Mystery Story

Mystery Story, umbrella term for a type of fiction with several subgenres, such as the detective story, including the police procedural; and the romantic suspense, a derivative of the Gothic novel. These types of fiction often deal with crime—frequently murder—and its successful solution. Suspense arises in the course of seeking that solution, which places the detective, others in pursuit of the villain, or innocent victims, in jeopardy. The elements of mystery and suspense also heighten a great deal of science fiction writing.

Mystery stories also include spy stories, such as the classic thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) by Scottish writer and statesman John Buchan. The spy novel is primarily a 20th-century literary form, and the earliest examples of the type include books by British writers Erskine Childers (The Riddle of the Sands,1903), Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent,1907), William Le Queux (Spies of the Kaiser,1909) and E. Phillips Oppenheim (The Great Impersonation,1920). Later British writers used the form of the spy novel to treat larger themes. Such authors include W. Somerset Maugham (Ashenden,1928), Eric Ambler (Background to Danger,1937), Helen MacInnes ( Above Suspicion,1941), and Graham Greene (The Third Man,1950). After World War II (1939-1945), the Cold War provided fertile ground for the further popularization of spy stories. Major authors from England include Ian Fleming, who portrayed the adventures of fictional secret agent James Bond in such books as Casino Royale (1953) and From Russia, with Love (1957), and John Le Carré (pseudonym of David John Cornwell), who wrote complicated novels of intrigue and counterintrigue, including The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), and The Night Manager (1993). Le Carré's most famous spy character is George Smiley. Other spy novelists include British writers Len Deighton ( The Ipcress File,1962), Frederick Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal,1971), and Ken Follett (Eye of the Needle,1978), and American author Robert Ludlum (The Bourne Identity,1980).

Another type of mystery story is based on events that have never been fully explained. One of the most famous of this type is “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842-1843) by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, which is based on the unsolved murder of a woman near Hoboken, New Jersey, in about 1842. A later example is The Daughter of Time (1951) by English writer Josephine Tey (pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh), which speculates on the role played by Richard III, king of England, in the murder of his nephews.

Adventure novels—such as King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She (1887) by British writer H. Rider Haggard, and The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1956) and Atlantic Fury (1962) by English writer Hammond Innes—also constitute a category of mystery stories. Alistair MacLean, a Scottish writer, is known for such novels as The Guns of Navarone (1957) and Ice Station Zebra (1963). Other adventure novelists include American writers Fletcher Knebel (Seven Days in May, 1962) and Lawrence Block (The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep, 1966), and Irish writer Jack Higgins (The Eagle Has Landed, 1975). American adventure novelist Tom Clancy (The Hunt for Red October, 1984) is known for the technological detail in his thrillers.