Christianity and the Detective Story

Seemingly strange bedfellows, Christianity and detective fiction share several noble pursuits in common: morality, justice, order, good and evil, and punishment—to name a few. The fifteen essays in Christianity and the Detective Story, edited by Anya Morlan and Walter Raubicheck, explore the similarities and intersections between these two bedfellows, rendering them far less strange by the end of the collection. The effect is important because one of the questions the volume continues to raise is, can detective stories offer a serious forum for philosophical and theological thought? In fact, the essays collectively make the argument that detective fiction is well-situated for the serious discussion of popular culture and religion.

Morlan and Raubicheck claim detective story writers have long relied on the genre to address the issues of religion and faith. Like Christianity, detective fiction offers readers reassurance derived from the restoration of order and the resistance to chaos. Even though both Christianity and detective narratives seek justice and punishment, Morlan and Raubicheck add, “Solving a crime and bringing the guilty to justice still do not undo the wrong that was done to the victims. And so, where the detective is limited, Christian faith can comfort the suffering and give meaning to the loss endured” (p. xxvii). The editors’ assertion presumes, of course, the existence of the divine and that the blanket effectiveness of “Christian faith” is a term not in need of clarification, since it presents a multiplicity of interpretations. Still, there are several compelling points the contributors and editors make in Christianity and the Detective Story, including the comparison of the Mystery of God and the mystery in detective fiction. As Morlan and Raubicheck state, “The Christian Mystery can also remain the one unsolved mystery of the detective story, thus reminding us that not all answers can be found by means of reason and logic” (p. xxviii).

Part one, “From Mystery to Mystery,” compares the experiences of engaging the unseen, unsolved, and unknown. The opening essay by Søren Higgins, “Is a ‘Christian’ Mystery Story Possible?: Charles Williams’s War in Heaven as a Generic Case Study,” argues that detective stories stem from and develop significant social ideologies, which underline “the necessity of order and the value of human life” (p. 8). Higgins points out that this particular message conveys moral and religious values, but she suggests that detective stories provide a significant ideological position, which integrates a supernatural element and separates this genre from other fiction genres. Extending this argument, Eric Biddy’s “Theodicy and the Detective Story: Holmes, Haverwas, and Auster” explores the ways these major detective characters enable their authors to create opportunities for theodicy. Although the subsequent parts address other intersections of Christianity and the detective narratives, the essays within them continue to address the primary argument for detective fiction as a viable, legitimate literary form to engage serious dialogue. For example, the essays in part two provide a case study of Dorothy Sayers’s work, and Maria Plochocki’s essay, “Morse, the Christian?” which appears in the third section, “Detective as Prophet,” develops the theme of the Mystery that part one introduces. Plochocki claims that Colin Dexter’s well-known Inspector Morse’s pursuit of the truth parallels similar pursuits for the Mystery of the divine shared by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Abeland (p. 152).

Christianity and the Detective Story extends a well-established area of scholarly work on detective fiction, including Leonard Cassuto’s rigorous study Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (2008). But closer to the question of religion and detective narratives, Michael Holquist’s “Whodunit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories,” which appeared in New Literary History in 1971, and John Irwin’s 1986 Modern Language Notes essay, “Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Rereading: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story,” provide early attempts to provide academic legitimacy to the genre. Using the lens of religion, Christianity and the Detective Story continues the efforts...