Just a note about rule #5… in an effort to not use an offensive term for asian immigrants the author has possibly inverted the meaning of the rule:
5. No racial stereotypes. – to a 21st century reader implies that an author will not use racial stereotypes, that the characters can be their own individuals regardless of their race. In the original it means that there will be no asian immigrants in the story, and Knox further clarified that he thought their presence spoils a good story.
The page I link above also contains a similar list of "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" by S. S. Van Dine. He avoids any racists rules, but has a "classist" rule that speaks to America in the 1920s as seen by avant-garde art critic…
Servants – such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like – must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. It is unsatisfactory, and makes the reader feel that his time has been wasted. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person – one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion; for if the crime was the sordid work of a menial, the author would have had no business to embalm it in book-form.
On the contrary, I think it's quite clear that Knox meant one should avoid the cliche. The version you linked is the original when it was only nine rules, the later decalogue version is even clearer, I think:
>No Chinaman must figure in the story. Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a reason for it in our western habit of assuming that the Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals. I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention of 'the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo', you had best put it down at once; it is bad. The only exception which occurs to my mind--there are probably others--is Lord Ernest Hamilton's Four Tragedies of Memworth.
It's the western habit of assuming asians are intelligent but immoral that ultimately spoils the story, not the presence of asian immgirants themselves.
I also clicked through to read the original, had a different interpretation of the use of that rule. It seems to me directed at focusing attention on competition within a social class rather than outside it.
These stories are about members of the same group competing, not about in vs out-group competition.
i.e. imagine a school mystery: "the case of the stolen grade book" with culprit "random stranger who walked onto school grounds". The forbiddenness of such a solution is not racism/classism/ageism, but just that they're not part of the same social milieu of students, teachers, and parents. Them showing up makes all the fraught student<=>student, student<=>teacher interactions meaningless. Such a culprit's has different freedoms, social restrictions, and resources are different than the characters. If the culprit were another teacher with freedom to move, you get interesting contrast to students lack of mobility (needing hall passes to do their investigations). The mechanics of the story with an in-group culprit force readers to think about the social relations gaps they personally see in their own lives.
The political implications of this are inconclusive to me - it avoids "othering" traditionally outside groups (to the authors of these books) and portraying them as criminals - but it does this by ignoring their participation in society and making them vanish.
Culprit selection is difficult; compare Colombo, who has similar rules: "the culprit is nearly always from the upper class" - is this a racist/classist policy or not?
> It seems to me directed at focusing attention on competition within a social class rather than outside it
> These stories are about members of the same group competing, not about in vs out-group competition.
Okay, but it doesn't seem obvious to me why "detective story" necessarily implies "story about competition within a social class". If I read a blog post titled "20 rules for making pasta-based dishes", and one of the rules was "don't ever use cheese", I'm not going to argue that there aren't a wide variety of good dishes you could make without cheese, but I'd definitely walk away with the assumption that the author has some sort of bias if they think it's a universal rule.
It seems like there was a decent amount of context missing here which leads to this ambiguity. Reading the original I can see it a couple of different ways but it seems to me that what is implied is that there was a genre of story in which the villain was always Chinese and that genre was full of shitty books that relied on racist cliches rather than clever plots or good writing. The advice then is to not follow down that path.
To me a modern equivalent would be if Spielberg decided to make a reality show to try to do a good version of it: at the end of the day the genre is just shitty and unsalvageable for more reasons than one.
Also it is hard to figure out if the original source was prejudiced against Chinese people or not from this alone. This is a discussion about good and bad writing, not about race directly.
I was responding to the comment about the rules that the person who did the crime couldn't be a butlet/maid/etc., not the rule you mention, which is an entirely different can of worms
5. No racial stereotypes. – to a 21st century reader implies that an author will not use racial stereotypes, that the characters can be their own individuals regardless of their race. In the original it means that there will be no asian immigrants in the story, and Knox further clarified that he thought their presence spoils a good story.
You can read more at: https://agathachristie.fandom.com/wiki/The_“Rules”_of_Detect...
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⟦addendum⟧
The page I link above also contains a similar list of "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" by S. S. Van Dine. He avoids any racists rules, but has a "classist" rule that speaks to America in the 1920s as seen by avant-garde art critic…
Servants – such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like – must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. It is unsatisfactory, and makes the reader feel that his time has been wasted. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person – one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion; for if the crime was the sordid work of a menial, the author would have had no business to embalm it in book-form.