Ms. James and Mr. Brown

For all her insistence upon reality and the fact that the reading public has rejected the "ingenious" mystery in favor of "psychological depth," Ms. James does not pay much attention to what people are actually reading.

from Talking About Detective Fiction
P. D. James

There is one way in which Dorothy L. Sayers was very much a writer of her own time, and that is the ingenuity of her complicated methods of death.  This is one aspect of her talent which ahs had little influence on modern novelists, and one which we have largely outgrown.

We have not now, and will not outgrow the clever puzzle. This is demonstrated time and again in what sells well both in book and cinema. It is my contention that Dan Brown's books do as well as they do based largely on the ingenuity of the built-in puzzle factor.  (They certainly don't take any awards for good writing.)  And the National Treasure series of films succeed (if they have been deemed a success) on the clever construction of interlocking, ingenious, and tremendously unlikely elements that pull us through an intricate puzzle that we can all participate in.  Even in Children's books we see the trend in such books as Chasing Vermeer.


Really, I think much of what Ms. James has to say on the matter of ingenuity is better leavened with a dose of the reality of the market.  It simply doesn't hold water.  We have not and we will not "outgrow" the allure of clever, intricate, fascinating puzzles.  Reading itself is a clever, intricate, fascinating puzzle that some of us never seem to tire of.