The La Jolla Grapevine
A
Todd J. Phelps
Film. Chickenhow Productions. A mystery-comedy about wine, caviar, and
... murder? Starring Sam P.
Whitehead,
Christine Fazzino,
Julia Garcia Combs, Todd J. Phelps, Jenn
Lewis,
Dalton O'
Dell,
Claudia Blair, Thaine H.
Allison, Jr.,
Molly Jacobs
From
Wikipedia:
Mystery (fiction)
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Mystery)
"Mystery" redirects here. For other uses, see Mystery (disambiguation).
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August 2006)
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term that is often used as a synonym of detective fiction — in other words a novel or short story in which a detective (either professional or amateur) solves a crime. The term "mystery fiction" may sometimes be limited to the subset of detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle element and its logical solution (cf. whodunit), as a contrast to hardboiled detective stories which focus on action and gritty realism. However, in more general usage "mystery" may be used to describe any form of crime fiction, even if there is no mystery to be solved. For example, the
Mystery Writers of America describes itself as "the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre".[1]
Although normally associated with the crime genre, the term "mystery fiction" may in certain situations refer to a completely different genre, where the focus is on supernatural mystery (even if no crime is involved). This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the
1930s and
1940s, where titles such as
Dime Mystery,
Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Mystery offered what at the time were described as "weird menace" stories supernatural horror in the vein of
Grand Guignol. This contrasted with parallel titles such as Dime
Detective, Thrilling Detective and Spicy Detective, which contained conventional hardboiled crime fiction. The first use of "mystery" in this sense was by Dime Mystery, which started out as an ordinary crime fiction magazine but switched to "weird menace" during the latter part of 1933.
The earliest known murder mystery[3] and suspense thriller with multiple plot twists[4] and detective fiction elements[5] was "
The Three Apples", or in
Arabic, Hikayat al-sabiyya 'l-muqtula ("The Tale of the Murdered
Young Woman"),[6] one of the tales narrated by
Scheherazade in the
One Thousand and One Nights (
Arabian Nights). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest that is painted pink with flowers on it along the
Tigris river and he sells it to the
Abbasid Caliph,
Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier,
Ja'far ibn Yahya, to solve the crime and find the murdererer. This whodunit mystery may be considered an archetype for detective fiction.[7][8]
Mystery fiction can be divided into several categories, among them the 'cozy mystery,' 'police procedural,' 'hardboiled,' etc.
[edit]See also
Detective fiction
List of crime writers
Category:
Mystery novels
List of mystery writers
List of thriller authors
Mystery film
The Top 100 Crime Novels of All
Time
Category:Mystery television
Giallo
[edit]
External links
The most honored Mystery books
A
Guide to
Classic Mystery and Detection
Cozy Mystery reading list
Great Mysteries reading list from Bookmarks
Magazine
A reading of "The
Big Bow Mystery" one of the earliest locked-room mystery novels
[edit]References
^ Mystery Writers of America
^ Haining,
Peter (
2000).
The Classic Era of
American Pulp Magazines. Prion
Books.
ISBN 1-85375-388-2.
^ Marzolph, Ulrich (
2006),
The Arabian Nights Reader,
Wayne State University Press, pp. 240-2, ISBN 0814332595
^ Pinault,
David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights,
Brill Publishers, pp. 93, 95, 97, ISBN 9004095306
^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, pp. 91 & 93, ISBN 9004095306
^ Marzolph, Ulrich (2006), The Arabian Nights Reader, Wayne State University Press, p. 240, ISBN 0814332595
^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, pp. 86-91, ISBN 9004095306
^ Marzolph, Ulrich (2006), The Arabian Nights Reader, Wayne State University Press, pp. 241-2, ISBN 0814332595
^ J.
Madison Davis: How graphic can a mystery be?,
World Literature Today, July-August
2007
Categories: Articles needing expert attention since August 2006 | Mystery fiction |
Crime fiction |
Fiction by genre
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