DETECTIVE STORIES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 591, 24 July 1933, Page 4

DETECTIVE STORIES

That many great men spend their leisure hours reacling detective stor'ies has long been widely known. Mr. Stanlfey Bald- . win has ' never conce'aied his fondness for the Sherlock Holmeses and the Trents of fiction. But now it appears that some learned men spend their leisure hours in writing them. Mr. G. D. H. Cole, who is reader in economics at Oxford, writes in collaboration with his wife widely read detective novels. Dr. Aiington, who has just resigned the head mastership of Eton, also relaxes himself by producing this land of fiction; While Mr. J. C. Masterman, a tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, ahd a well-known historian, has recent- : ly written a detective stor.y with |happenings in his own univeri sity. ! This is a development that Imight justifiably be made the 'occasion for national rejoicing. If books must be written there is a lot to be said for getting them written by thoughtful people. Particularly is this so when the hook in question happens to be a detective story. For the detective novel falls into two classes, one of which is extfemely undesirable. \ ' A large proportion of detective stories consists of tales that are indistinguishable from those j 0 - . ; in the crime news of the tabloid | Press. They are a tissue of homi- | cides, robberies, and ill-doings of every conceivable description which their authors wallow in without the slightest artistic justification. There is, however, a small number of detective stories whose object is far different from mere sensationalism. These emphasise, not the details of the crime committed, but the ingenuinty of the problem set the detective and the reader, and the skill with which the solution is woirked out. Their ihterest is primarily intelleetual, like the interest of a game 0$ chess. It is in the hope that they will popularise this kind of story instead of the other that one welcomes into the detective field the learned scholars of Eton and of Oxford.