#van dine

Knox's Commandments

"The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow." For sure

"All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course." Now here's a tricky one. Definitely while witchcraft comes up in both murders it's pointing to motive, not as a means. The real issue comes with Knox's "Father Brown" complaint: the supernatural shouldn't be used as a red herring because we know it's impossible. And, yes, a player in that mindset (or a rationalist Andreas) would think that of Amelie's visions: they prove she's got a direct connection to the crimes. Maybe I'm a fool but I didn't jump right to it.

"Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable" While technically two (at least), the first I'd say is more part of the evidence for the second. There's a perfectly good reason for the secret passages: the Romans built them and everyone just forgot

"No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end." I think we all understand how pulleys work

"No Chinaman must figure in the story." In terms of "don't just make the Sinister Foreigner the killer/red herring", for sure. Vaclav, Sebhat, and the Sommerfelds never come under suspicion

"No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right." Aside from Amelie happening to call out (is that even an accident? Let's say it is) or the standard "wow a murder happens every time you show up", no.

"The detective must not himself commit the crime." No he's not guilty he just has depression

"The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader." Nope.

"Watson" Magdalene, possibly?

"Twins" Apollo and Artemis may be mischievous but they aren't killers

Pretty good! The exceptions let both Knox and Pentiment come off well

Now for Van Dine who I expect will fare much worse

"The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described." Ok

"No willful tricks or deceptions may be played on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself." Yep. The only trick is the culprit directly lying to Andreas to throw him off the scent

"There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar." Love is the only reason to do anything in this world, fuck you.

"The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering someone a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It is false pretenses." Certainly

"The culprit must be determined by logical deductions—not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker." Well, each murder has evidence but never 100% conclusive. As for the ending, they did logically conclude where the thread-puller is

"The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic." 100%, and process of elimination is logical

"There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much bother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded." Oh, far more than one

"The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, Ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic séances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio." As above, the supernatural is, seen rationally, the central clue to everything

"There must be but one detective—that is, but one protagonist of deduction—one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader does not know who his coeducator is. It is like making the reader run a race with a relay team." It all depends on whether you see Magdalene as "the detective", frankly this rule is splitting hairs, if the brains trust is collaborating you get the same benefit as any one of them.

"The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story—that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest." Not only that but you're present at the moment they decide to commit the crime

"A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person—one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion." Passes but also fuck you

"There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature." This is a complicated one, I'd say it doesn't pass this rule but it works

"Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds." Definitely passes. The thread-puller has help but isn't some secret society leader

"The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure." Again see above.

"The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent—provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face—that all the clues really pointed to the culprit—and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying." Oh, absolutely. The visions? The ongoing refusal to do foundation repair? The huge hole? Obvious clues when you know

"A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude." Fuck you.

"A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by housebreakers and bandits are the province of the police departments — not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities." Mostly the case though you can easily blame Martin for everything

"A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader." They're all definitely killings

"The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plotting and war politics belong in a different category of fiction — in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader’s everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions." I'd say so. It's a big motive touching on huge forces in the world, but this isn't about imperial or church politics, it's about a small village and how it sees itself.

etcetera. Well, the Martin bit edges against the "no doubles" but that's motive not means. And the letters aren't code, they're a bit cryptic but straightforward.