Ironic detective stories: the specifics of the genre

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

What is an ironic detective? Books of this genre are familiar to all categories of readers, only the attitude towards them is different for everyone. Someone considers the ironic detective story literary garbage, someone happily buys up all the new items, while the majority is quite indifferent. And few people know that this genre appeared less than 100 years ago, and it has a specific "literary mother" - Joanna Khmelevskaya.

Strictly speaking, the famous Polish writer was not at all the creator of a new group of literary works. Simultaneously with the first stories of Khmelevskaya, ironic detective stories by such authors as Gaston Leroux (France), Georgette Heyer (Great Britain) and Jene Reito (Hungary) appeared, so this genre was created by joint efforts. But it was Pani John who first won the love of Russian readers, so that in our country there was a consensus: Khmelevskaya was the first, and the rest only followed in her footsteps. It is difficult to say how true this is: each author has his own style, so you cannot accuse someone of gross imitation. Nevertheless, ironic detective stories are most often written according to a single pattern, which can be clearly seen in the work of any writer.

Classic componentsironic detective:

1. Name. This is the most noticeable detail for the buyer, so it is always catchy, noticeable, with a bit of humor or satire, and most often it is a distorted speech cliché. Example: "Beast without Beauty", "Special Purpose Girlfriend", "Ladies Kill Cavaliers".

2. The image of the main character. In an ironic detective story, this is usually an ugly, unhappy woman (girl) who always gets into ridiculous situations. Sometimes asexual. At the end, the “stupid” heroine will certainly outwit all the criminals, find happiness in her personal life and automatically receive the reader’s empathy, since he himself has long guessed who the main criminal is.

3. One-sided characters: either bad or good. And the world is appropriate: no halftones, everything is black or white.

After Pani Joanna, many authors wrote ironic detective stories. In our country, the peak of the genre's popularity came in the 90s of the last century, when the shelves were actually littered with inexpensive paperback books that sold like hot cakes. And, most interestingly, most of this popularity was related to just one name - Daria Dontsova. The ironic detective performed by this writer is still the same mixture of classical components. Why did her books enjoy and still enjoy such success? After all, along with popularity, an avalanche of criticism fell on Dontsova: the books are mediocre, the author does not shine with intelligence, she orders detective stories from"literary blacks" - this is only part of the accusations. The writer answered the question about success herself, and, according to Dontsova, she only writes fairy tales for adults, which they lack in real life. As for the other accusations, everything is obvious here: well, not all writers can create like Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Moreover, they do not want and should not. Books should be different, for all categories of readers, and as long as there is someone who prefers ironic detective stories to any other genre, there will always be a writer who will create them.