Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes
Sign in to watch this content please.
- Episode
- Detectives - Ep1
- Broadcast Info
- 2016 (59 mins)
- Description
- In the first episode of a series that explores the books we (really) read, Andrew Marr investigates the curious case of detective fiction. This is a genre that been producing bestsellers since the 19th century, and whose most famous heroes Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Rebus are now embedded in our collective psyche. But how does it work and how do the best crime writers keep us compulsively turning the pages?
Andrew Marr deconstructs detective fiction by looking at its rules: the conventions that we expect to be present when we pick up a typical mystery. Because detective fiction is an interactive puzzle, many are the rules of a game e.g. The Writer Must Play Fair, The Crime Must Be Credible; that allow the writer and the reader to engage in a fiendish battle of wits. What is remarkable is that instead of restricting novelists (as you might expect), the rules stimulate creativity: clever writers like Agatha Christie or Ian Rankin use them to create a seemingly infinite number of storytelling possibilities.
Andrew will show how the fictional detective is a brilliant invention, who takes readers into (often dark) places where we wouldn’t normally go. While we are in their company, no section of society is offlimits or above suspicion, and Andrew shows how writers have used crime fiction not merely to entertain, but also to anatomise society’s problems.
During the course of the programme, Andrew interviews modernday crime writers such as Anthony Horowitz, Sophie Hannah and Val McDermid, while profiling important pioneers such as Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Ruth Rendell. Along the way, he decodes various great setpieces of the detective novel such as Hercule Poirot’s drawing room denouements, and the "locked room" mysteries of John Dickson Carr. - Genre
- Literature; Writing
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/225957 (Accessed 24 Nov 2025)