It must have been the heady atmosphere of those World War II days that made Edmund Wilson mount a frontal assault at one of the mainstays of Western civilization. "Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd," he thundered in the title of his essay denigrating detective fiction. But having discharged this salvo the eminent critic must have been seized by some inner doubts. Obviously hundreds of thousands have cared, the vast legion of readers who for 300 pages have struggled with the plethora of clues, only to be left dazzled and emotionally drained by the astounding conclusion of Agatha Christie's masterpiece. Wilson thus beat a retreat to a higher, supposedly safer, ground: "Friends," he wrote, "we represent a minority but Literature is on our side…. There is no need to bore ourselves with this rubbish." But this maneuver left him even more vulnerable. The masses don't buy and certainly don't read boring books, that is unless they have been certified as Literature by eminent critics. Wilson's last desperate move was a traditional one for those who run out of rasoned arguments: call for repression. He would have detective fiction proscribed…. (p. 21)
Fortunately his impious suggestion remained unheeded. Where would we be now, how could we have survived the alarms and anxieties of the Cold War, the Great Society, and the Greening of America without the distraction and solace of the mystery novel? As against senseless violence that surrounds us on all sides, this novel is an oasis of sensible violence: fictional, orderly and intellectually stimulating.
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