Iain Sinclair's Unsound Detectives

Abstract

The heroes of detective fiction are revered for the intellectual brilliance that allows them to unravel mysteries that appear insoluble to ordinary mortals. Yet the stature of figures like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot is continually compromised by the relatively low status of the literary genre in which they perform their dazzling feats of reason. John T. Irwin asks a simple but essential question about detective stories: “How does one write analytic detective fiction as high art when the genre's basic structure, its central narrative mechanism, seems to discourage the unlimited rereading associated with serious writing?” (1168). Irwin quotes one of Jorge Luis Borges's characters who, “steeped in detective stories, thought that the solution of a mystery is always less impressive than the mystery itself (1169). How can a writer capture, and sustain throughout a whole story, the fascinating atmosphere of uncertainty that exists in classic detective fiction prior to the “always less impressive“ solution of the case? An attempt to do this can be found in works that have come to be known as metaphysical detective stories1 (Haycraft 78; Holquist 154).