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Vicente Flores Jr.

Professor Lynda Hass
Intensive Writing 37
November 6th, 2014
Conventions of the Detective Genre
The detective genre is universally popular and is of great significance as the world has
become increasingly complex. Sir Arthur Conan Doyles creation of the character, Sherlock
Holmes, has made him an iconic figure where he is directly associated with the word detective.
Doyles popularity during the Victorian era has contributed to the popularity of the detective
genre that still exists today. His detective stories have set the standards that all detective novels
would follow in later years with characteristics that are expected in detective stories. These
conventions that Doyle had created through inspiration, imagination, and manipulation had
culminated into what defines the detective genre. Through these conventions, scholars have been
able to analyze the popularity of the detective genre that has become present in many forms such
as media and television.
Scholars have identified the different conventions of the detective novels that Doyle had
written that had contributed to the genres rise and popularity. These important conventions
include the detective character himself and his characteristics. In the terms of Sherlock Holmes, a
detective would display a remarkable talent of deductions and would be an essential
characteristic of a detective. In Doyles The Red Headed League, Holmes was able to deduce
information that related to his client, Mr. Jabez Wilson such as that he [had] at some time done
manual labour, that he [took] snuff, that he [was] a Freemason, that he [had] been in China, and

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that he [had] done a considerable amount of writing lately (The Red-Headed League). This was
one of the many instances that Holmes would display his incredibly talent of deduction by mere
observation. It is this deductive reasoning that contributed to the popularity of Holmes and the
scientific method. This deductive reasoning is seen as a trademark for Holmes and according to
Binyons "Murder Will Out": The Detective in Fiction, it is seen as showy displays of what, so
Conan Doyle informs us, has come to be known as Sherlockholmitos in South America (Binyon
11). Holmes ability to do such thing popularized and perpetuated misuse of the term,
deduction (Binyon 10).
Following with the convention of the detective character, the eccentric behavior of
Sherlock Holmes would define his character. This is shown through the specific collection of
knowledge and the ability to deduce anything by just observing it. According to Jerome
Delamater and Ruth Prigozy in Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction, Holmes
collection of knowledge, too, is eccentric, is some areas highly detailed and in others
demonstrating astonishing ignorance and indifference (Delamater 22). For example, in The
Red-Headed League, Holmes is able to infer that Mr. Wilson received his tattoo while in China
since Holmes has a considerable amount of knowledge about tattoos. However, Holmes would
demonstrate ignorance at times where Watson noted that [His] surprise reached a climax,
however, when [he] found incidentally that [Sherlock Holmes] was ignorant of the Copernican
Theory and of the composition of the Solar System (A Study in Scarlet loc. 25). This makes
Holmes very interactive with knowledge, but also leads to odd habits such as [conducting]
chemical experiments in his rooms, [keeping] tobacco in the toe of a [Persian] slipper, and
during periods of intellectual boredom, [using] cocaine (Delamater 22). But, it is this eccentric
behavior that defined the detective genre, along with his show way of making deductions.

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The detective genre was commemorated on the basis of its narration and structure which
is considered a plot convention and is one of the many important conventions of the genre.
Mostly all the detective stories of Doyle follow a formulaic pattern that seems repetitive, but its
unique pattern lies in its double and duplicitous plot. This means that the story is narrated by
"bewildered bystanders who observe the crime and are to some extent threatened by it but who
cannot arrive at its solution" (Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction 1). In most of the
Sherlock Holmes stories, the role of the narrator was always given to Watson. This allowed for
the plot convention through narration of the detective genre to reoccur in all the Sherlock
Holmes stories. Because Watson was the narrator in most of the stories, he was relatable to the
reader since he was in no comparison like Holmes, where he was oblivious to many clues and
hints like the reader. In the chapter Doyle from An Introduction to the Detective Story by
Leroy Panek, Doyle took inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, the creator of the detective, but led
him to eliminate many aspects of Poes writing. In contrast to Poes nameless narrator that was
never presented or involved in his detective stories, Doyle realized the uses for plot and
characterization of the detective's assistant as the narrator (Doyle 80). With Watson as the
narrator, the writer [would] use the narrator's ignorance to hide important facts and through him
[could] praise the detective and keep him civilly reticent at the same time (Doyle 80). This
allowed the writer to manipulate the plot for the reader and made the detective stories closer to a
pure narrative, which, according to George Dove in The Different Story, allowed the reader
[to approach] the narrative at the outset with much of the context already supplied (The
Different Story 24).
Continuing with the structure convention of the detective genre, the detective genre had
to follow a repeating structure where, according to George Dove in "The Different Story,"

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exhibits four qualities in which "the detective story is transitory, without long-range goals or
purposes; it is fundamentally an intellectual undertaking; it is recreational, intended primarily to
relax; and it is a disciplined, delimited literary form (The Different Story 2). For example, in the
beginning of The Hound of the Baskerville, Holmes was examining a cane left by Dr. James
Mortimer and deduced that Dr. Mortimer was a house-surgeon or a house-physician little
more than a senior student. And [had left Charing Cross Hospital] five years ago (The Hound of
the Baskerville loc. 7) without formally meeting him in the first place. These type of scenes
appear in nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes novels and all were designated in following the same
structured pattern of writing. Because of this, rules were to be followed when writing detective
novels such as writing a novel with a restricted structure and introducing expected conventions.
This makes the detective genre structured that is described by four characteristics: the detectiveprotagonist, the detection plot, the problem to be solved, and the solution (The Different Story
24). This was especially important since the audience of the detective novel during the Victorian
era were from the middle class which made authors of the detective genre write stories that were
not complicated and easy to follow, in contrast to other contemporary writers before the
Victorian era such as Edgar Allan Poe.
The detective genre provides many conventions that readers would expect, making it
uncomplicated to read and can be presented in several other forms such as media, television, or
cinema. Thus, the detective genre became extremely popular through all mediums and proves as
cultural significance to the world. From the stories of Dupin by Edgar Allan Poe to the creation
of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle, the detective genre provides undying conventions that are
still present in most detective novels of today and will continue to be introduced in detective
novels of the later years.

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Works Cited
Binyon, T.J. "Murder Will Out": The Detective in Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989. 9-12. Print.
Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sharon, MA: Higher Read, LLC 20143.
Kindle eBook. Online.
Delamater, Jerome and Ruth Prigozy, eds. Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction. New
York: Praeger, 1997. Print. PDF File.
Dove, George N. The Different Story. The Reader and the Detective Story. Bowling Green,
OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997. PDF File.
Panek, Leroy. Beginnings. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH:
Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987. PDF File.
Panek, Leroy. Doyle. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1987. PDF File.