DETECTIVE NOVELS
Sir,-I am sure that the article "Wha Cares Who Killed Him" attacking des tective fiction will be hailed with great joy by many. I consider myself an avers age New Zealander, who in my youth acquired my literary standards at a New Zealand Secondary School and University and I agree entirely with Edmund Wilson. I have tried to read a Dorothy Sayers’ novel, as so many have gushed about her books, but I cannot wade through one, despite the fact that I read all of Tolstoy’s "War and Peace" and found it intensely interesting. Lord Peter Wimsey appears to me to be just fatuous. I have read works of Ngaio Marsh, Leslie Ford, Mignon Eberhart, and confess that after reading one, and working out, or trying to work out, the identity of the murderer, to read several
is just boring. The only author of Crime Club fame who interests me at all is Agatha Christie, but since she seems to have abandoned Hercule Poirot now, her stories leave me cold. But to have these books on one’s bookshelves among one’s treasured possessions-a thousand times no! As people must meditate upon characters in fiction I often wonder what is the effect on the mind of studying all the ingenious methods by which murder can be committed and my own answer is that it gives people ideas-and bad
ones too,
I. V.
H. T.
(Hawera).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451005.2.13.10
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 328, 5 October 1945, Page 24
Word count
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235DETECTIVE NOVELS New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 328, 5 October 1945, Page 24
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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