"Raymond Chandler once called murder a

simple art: Maybe so, but detection is a decid-

edly elegant one, elegant in the way a mathe-

matician calls a tidy solution to a t~articularly

kn otty problem elegant. Sherlock Holnles

used logic, Father Brown an abili~fto put

himself in the murderer s skin, Lord Peter a

knack for intuitive bursts of inspiration, Sam

Spade an instinct to distrust his suspects only

so far, Lew Archer a belief that more crimes

can be explained by Freud than Blackstone.

But more central than the methods and man-

nerisms of the great detectives is the fact that

they cut through confusion and chaos, solve

puzzles, and set things right to make the

world seem quite a logical place after all.

They restore order. As for those methods and

mannerisms--there, for the readers of detec-

tive stories, is where the fun lies."