When tinged with travel writing and journalism, the mystery genre feels a lot more familiar—I don’t mean cozier—to me. Probably, this is largely because much of my professional writing background has involved these non-fiction fields during the past twenty-five years. And yet, my readings of classic mystery works since 2021 (when I started writing my first mystery novel) also seems to bear out the idea that from its inception with Edgar Allan Poe, and through all its various divergences since, the genre has been marked fundamentally by aspects of travel writing and journalism, directly but often indirectly.
In the following brief summary, I will provide three examples from well-known works where the travel or journalistic aspect can be discerned. In the bigger picture, this cross-pollination of approaches is practically useful to authors today, I believe, specifically for the strengthening of the literary character of a mystery story—in terms of both characters and settings, and the spirit that permeates the tale.
That is: the singularity of any given story should have just as much to do with its setting and its people as it does with its ciphers, locked-room ingenuity, or other devices of the genre that could be plotted anywhere. The best mystery (and other) stories are memorable to a large extent because authors succeed in convincing readers that the story happens, of necessity, to the characters involves, and in the places and times in which they are set. The informed articulation of a specific topos and a convincing historicity (even if the story is not ‘historical,’ in the broadest sense) create additional nuance and depth to a mystery story, elevating the most memorable beyond what might otherwise be simply a generic puzzle absent of topical and character necessity.
Note: for the reader’s enjoyment, and to better demonstrate the stories discussed here, I will include a special shout-out, in the form of relevant links to recitations by British voice actor Tony Walker of the Classic Detective Stories channel on YouTube.
I tested my observation in yet another listening of the genre’s honorary original, and still one of the most remarkable literary detective stories, Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ For both his great puzzle-solver, the Frenchman Dupin, and his native city of 1840s Paris, are so deftly described in passing, in a thousand accidental (yet essential) details that the magic of the piece comes to life. For the eventual explanation of an escaped orangutan with a razor blade to be at all believable, the author must conjure sufficient images of a city in which both the architecture and personalities make it possible. In order for Poe’s city to be fit for the genius of Dupin the occasional detective, it must also be habitable for that hapless Maltese sailor with his strange pet.
Further, and most extraordinary, is how Poe manages to encapsulate both the mood of the characters and their location while foreshadowing and mimicking the very concept of the locked-room mystery that he is about to detail, in the early descriptive scene, in which Poe’s narrator first discusses life in Paris with Dupin:
“Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen — although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors whomsoever. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone.
In the following brief summary, I will provide three examples from well-known works where the travel or journalistic aspect can be discerned. In the bigger picture, this cross-pollination of approaches is practically useful to authors today, I believe, specifically for the strengthening of the literary character of a mystery story—in terms of both characters and settings, and the spirit that permeates the tale.
That is: the singularity of any given story should have just as much to do with its setting and its people as it does with its ciphers, locked-room ingenuity, or other devices of the genre that could be plotted anywhere. The best mystery (and other) stories are memorable to a large extent because authors succeed in convincing readers that the story happens, of necessity, to the characters involves, and in the places and times in which they are set. The informed articulation of a specific topos and a convincing historicity (even if the story is not ‘historical,’ in the broadest sense) create additional nuance and depth to a mystery story, elevating the most memorable beyond what might otherwise be simply a generic puzzle absent of topical and character necessity.
Note: for the reader’s enjoyment, and to better demonstrate the stories discussed here, I will include a special shout-out, in the form of relevant links to recitations by British voice actor Tony Walker of the Classic Detective Stories channel on YouTube.
I tested my observation in yet another listening of the genre’s honorary original, and still one of the most remarkable literary detective stories, Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ For both his great puzzle-solver, the Frenchman Dupin, and his native city of 1840s Paris, are so deftly described in passing, in a thousand accidental (yet essential) details that the magic of the piece comes to life. For the eventual explanation of an escaped orangutan with a razor blade to be at all believable, the author must conjure sufficient images of a city in which both the architecture and personalities make it possible. In order for Poe’s city to be fit for the genius of Dupin the occasional detective, it must also be habitable for that hapless Maltese sailor with his strange pet.
Further, and most extraordinary, is how Poe manages to encapsulate both the mood of the characters and their location while foreshadowing and mimicking the very concept of the locked-room mystery that he is about to detail, in the early descriptive scene, in which Poe’s narrator first discusses life in Paris with Dupin:
It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massy shutters of our old building; lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams — reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.”
A second story in which sense of place and character struck me, for a different reason, was Dorothy L. Sayers’ ‘Murder at Pentecost.’ This story of mad professors and a murder at an apocryphal Oxonian college not only reminded me of Oxford (and perhaps, how much has remained the same there over time). Yet it also really emphasized the value that a good narrator can bring in terms of reinforcing character identities through proper reading of dialogue. In the story, Tony Walker does an excellent job of narrating the subtle tonal differences between the aaimless upper-class English undergraduate, the (perhaps) mad professor, and the working-class English policeman on the case. This comprehension of character dialogue through regional accents adds great depth and richness, bringing us closer to Sayers’ original intent and making the story more singular in its new reading.
A separate mention of another Classic Detective Stories recitation comes from a book I very much hope to cover in more detail for the Mystery Readers Journal next year. That is the classic 1939 thriller by Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios (published in the US as A Coffin for Dimitrios). The excerpt is called Belgrade 1926
, and recounts a fictional espionage trap set in that city in that year. Ambler’s opening contextualization of the contemporaneous geopolitical situation of that era in Europe makes his scenario more believable: that is, how and why ah international mster-spy would attempt to trick a Yugoslav civil servant into selling him, by hook or by crook, a top-secret map of planned mine fields in the Adriatic meant to deter the threat from fascist Italy. The further discussion of the Greek international agent Dimitrios (based on the real-life arms dealer, Basil Zaharoff, and how he attempts to interfere with the map business is recounted in gripping prose, in one of the first realist espionage thrillers.
Since 2021, I’ve brought on board the lessons of stories like these into the writing and editing of my own Detective Grigoris novel, which is set in Southeast Europe at the turn of the 21st century. I’ve applied my own diverse writing and research experience to the novel. At the same time, I’ve observed from the classics of the genre that ‘fleshing out’ a mystery with ekphrasis and richly-local characters are things of long-standing.
Such an observation gives me hope not only that my work will be published, but that my approach confirms and complements a pre-existing (if under-discussed) dimension of what makes the mystery genre so interesting for diverse groups of readers.
A second story in which sense of place and character struck me, for a different reason, was Dorothy L. Sayers’ ‘Murder at Pentecost.’ This story of mad professors and a murder at an apocryphal Oxonian college not only reminded me of Oxford (and perhaps, how much has remained the same there over time). Yet it also really emphasized the value that a good narrator can bring in terms of reinforcing character identities through proper reading of dialogue. In the story, Tony Walker does an excellent job of narrating the subtle tonal differences between the aaimless upper-class English undergraduate, the (perhaps) mad professor, and the working-class English policeman on the case. This comprehension of character dialogue through regional accents adds great depth and richness, bringing us closer to Sayers’ original intent and making the story more singular in its new reading.
A separate mention of another Classic Detective Stories recitation comes from a book I very much hope to cover in more detail for the Mystery Readers Journal next year. That is the classic 1939 thriller by Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios (published in the US as A Coffin for Dimitrios). The excerpt is called Belgrade 1926
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Since 2021, I’ve brought on board the lessons of stories like these into the writing and editing of my own Detective Grigoris novel, which is set in Southeast Europe at the turn of the 21st century. I’ve applied my own diverse writing and research experience to the novel. At the same time, I’ve observed from the classics of the genre that ‘fleshing out’ a mystery with ekphrasis and richly-local characters are things of long-standing.
Such an observation gives me hope not only that my work will be published, but that my approach confirms and complements a pre-existing (if under-discussed) dimension of what makes the mystery genre so interesting for diverse groups of readers.
***
Christopher Deliso is an American author, former long-term contributor to The Economist Intelligence Unit, IHS Jane’s, and co-author of over twenty Lonely Planet travel guides for five Southeast European countries. He has been widely published in major global media, and his first Detective Grigoris story, "The Mystery of the Scavenging Crabs," was published in January 2025 in the Crimeucopia anthology, Hey! Don’t Read That, Read This! (Murderous Ink Press, UK). Subscribe to Christopher Deliso’s Substack for occasional articles on literature, history, travel and reviews.
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