Mystery’s History 003: Mystery’s Fair Play Rules

Watch Mystery’s History 003: Mystery’s Fair Play Rules and follow along with the transcript below.

Welcome to Mystery’s History, Interesting Facts Behind Intriguing Stories.

In this episode, we’re traveling back to 1928* in search of the history behind mystery’s fair play rules.

Readers may not know this, but there are guidelines for mystery writers like me to ensure that we play fair with our readers meaning we should give the reader all of the clues they need to solve the mystery right along with the sleuth.  

The interesting fact about the fair play guidelines is there are two versions. Both were written in 1928* but on different sides of the pond. Father Ronald Knox, who was a Catholic priest as well as a mystery writer, wrote his 10 Commandments of fair play in England. These guidelines were later adopted by Britain’s Detection Club. On this side of the pond, S.S. Van Dine, who wrote the Philo Vance series, created 20 rules for writing detective stories. Now, these two treatises are very different but clearly agree on their intent as summed up in Van Dine’s rule number one. “The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery.”

I’ll have more on the individual fair play rules in upcoming episodes of Mystery’s History. Until then, I’m Donald Jay.

*Note: After the production of this video, upon further research, I discovered that Father Ronald Knox published his 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction in 1929, not 1928, as my original source reported.