We must have certainty : four essays on the detective story /

In the first essay in this volume, Van Dover (Lincoln Univ.) breaks up the 150-year history of detective fiction into four phases. In the remaining three essays, he explores the two worlds in which the detective operates in each of the four phases. The author argues that one of the worlds is superficially like the actual world, providing the outward appearance of reality. Into that world, the crime--usually murder--introduces confusion, disorder, and misunderstanding. Van Dover explains that the satisfaction of the genre comes to readers from the second world, which the detective ultimately orders and explains. The detective explains what really took place or who is really not what he or she seems to be. Everyone, other characters as well as readers, has been privy to the same information, but only the detective can rightly interpret that information. Moreover, the detective is never approximately correct. His, or hers, is certain knowledge--the "certainty" of the book's title--that fully and completely accounts for all of what seemed disordered and chaotic. All four essays are clearly written and very insightful. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All readers; all collections. J. L. Culross Eastern Kentucky University