The curious case of two genres that seem to say the same thing: Mystery Fiction

Is it just me or does Mystery Fiction and Detective Drama pretty much say the same thing? I'm thinking they can be merged. Same with Mystery Literature and Detective Literature. Either that or someone needs to spell out the difference more explicitly.

You cannot put two tropes in the description, I've pointed it at one of them.

Mystery Fiction is characters that aren't detectives solving mysteries, generally murder mysteries. They tend to be things like cooks or grandmothers or something.

Detective Fiction involves detectives.

The same with the other two. One has detectives, but not always mysteries. One has mysteries, but not always detectives.

edited 20th Jun '11 7:47:11 PM by shimaspawn

The problem with that separation is that Detective Drama says "The character is usually a police detective or private detective, but can also be a [[AmateurDetective civilian]] with acute sleuthing skills" which puts most, if not all, of the not-a police-detective-or- Private-detective players right back into that category.

Mystery Fiction: A genre which often includes a detective (amateur, PI or regular cop) involved in, well, a mystery.

Detective Drama: A show that follows the cases of a central detective character as he pursues a mystery

So, the only real difference in the definition is that Drama uses "show" and Mystery doesn't specify show. However, if you look at all the examples for Detective Drama, there is a lot more than just shows listed.

IF there is a difference, it needs to be spelled out more clearly.

Of course, if you follow the link that Mystery Fiction has to a web page defining what a mystery fiction is, you get a link to something defining "Detective Fiction."

I'm inclined to think that the two pages can be merged with minimal effort.

edited 21st Jun '11 9:41:56 AM by Auxdarastrix

^ What about something like And Then There Were None? It's clearly Mystery Fiction, but there's no detective character that is followed. The same could be said for many of Agatha Christie's works, actually. Death Comes as the End comes to mind as well.

How about detective fiction is character driven and mystery fiction is plot driven?

Edit to add: I wrote that and then went outside and realized I should have said less or more.

What I mean is that if the personalities of the people involved in solving the mystery is as important as the case itself that would be detective fiction. The Alienist, Sherlock Holmes, Kinky Friedman, that one obscure Perry Ellis I like oh and Martha Grimes novels.

Mystery fiction would be things like Ellery Queen or some of the Miss Marple stories.

edited 21st Jun '11 10:06:05 AM by blackcat

So, why is it that the history section for Mystery Fiction on the list includes a bunch of detective stories like Sherlock Holmes, which you classify as Detective Drama? It all seems a bit arbitrary to me.

Yup, it is arbitrary. Most systems for determining whether something is one thing or another are. It was a thought, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.