back of a head,
0:50:14 > 0:50:17there might be a glass of something arsenicy,
0:50:17 > 0:50:19why has it become necessary to include
0:50:19 > 0:50:24more direct violence and sometimes pretty horrible stuff in your books?
0:50:24 > 0:50:28I think if you're claiming to write novels which have any basis
0:50:28 > 0:50:33in social realism then you have to confront very directly the
0:50:33 > 0:50:36nature of violence and the way it contaminates everyone who
0:50:36 > 0:50:40comes into contact with it, the way it spreads out like a miasma
0:50:40 > 0:50:43and infects people's lives.
0:50:43 > 0:50:45I think if you're writing about these kind of things,
0:50:45 > 0:50:48it's a bit disingenuous to say, "Tony looked at the body and thought,
0:50:48 > 0:50:51"the killer is a left-handed man with a limp." You've got to show the
0:50:51 > 0:50:55- reader what's going on... - What the body looks like.- Yes.
0:50:55 > 0:50:58And what's happened, what's part of the process.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01If you're actually going to investigate the process of someone's
0:51:01 > 0:51:03mind that takes them to this point where they commit these acts,
0:51:03 > 0:51:06then you have to know what the acts are, otherwise it becomes this
0:51:06 > 0:51:10completely denatured thing. This is not a parlour game.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13This is not the Agatha Christie crossword puzzle,
0:51:13 > 0:51:16it's writers attempting to tackle difficult things and
0:51:16 > 0:51:19the terrible things that happen in the real world.
0:51:24 > 0:51:26As the body count piles up,
0:51:26 > 0:51:31so greater emphasis is placed on the victim in the mortuary and
0:51:31 > 0:51:35the fact this was once a living breathing individual.
0:51:36 > 0:51:39I think now we're much more shocked
0:51:39 > 0:51:42by death because we see it
0:51:42 > 0:51:43less in everyday life.
0:51:44 > 0:51:48People even in the 1950s used to stop as hearses went by
0:51:48 > 0:51:51in the street. People had mourning clothes.
0:51:51 > 0:51:56Now, death is removed from us in society and what crime
0:51:56 > 0:52:00fiction does is to bring it back, is to remind us how present it is,
0:52:00 > 0:52:06and how terrifying that is, but how we have to learn how to address it.
0:52:06 > 0:52:12We have to add a much more complex moral dimension and that's
0:52:12 > 0:52:14the task of the contemporary writer.
0:52:20 > 0:52:22At the end of the detective story,
0:52:22 > 0:52:26there used to be a form of consolation when the crime was
0:52:26 > 0:52:28solved and order was restored,
0:52:28 > 0:52:32but we all know that life isn't like that.
0:52:32 > 0:52:36One criminal goes to prison, but another comes along to replace them.
0:52:38 > 0:52:40But maybe modern detective fiction offers
0:52:40 > 0:52:43a different kind of consolation,
0:52:43 > 0:52:45that there are still people who
0:52:45 > 0:52:50selflessly are willing to look into some very dark places on our behalf.
0:52:51 > 0:52:55Sadly, when you look upon death, there's a price that must be paid.
0:53:04 > 0:53:07No-one is more aware of this than Ian Rankin's
0:53:07 > 0:53:09Detective Inspector John Rebus.
0:53:10 > 0:53:13Rebus has put away countless bad guys,
0:53:13 > 0:53:17but he's basically much more at home in the pub than the police station.
0:53:17 > 0:53:22He survives just about on a bracing diet of booze and fried food
0:53:22 > 0:53:25and cheese sandwiches.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28He's had to deal with some pretty unsavoury types,
0:53:28 > 0:53:32retired serial killers, dodgy policeman,
0:53:32 > 0:53:35the very worst kind of politician, but we follow him,
0:53:35 > 0:53:38empty crisp packet by empty crisp packet,
0:53:38 > 0:53:44empty fag packet by empty fag packet because, although he's a walking
0:53:44 > 0:53:51public health disaster on two wobbly legs, Rebus always gets results.
0:53:51 > 0:53:54If something terrible has happened, you want a detective like Rebus.
0:53:54 > 0:53:58Somebody who will go the extra mile, somebody who ain't going to give up.
0:53:58 > 0:54:00You give Rebus a case, he's going to gnaw away at it until
0:54:00 > 0:54:04he makes some progress. He ain't giving it up. Of course,
0:54:04 > 0:54:07most cops in real life ain't like that.
0:54:07 > 0:54:09They're not as full-on as he is,
0:54:09 > 0:54:12they're not thinking about the job 24/7.
0:54:12 > 0:54:15He's got no social life, he's got no family around him, he's got
0:54:15 > 0:54:19nothing that would get in the way of him just focusing on the case.
0:54:19 > 0:54:24He focuses on the cases I give him because it stops him having
0:54:24 > 0:54:28to think too much about himself and what a, you know,
0:54:28 > 0:54:31flawed human being he's been, a flawed husband,
0:54:31 > 0:54:33a flawed father, a flawed individual.
0:54:35 > 0:54:38But Rebus's flaws make him the perfect modern fictional
0:54:38 > 0:54:42detective and even though the wheezing old bloodhound first
0:54:42 > 0:54:46retired several books ago, the fact that crime will never go away
0:54:46 > 0:54:49means that his work will never be done.
0:54:49 > 0:54:52What modern-day crime writers have to deal with is this notion
0:54:52 > 0:54:56that the world is still rotten and no matter how many times
0:54:56 > 0:54:59Rebus puts somebody in jail or puts away as many bad guys as
0:54:59 > 0:55:03he possibly can, he knows the next one is just around the corner.
0:55:03 > 0:55:06That's become very frustrating to him through the course of his career.
0:55:06 > 0:55:09He's a bit like King Canute, trying to keep back the waves.
0:55:09 > 0:55:14So he piles it all on his shoulders, as with many fictional
0:55:14 > 0:55:18detectives in crime fiction, he carries the weight of that around.
0:55:18 > 0:55:23He carries around all the ghosts of the people who have been killed who
0:55:23 > 0:55:29he's tried to find some justice for or closure for, for their families.
0:55:29 > 0:55:33He carries around the weight of all the criminals he never quite put away.
0:55:37 > 0:55:41Now, all this is beginning to seem just a tad unfair.
0:55:41 > 0:55:43We started by talking about how detective fiction was
0:55:43 > 0:55:46a game played between the reader and the writer,
0:55:46 > 0:55:50but now it seems that whoever wins that game, regardless of that,
0:55:50 > 0:55:53the loser is always the fictional detectives.
0:55:53 > 0:55:56They have gone to the dark side on behalf of us,
0:55:56 > 0:55:58our reading pleasure,
0:55:58 > 0:56:00and perhaps because we've enjoyed ourselves too much,
0:56:00 > 0:56:05I don't know, they always end up paying a deep psychological penalty.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10I'm not going to get too worked up about this,
0:56:10 > 0:56:12after all it is just a rule,
0:56:12 > 0:56:18part of the mechanism that's kept the story machine churning for over a century.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26And if you want an idea of how universal these rules are, you
0:56:26 > 0:56:30only have to look at that unlikely explosion of detective
0:56:30 > 0:56:34fiction that has erupted from those placid Nordic countries in
0:56:34 > 0:56:37the last few years and turned crime
0:56:37 > 0:56:41dramas and novels into Scandinavia's greatest export.
0:56:42 > 0:56:46These are tales that are still powered by a puzzle,
0:56:46 > 0:56:51that play fair, where detectives go everywhere, often with a sidekick.
0:56:51 > 0:56:57That probe the dark heart of society and has there ever been
0:56:57 > 0:57:01a more flawed detective than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo?
0:57:04 > 0:57:06Father Knox would surely have approved.
0:57:06 > 0:57:11The late lamented PD James used to say that because the
0:57:11 > 0:57:15detective novel relies on the tiny details of everyday life,
0:57:15 > 0:57:18it's also a fantastic form of social history.
0:57:20 > 0:57:22Historians in 100 years' time,
0:57:22 > 0:57:25if they want to know what life was like at the beginning of
0:57:25 > 0:57:29the 21st century, will turn to Ian Rankin and Val McDermid for
0:57:29 > 0:57:34the smell, the tiny granular detail of how we lived our lives.
0:57:36 > 0:57:40Those historians will discover the best of us and the worst of us,
0:57:40 > 0:57:43and really how we lived,
0:57:43 > 0:57:47and all of this delivered through the detective novel, a cheap,
0:57:47 > 0:57:51disposable, interactive puzzle on paper.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54A throwaway entertainment which will outlast us all.
0:57:57 > 0:57:59Next time.
0:57:59 > 0:58:04Let's lose our grip on reality, to delve into the impossible world of
0:58:04 > 0:58:09fantasy fiction, where magical stories of fantastical creatures,
0:58:09 > 0:58:15heroes and dark forces reveal a surprising take on real life.
0:58:17 > 0:58:20Now, has this uncovered the inner detective in you?
0:58:20 > 0:58:24Find out by creating your own whodunnit crime plot or
0:58:24 > 0:58:28simply learn more about how to write fiction by going to the BBC
0:58:28 > 0:58:32website on the screen and following the links to the Open University.