Chris Simmons 10MA 5th June 2002
Compare the Techniques that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ruth Rendell use to present the Nature of the Murderers, the Motives and the Consequences.
The two books I am going to compare are ‘The Hound Of The Baskervilles’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and ‘People Don’t Do Such Things’ by Ruth Rendell.
‘The Hound Of The Baskervilles’ is an intricate crime detection novel written pre-war in the 18th Century, where Doyle relays facts to the reader incredibly cryptically and at strategic points. These facts, if pieced together correctly, eventually inform the reader of the result of the book and what characters fit in where. It starts with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solving, really a puzzle rather than a mystery as they find a walking stick left in their office by someone unknown. This however develops into a full-scale mystery that involves murder, betrayal, dishonesty and revenge. This type of novel was popular around the time of being first published because they somehow matched true stories of the time, for example, Jack the Ripper.
‘People Don’t Do Such Things’ is a short story written post-war and has a much more modern slant on things. It is told through the eyes of the eventual culprit so as to only relay information that the narrator deems to be important and this resultantly deceives the reader in the overall ending of the story. The beginning of the story is a depiction of a happy stable marriage between the narrator and his wife but starts to go downhill from there. The story uses themes of betrayal and murder.