The Mystery of the Missing Corpus

Abstract

Until recently, two happy vices stole a good share of my time. Of those burglars, the first was the reading of science-fiction stories, a source of entertainment that I discovered at the age of eight, but kept manfully in check because I never stumbled upon a continuous supply. Of late, however, real life has mocked this branch of fiction so closely that I now miss in it the elements of fantasy and escape that used to delight. You might say that, being crowded out by the real thing, we armchair spacemen face technological obsolescence.

My second time-stealer has been “Murder for Pleasure,” as Howard Haycraft calls the detective story. Fortunately, I did not discover its existence until my twenties, so I had a little time for study before then. The great value of the detective story, quite apart from its educational aspects– after all, where else can one gather so much data about useful everyday questions such as tasteless poisons, homicidal law, and criminal psychology–is the fine training one gets in applied psychology and in the logic of everyday life.