What Are The Conventions Of Detective Fiction And How Does Conan Doyle's Story, 'The Speckled Band' Conform To These Conventions?

What Are The Conventions Of Detective Fiction And How Does The Speckled Band Conform To These Conventions?

Detective fiction is a type of fiction revolving around the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective. The genre of detective fiction has existed for a long time and had produced hundreds of well know novels, short stories, Television series and films. Adversely to popular myth, detective fiction did not begin with Sherlock Holmes. The first examples of this highly popular genre can be traced back to biblical times, whilst Conan Doyle’s popular Sherlock Holmes books are just the more famous and one of the first of the books written in the ‘British Golden Age of Detective Fiction’.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a Scottish Author who wrote Science fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. Conan Doyle is most well known for his series of stories based on Detective Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle compiled twelve Sherlock Holmes detective fiction sort stories into one book that was known as “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” which included “The Adventure of The Speckled band. The book was published in 1892, in late Victorian England, a prosperous time in England, the time of huge change, the industrial revolution and scientific development. These changes in society brought about an embodiment of scientific and logical thinking; the character of Holmes is a great example of this new form of logical thinking. This new modern thinking also caused the suppression of superstition in society, causing death to be investigated more closely. The result of this was the subject of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, detective fiction.

“The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, a short story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is written from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes’s protégé, “intimate associate” and friend, Dr.Watson. The narrator recounts the events of Sherlock Holmes Solving the mystery of the speckled band. The story starts when a young lady, Mrs. Stoner, wakes Holmes and Watson in London pleading for their help in solving the reason for her sister’s mysterious death and the surreptitious recent re-occurrences of the days before her sister’s death. Mrs. Stoner tells Holmes the series of tragic events that lead up to her being distraught with fear in London with Holmes. After Mrs. Stoner recounted her story to Holmes and Watson, Mrs Stoner leaves back to her home at Stoke and Moron Manor. After Mrs. Stoner leaves, Holmes is visited by the young lady’s stepfather, Dr. Roylott and is threatened to stop medalling with his affairs. Holmes does not heed Roylott’s warning and hatches a plan to visit Stoke and Moron Manor to investigate the case further. Holmes discovers some secretive adaptations to the room in which Mrs.Stoner’s sister was murdered and where Mrs. Stoner has been moved into. He discovered that the bed had been bolted down to the floor, there was a ventilation system that didn’t work, and fake bell-pull. From this information Holmes deduces what may happen without his intervention. He hatches a plan in order to prevent a treacherous deed from taking place. Holmes and his companion Dr.Watson have a so called ‘steak out’ in Mrs.Stoner’s bedroom whilst Mrs.Stoner is secretly escorted to a safe place. Whilst in the room Holmes and Watson hear the earlier described whistling both Mrs.Stoner and her now deceased sister previously heard. As Holmes predicted, a snake dropped into the room via the false ceiling ventilators. Holmes prevents an imported swamp adder from finding a victim by hitting it with a cane. The swamp adder is enraged and returns back up through the ventilation system back into the lap of the villains, causing it strike the villain, killing him. The Villain turned out to be Dr. Roylott. Holmes prevents the murder of Mrs.Stoner whilst adversely killing Mrs. Stoner’s villainous step-father.

The basic story line is quite simple but contains much more than this brief summary. The story is very stereotypical of a detective fiction story and conforms to many of the conventions of detective fiction stories. In order to find out what the conventions of a detective fiction story were, I read another Sherlock Holmes story, a Poirot book by Agatha Christie and watched many modern detective fiction television programmes. After studying a variety of products of the detective fiction genre I discovered that many of them shared some common characteristics and included many similar conventions.

Firstly, there is ...

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Firstly, there is the most important aspect of detective fiction, the detective. In “The Speckled Band” the main character is the often celebrated detective, Sherlock Holmes. The character Sherlock Holmes conforms to many characteristics of other detectives in detective fiction literature. Most detectives are portrayed as very logical, observant and dependable whilst not necessarily likeable to the reader or viewer. The character Sherlock Holmes conforms to this stereotype throughout “The Speckled Band”. Another example of a detective that conforms to this stereotype is Agatha Christie’s detective character Hercule Poirot.

Evidence for Holmes’s consistent deduction and observational skills include when Holmes observes mud splatters on Mrs. Stoner’s jacket and the train ticket in her hand and instantaneously and correctly deduced and identified Mrs. Stoner’s mode of transport on her journey to London. Further evidence for Holmes’s observation skills is when Holmes sees many subliminal features throughout his tour of Stoke and Moron Manor that that suggested the mode of Mrs.Stoner’s sister’s death that neither Watson or the Coroner picked up on.

Holmes is also portrayed as a very dedicated man, as are many detectives in detective fiction. Holmes mentions during a conversation with Watson and a very distressed Mrs. Stoner that “As to reward my profession is its own reward but you are at liberty to defray any expenses that I may be put to”. This tells you that Holmes does not work as a detective for the money; instead he is very dedicated to his craft and works for the love of his craft. The quote suggests that there is no charge for the a job he wants to do for the love of helping a helpless woman and suggests that Holmes is not only dedicated but very caring and sympathetic to Mrs. Stoner’s predicament. This means Holmes is a very moral person as he doesn’t exploit people’s situation for money, this integrity is not uncommon in many other detective characters.

The second of the three most imperative parts of a detective fiction story is a Villain. Villains are often portrayed very negatively in detective fiction. The villain in this story is Dr. Roylott, the stepfather of Mrs. Stoner, the ‘damsel in distresses’. Dr. Roylott is branded as a very violent ferocious man by his step-daughter. Mrs. Stoner refers to him as the “terror of the village”, his “violence of temper approaching to mania”, and his “uncontrollable in his anger” intensifying Dr. Roylott as a very villainous character. Holmes observes marks on Mrs.Stoner’s body further suggesting his violent nature. Later on in the story Dr.Roylott visits Holmes threatening him with a fire poker to stay out of his affairs. During the time he is in the room with Holmes and Watson, Watson physically described Dr. Roylott as having a “large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun and marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other of us, while his deep set eyes and his high, thin, fleshless nose gave him somewhat of resemblance to a fierce bird of prey”. These somewhat fierce and threatening physical characteristics are stereotypical of a villainous character in any story.

One of the other most important parts of a detective fiction story is a victim; after all there is nothing to investigate if there is no victim. In the case of “The Speckled Band” the victim is the sister of Mrs Stoner. Most often than not the detective investigates a murder, whether it be a past murder or recent murder though sometimes a detective may be investigating the theft of an inanimate object or money. Throughout “The speckled band” Holmes investigates a murder and the imminent threat of a repeated murder.

Repetition of a crime is a regular occurrence in detective fiction novels the logic behind it is that if you can get away with a crime once, you should be able to get away with a crime o

Often the celebrated detective of the story is at odds with the police and official law enforcers such as a coroner (unless of course the detective in fact belongs to the police force or is a coroner). This is often because the celebrated detective is of a better standard than the state detectives, or that their differences in levels of integrity and morals. Although there is little reference to the police throughout the story Holmes belittles the work of the official coroner’s work suggesting his superiority.